AIBU to think leaving a WhatsApp activity group without a word is rude?

[girlfriend44]

Aibu to think it's rude when people leave activity groups that they were welcomed into. (What's App) Without saying anything?

We welcomed two people they were friends to an activity, made them welcome and they said they enjoyed it and would come back and looked forward to it.

Fast forward a while we have not seen them or heard at all. Today I noticed they've both left the group, one and then the other followed shortly after.

Can't they just say thanks for welcoming us or nice to meet you, but we are unable to attend anymore and then leave.

People are so bloody rude.

It would finish it off much better if they communicated and you'd think much more of them.
Makes you wonder why you bother?
Perhaps when they attended we should have been rude and unwelcoming instead of friendly.

Oh really? I just don’t use it. I have a group I use occasionally, if there’s an update I need to read someone sends me a message on messenger to log onto WhatsApp

Thanks i’ll check out the settings

If they had only attended once and didnt know any of you than i dont think its weird, or rude, no

Not ageism, observation. My own little sample. I'm not too young either btw. And I don't have a mil.

I did very quickly at the start stop media being automatically downloaded. I didn’t see the actual message just all sort of dodgy things downloaded on my phone

They are not rude. You are really overthinking this. It's a WhatsApp group. You have said yourself there's no communication there apart from meet up details; it's not personal.
These individuals clearly don't want to do the activity, and have chosen not to. They didn't need your permission to take part, and they don't need your permission to stop. So I'm really not sure what you are expecting from them.

Its not a chat group, its literally for info. I wouldnt announce my departure

Cos. Information overload. The group loses its usefulness if someone only is interested in the yoga meet ups you need to go scroll through all the bs that you didn't wanna read in the first place.

I absolutely hate being added to What's App groups. The amount of communication we have to deal with these days is overwhelming.

I don't think it really matters. I would probably just leave quietly if it had no affect in the other members. If it's an activity that requires knowing specific numbers before attending I would let people know I'm not going anymore.

I'd love to hear from the two people who left. I hope they habe mumsnet 😆

I don’t think I’d be losing sleep over this. You barely know them and are taking it quite personally. Yes it might have been nice if they sent a message but probably all a bit awkward re what to say esp on a WhatsApp message. It’s just a shrug your shoulders oh well moment. There may be a point you do similar or exit from something in a way others would prefer you do differently and hopefully they will give you some grace.

I got invited into a WhatsApp group for an activity I was interested in. It was the only way to find out what was going on. Went a couple of times and said thank you face to face but daily I was bombarded with messages only about 10% was relevant to the activity. Endless messages about nonsense, 1 message relevant to the activity and then loads of messages about why people couldn’t make it, the minutiae of arrangements and equipment.
I didnt have the headspace for it nor the clutter to my notification so left. I said thanks face to face. That’s what matters not glib pleasantries via a messaging app to people I’ve never met.

Is it more polite to say 'hi I don't want to be in your swingers/ cycling/ cross stitch group after all' though? I think if someone has been a member for years it'd be nice to say bye, but the pair in question had only been once. Bringing attention to the fact they didn't like it/ the group doesn't feel super polite.

Its a bit cowardly but they likely don’t mean anything malicious. It wasn’t for them and they just want to be out without making it a big thing.

Go to ‘You’, then ‘Chats’ and turn off the toggle next to ‘Save to photos’

It's a WhatsApp group for sharing activity details, not a chat group between friends. If you were posting said arrangements on Facebook, would you expect a goodbye if they stopped following?

Did they really have to announce their departure from a WA group? They may have wanted to avoid answering questions about why they didn't want to participate. Better to just go.

I also find it so rude when people just ‘leave the group’ but I realise I am alone in that so I never voice it in real life.

You seem very angry about this and assuming the worst of them. Most people I know find social situations like this quite awkward and aren’t sure what the ‘right’ thing to do is. They may have considered sending a message but then thought ‘people will think it’s weird to announce my exit like I’m assuming it’s a big deal’ and so decided not to. How about assuming that most people are just bumbling through life, not sure how to deal with these situations, especially something like WhatsApp groups which don’t have agreed etiquette rules.

How many people in the group and what is the activity? Do you know them outside of the activity or only because they were interested in attending?

Assuming less than say 5 regular attendees where their attendance would be noticed, I kind of agree that it would have been polite to say “thanks for the invite but not for me” or something. Something like a Women’s Institute group with 30 in, it seems a bit OTT to announce your departure after one trial session. Either way, you’re really making a mountain out of a molehill.

There are certain groups of people - and I suspect it’s a bit of an age/generation thing - who use the WhatsApp behaviours of others as a way of assessing people, judging them even, based on what they normally do themselves. It’s a very limited, very narrow metric which tells you a lot about the person doing the judging and precisely nothing about how other people use WhatsApp as they do. Some people unsubscribe from a group in the same spirit as a stroppy teenager storms out and slams the door. Others simply find the constant stream of stuff tedious or intrusive and leave quietly. Some believe that by leaving a group, they are snubbing a person or people. Some join a group to see if it has any value, decide it doesn’t, and leave. And some people just don’t like using WhatsApp.

Being part of your particular group is not compulsory, and leaving a group is not rude. The leavers owe you nothing. If you are judging them as people for that, your own view of people’s worth is superficial, uninformed and thoroughly distorted.

Yes it is rude. If it bothers you though just message and ask about it.

Frankly, if you generally operate at this level of outrage on WhatsApp, I’m not surprised they made a silent departure.

Add them back in, give them a fucking good dressing down on behalf of the whole group and then kick 'em out again, the bastards.
Who do they think they are?

There is a difference between saying your goodbyes to a group you have met and known and interacted with and a group you met once or twice and realised it's not for you. It would be much weirder going "hi everyone, look at me. I'm leaving the group now" and everyone in the group wondering who tf that was to begin with. I would probably also just slip quietly out the back door in this case .