Comment by jamescostian
6 years ago
I'm 22 and live in a mid-sized city, and I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" - and really, I'm not exaggerating. And not from rich people who have the latest iPhone either.
In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in a group chat on iMessage, you lose tons of features, like the ability to name the group chat (I'm being completely serious here; this was considered an important thing). The work around was "we'll take you out of this chat, and if something important happens someone will send you a text" - of course, it's not very easy to always remember to send that person an SMS, so they end up _very_ left out of things. This has also happened with middle-class people.
Honestly this seems like a feature of the social circles involved. I can't really imagine being, or even wanting to be, around people who are so shallow they won't have someone in a group because they can't change the chat name, or at least, people who wouldn't be willing to move to other types of software to accomodate people in the group. It seems like basic human decency that when someone in the group says "I can't xyz" you go "ok what can we do instead?". I'm not sure I can imagine caring so little about other people, and I definitely do not want to be around people who don't.
The parent comment mentioned some of the reasons why it goes beyond the normal "lol you're too poor to buy an iPhone". SMS chats are majorly crippled compared to iMessage ones, and this is technical functionality, not just bubble color. You can't really change the people in an SMS chat, iMessage features don't work (in some instances hilariously: you'll get a text like "so-and-so liked this message" instead of a reaction)…people just don't want to deal with it. And yes, iMessage makes no effort to destigmatize the person who converts your iMessage chat into an SMS conversation.
But people can just use LINE, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, messenger, etc and get all the features and more which in my experience as an android user is what actually happens than this weird shallow world of green and blue bubbles I've heard about on the internet.
Different friend groups may prefer different platforms, but it's pretty rare where someone new to the group refuses what the group is already using, which is almost never plain sms/imessage.
Google voice/sms is almost always for one on one friends where we don't share anyone in common or older relatives.
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You can use Whatsapp or other IMs though, which is what the rest of the world is doing. No one really uses SMS anymore
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It’s often not malice or conscious choice as you seem to think. It’s that technical designs have effects on social dynamics. Here’s an example I wrote elsewhere:
> Social dynamics are subtle. For example, group SMS doesn’t support contact names. If you add someone to a group SMS, the other people only see a phone number unless they go out of their way to add the new guy to their contact list. Likewise, the new person has to add everyone else to see names. Decades of research in behavioral economics show just how powerful defaults are, so most people probably won’t bother to add names. Without names, the new person will have a more difficult time connecting with the group.
But how difficult is it to move to whatsapp or something that everyone has supported, and most likely has on their phone anyway?
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I've seen this exact behaviour with non-tech friends in 20s-30s people. You have it exactly right. There's a stigma to being a green bubble.
It's stupid, but whatever. If you're going to be my friend, first things first: no tech prejudice :-) Apple might be more willing to interop if it had less of a network effect. Hell, I'd sub to iMessage if I could get it on Android.
One of the most disappointing anecdotes I've read recently.
If you're looking to be even more disappointed, check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23406844
Wow. There’s been a lot going on lately?
Yeah my feeling is that there are a lot more important things going on than the color of chat bubbles (or the status/system it implies). Sorry if it came off as though I meant this is more important than other serious things going on.
edit: typo
High school senior here; I can second the prevalence of this experience starting in middle school.
Oh and texting an i phone user sucks because those reactions come through like: Loved "blah blah blah"
Please when texting us android plebians don't use those reaction things.
I don’t think it’s just Android users who see it. I’m on iPhone and in a group text with a mix of Android and iPhone users I see it that way too. Maybe I’m on the cusp of being old and cranky but it seems a silly thing to worry about.
Because it's a group MMS instead of a group iMessage, it falls back to sending those as messages instead of sending them as metadata.
I actually like the "so and so Loved blah", because otherwise it would be really easy for non-iphone users to not know that someone actually acknowledged their message.
I actually think just changing the content of the message could make this so much better. Change:
> Liked "XXX"
to
> (John Smith Liked "XXX")
Including the parenthesis. Make it clear that it's not a real, typed message from the person.
To be fair I am an iOS user and found the reactions an unnecessary and annoying gimmick.
It’s faster to just type the “laughing with tears” emoji and press send than to use the equivalent reaction.
I really like the "Liked" reaction after a former boss used it to signify "+1".
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It’s much easier to heart the thousandth photo of a fuzzy critter my sister has saved than to formulate a response. When it’s all iPhone users the chat is a lot cleaner too.
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There are two reasons which together make it all make sense:
tldr; It's pre-installed and way better than SMS
1. iMessage is leagues more reliable and faster than SMS/MMS on even horrible connections allowing a real-time cadence to conversation with indications if messages were actually received and possibly if they've already been seen. Its features are also not crippled so simple things like sending photos between $1k+ phones does not end up with MySpace quality photos that are otherwise supposed to be 12MP Live HDR photos. Let alone sending longish videos (3 min+)
2. iMessage is already installed and integrated in iOS unlike WhatsApp which literally has all the most important features and MORE, but, for reasons I do not fully understand, I simply like using iMessage more. And so do most of my friends.
iMessage and FaceTime audio. There are occasions where T-mobile’s voice network won’t let a call through, but I can use the data network to do FaceTime audio.
I’ve had to use FB Messenger at times to contact my one or two relatives who just refuse to by an iPhone.
I wanted to do a group video chat with relatives and we all had to use Facebook Messenger because one person didn’t have an iPhone. We just left the person out a few times because we didn’t want to bother with lower quality messenging.
There’s also the fact that WhatsApp is Facebook. I dumped Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all at the same time and will not install any of them on my devices.
More of a reason not to be friends with them.
Sadly, this is not how relationships work and exactly how entrenched social networks come into existence.
In a way, toxic behavior like this is an indicator of how your future relationship with this person will go.
If they're going to be this basic, then I'm probably going to extrapolate how these people will behave in the future.
Although, maybe thats why I only have a very few select close friends.
You can’t expect full commitment from people you may not know too well. The UI/UX benefits outweigh acquaintances, not friends.
Unfortunately, acquaintanceship is a prerequisite to friendship.
It might be possible to be in a majority-Android friend group outside of North America, but not really here. iMessage is far too entrenched in the US for that to be possible.
> I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles"
Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos, and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.
>I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.
You're mad at people for succumbing to a dark pattern in tech that they themselves don't completely understand, but are going off on people who post pictures of their food or have tattoos like it affects you in any way?
>Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
You know, blue bubbles may in fact feel the same way about you.
To be fair, I can entirely understand why they’d do it: the platform all but makes you annoyed at people who don’t have iPhones.
Now you've got me curious. Are these people in the tech industry? What would their age range be, roughly?
Most of this happened while I was in high school, and now I am currently 22 years old.
Exactly zero of the people who have said any of these things are in the tech industry
This is very true in the US, but not a thing overseas (at least in Israel). Everyone is on WhatsApp for texting.