← Back to context

Comment by pioyi

18 hours ago

Just use email...

This is a brilliant take. I was talking to friends the other day and we were reminiscing about the old days where you'd email and phone people. And if there was a family event you'd shove a quite write up and some photos on your personal web site and email the links out to people. Some parts of the family would mail a newsletter around periodically.

We decided to do the same again.

My Mom (70s, retired special ed teacher) got the family on Signal and it's a breeze to do video calls or send pictures/messages to people.

They occasionally have a donation popup but it's one of the easiest and least intrusive programs I've ever used, and it just works.

Email is not chat and it's certainly not Instagram. Your suggestion will only work for people who are not really users of WhatsApp or Instagram.

  • No, the suggestion "only" works for those of your friends who truly value you. If they want to connect with you, they'll find a way. If they don't, they won't.

    • Ah, yes, "truly value". The measure of how much one is valued is whether people are willing to move out of a chat app due to some sort of nerd principle. Needless to say, I disagree.

      I value my (various groups of) friends more than I value moving out of WhatsApp, and for what anyway? WhatsApp is perfect for our needs. If it becomes paid-only, we'll move out of it, but not before. I don't need dealing with this kind of nerdy crusade. And I need to have WhatsApp installed anyway for different family members [1] and the parent school groups and official comms from school.

      Sorry, but that suggestion is a no-go in the real world. It only works in the micro-bubble of HN.

      ---

      [1] Let me preempt your likely "but convince all of your family of using <thing> instead...". No. Just no.

      2 replies →