Feeling bombarded by friend's stream of consciousness posting in a WhatsApp group

[SkaterGrrrrl]

I am in a WhatsApp group with friends, we don't see each other often but are close. Everyone in the group uses WhatsApp to share photos of their children/ chat/ share memes etc. There is one woman in the WhatsApp group who is a lovely person and a good friend, but she brain-dumps every thought in her head to the group.

When she takes the kids trick-or-treating she doesn't just share 1 post of the kids in their costumes but the entire night, including lots of people we don't know. She forwards photographs that her family members have sent her - cousins, nephews etc that none of us have ever met. If she's watching something interesting on TV she will film a bit of the TV show with her phone and send to the WhatsApp group 😱 If she goes on a business trip, she doesn't just send 1 or 2 pics of the new city or whatever, but shares multiple pictures daily, including the inside of empty conference rooms set up for meetings.

Obviously I have put the WhatsApp group on mute, but it still bothers me. Her frequent messages clog up the group so quickly, it dilutes the interesting conversations that we are having otherwise. It fills up my phone's gallery with photographs of complete strangers.

Friend posts all the same (identical!) content on her Facebook feed, which I feel is the right platform for it, because if I were feeling curious /nosey / interested or I had the time and mental headspace, I would go to her Facebook and look at what she's been up to.... but to have it constantly sent to my phone throughout the day, wanted or not, feels more invasive.

To make matters worse I'm in a second WhatsApp group with her and she posts all the same content on there as well.

Any advice?

There is a setting in WhatsApp to turn off the photos saving to your phone album. You can even just turn it off for groups or on for only certain people eg DH. That solves one problem at least.

Not much you can do about that friend other than set up a second group without her for normal chat with the others but unless she's not a nice person otherwise that seems a bit mean.

Is she neurotypical? Women who have add/adhd can overshare to a huge extent. It doesn't take much to scroll on by. I'd leave it if she's a lovely person. Also sort your settings so it doesn't save the photos.

Mute and catch up on weekends with a brief move acknowledgement of the posts if you would like to keep her as a friend and apart from this aspect, if you like her as a person. It’s what I do with a few.

*note not move

I do the same as @Tillsforthrills . I may even forgo the acknowledgement of the photos and would just ignore. I don't think of WhatsApp as messaging which warrants a reply tbh unless someone asks me a question. I used to be on some school parents chats and just ignored most of it

Belinda, jeez you know that every photo you put on here gets downloaded automatically to everyone's phone, so I have more photos from your holidays, downloaded twice now, than I do of my own? Let up a little, we can all see these on Facebook anyway.

Plinky, excellent question - yes she is NT.

(But I know people with autism who can't resist talking about trains/ planes/ buses so you do make a good point).

I didn't know about that settings langos, thank you!

Yes Tillsforthrills she is a lovely friend and I enjoy her company in real life. So maybe I need to suck this up.

I'd just ask her to cut down on all the pics as it's about 90% too much

Just mute her. I'm in some nightmare whatsapps like that - there needs to be a group for everything these days it seems.

Indeed, Celia, the school ones at Christmas time are the worst.

This is pretty good!

My friend is like this. I regularly get voice notes 10-15 minutes long 😬

I think she'd rather you told her if that was the case - I would.

Change your settings so photos aren't saved.
Delete her messages as soon as they arrive.

That would tip me over the edge.

I'm ND. And sometimes I'm like this. I'm aware of it now and really have to hold back. You can't be sure she isn't ND. I pass for NT and was only diagnosed in June. It does sound not very self aware.