Is this rude?

[spicysauce]

So my sister has a boyfriend and they are expecting a child together, due in May 2021. I haven't met the boyfriend yet ( they don't live close).

My sister, myself and my partner share a WhatsApp group with my mother where we exchange photos of our children and discuss daily matters.

Two days ago I added this boyfriend to our WhatsApp group in order to "welcome him to the family" before we get to meet in real life.

He thanked me for adding him to the group and I asked him if he was looking forward to being a dad and he said very much so.

Yesterday I discussed something with my mother in the group. It wasn't a lot of messages, maybe ten and they all occurred within an hour.

Later on there was a notification that my sister's boyfriend left the group.

AIBU to think this is rude? He could have muted the group.

I asked my sister why he left the group. She said she didn't know, but perhaps the messaging was too much for him.

This is hard to believe for me, because when my sister visited me, she was on her phone all the time WhatsApping with him.

Also:

1. You should have asked him privately before you added him.

And

1. He’s perfectly within his rights to leave once he realised he didn’t like the group chat it wasn’t a good fit for him.

I don't think he is rude. Groups like this are for group chat, why didn't you message her individually

I leave WhatsApp groups all the time. I get really frustrated by the constant going’s on and inane drivel. I do stay in a few I like. My MIL is a fan of creating new groups all the time with certain members of the family (even though we have a family one) and recently created a new group so she could PA give us a bollocking. I stayed in it for a day then left with a message saying as there was no activity on this group I would leave and stick to the main group.

No, I don’t think it’s rude and he probably does not want constant pinging and updates about random stuff he doesn’t have a clue about.

Why do people use a group WhatsApp for a 2 way conversation? If you're chatting to one member of the group just message them directly fgs.

It's WhatsApp. He hasn't divorced your family.

Ten messages in an hour is a lot to me. I couldn't be doing with constant interruptions through the day.

I am in a few WhatsApp groups, but we only message to arrange things or pass on interesting snippets of information. My WhatsApp pings every few days not several times an hour. I also mute conversations for 8 hour stretches and catch up at my own convenience.

Tbh I think it’s more rude to add him to the group without checking first than to leave it. It would drive me mad to have constant notifications about things that were nothing to do with me, especially if I hadn’t even met the people involved yet.

No, its not rude to leave a social media group that you didn't ask to join or agree to join, and your're insane if you think it is.

Rude is expecting people to be in your social media groups without bothering to check if they want to be, or have any interest in your chatter.

I do tend to find that people who decry rudeness in others are far ruder themselves.

I’d hate to be added to a group. Can’t stand it. I don’t blame him.

Yeah I would leave too. My mum and sister have conversations on a joint whatsapp group. I love them but I'm not interested and it's drives me mad (and I am rude so I'll say "not interested, text each other not everyone")

Just message the person you are talking to, not everyone

I would find it rude. I wouldn't include him in anything else in the future.

@Ginfordinner

We don't even have a family WhatsApp. DD doesn't have WhatsApp, and DH just doesn't "do" social media. DD uses Snapchat to talk to her friends and FB Messenger to talk to me.

Your medals are in the post

Not getting the relevance of this post at all

@RatanPostmaster

I would find it rude. I wouldn't include him in anything else in the future.

How very childish.

I can't stand it when people use group chats to have a 1:1 conversation (why does everyone else need to be involved and flooded with notifications? It's just intrusive and unnecessary) and if that's how your family use them I'd remove myself from it - I may have muted you for a while first so it wasn't quite so obvious

In-laws’ WhatsApp is the devil. Actually all group chat is awful. Muting is a short-term solution; all that irrelevant chat is still there, lurking, the number of unread messages growing higher by the minute. He got out while he could.

Ten notifications in an hour?! That's a ping every 6 minutes on his quite possibly usually-silent phone. Did any of those messages actively involve him? If not, that's 6-minutely interruptions to his day, for nothing, because presumably your sister will just tell him anything he needs to know.

Why do you need him to part of the group, to the point that you think him leaving it is rude? Why do you think he is obliged?

I think you’ve been very rude, not him. You added him to a group chat without asking him, though you’ve never even met him, then you engage in 1:1 conversation with someone else on that group, resulting in his phone pinging 10 times in an hour. That would drive me insane if it happened me. If you want to chat 1:1 with your mum, do it outside the group.

Maybe he didn't even know that you could mute it. Or switch off group notifications. Lots of people don't.

I would have left too.

Maybe he and your sister spoke and agreed he would leave, you shouldn't have added him in the first place, that's your sister's job, when she feels comfortable.

YABU. It wasn’t rude of him. It was rude of you not to message your mother directly b

Maybe he thinks you've added him to the wrong group? Ie, added him to the WhatsApp group between you and your maw instead of the generic family one?

Group texts should be about things the group are interested in. Maybe the occasional one to one, but if it’s for you and your mum to discuss stuff, then he doesn’t really need to know that. I think it’s kind of rude to invite him then he has to become privy to your stuff like that.

You need to think of the others in the group, when deciding if it’s best to do a one to one or a group convo.

@spicysauce

I agree, although we haven't met yet, we're not really strangers

Yes you are.

Adding people you have never even met to a close family chat group is weird and invasive.

@Gigheimer my DH did the same in the family WhatsApp. Its mostly my mums extended family.

I'm bored shitless with the attitude towards me and my brother (we didn't grow up near them, none of them have moved more than 5 miles from home, so we're "outsiders") but it would upset my mum if we left the group.

WhatsApp groups are for group conversations only. If your conversation stays into a two way conversation move it to your own conversation.
Why would your sisters boyfriend who you've never met be interested in what you and your mum are talking about? Or your kids for that matter.