Refusing to Use WhatsApp for this reason

[dottypotter]

Someone in the family refuses to use WhatsApp and be in the family group as they don't believe it's private and safe.
I have never heard anyone give this as a reason has anyone else

We now have to text them separately etc cos they won't use it.

It's so useful to all be on the same group. Just never heard it as a reason before.

"The situation's never arisen - I have a small number of close friends (none of whom know each other) and my partner, so we make our arrangements one to one. I've never enjoyed being part of a group and if I'm going to a party/gig/club I'll go by myself and see who's there when I arrive."

Wow. I find one-to-ones too intesne and it also gets boring if you're out for 5 hours and you have to keep up conversation.
As for seeing who is there when you arrive at a gig - is it common for your friends to just randomly be at the same gigs?

"Er, good luck with trying that now. Party lines were phased out in the 80s."

I suppose there are conference calls, but I've only ever seen that with work phones. And do people under 55 even have land lines these days?

"families have been organising days out for centuries without all this technology."

By phoning each person one by one presumably? Or going around to their houses? And it being a time when nobody had smart phones so nobody flaked or turned up late or wanted a last minute change of plan and if you missed a message or misunderstood which clock you were meeting under, you just missed the event. Times have changed.

I don't think anyone's expecting 93 year olds to be on WA are they?

Looks like you can only make three way calls now
www.bt.com/help/landline/all-about-3-way-calling

Wtf are they writing on WhatsApp? I couldn’t give a shit if it wasn’t private. The WhatsApps I’ve sent today include some stuff to my brother about dogs, a convo with dh about what needs to be done this evening etc etc. I mean hold the front page…not

even if it was used for an affair, who would give a shit about random messages from random people?

I wouldn’t text separately

I find it curious that the middle-aged, tech savy men in the family who couldn't possibly use messaging services due to privacy/ security reasons find it acceptable to use their wives' as their secretaries or as proxy devices... 🙄

Messaging is a mainstream reality of organising modern life and it's taken off because it's more practical than older methods, particularly when involving multiple people. Where people choose not to participate with it it makes them less accesible and relatively harder work compared to others and does run the risk of being left out when others don't remember their particular requirements.

This was a part of fizzling on a couple of friends within a wider group, but they were already flaky, didn't put in evenly and tended to be tight. When I had a SIM issue and lost their numbers on my phone, I didn't chase around to get them again and it says it all really that they never texted rang directly to get the number back in the phone because they never organised anything themselves Others I could contact through SM and get numbers directly.