I’m on four separate text chains for my kids’ school.
This total doesn’t include the additional chains for various friend groups and family branches. And while the friend and family ones feel like a warm hug punctuated by the occasional disagreement, or even some spirited infighting, the school ones have left me wondering how the hell I’m supposed behave.
I share deeply personal information with my closest girlfriends, a thousand kid pictures with my college roommates, and funny GIFs with my siblings. In all three cases, there’s no explanation needed because the nature of the relationship means that the recipient already understands. This is a prerequisite for the casual style of texting to which I’m referring. I mean, I’ll even talk politics with these people because our relationships run deep; there’s a level of care and consideration that buttresses our discussions, making conflict safe and mutual growth possible. I’m a big fan of these chains because they infuse our days with energy from people we love in moments when we don’t have the bandwidth to nurture each individual relationship, which – let’s be honest – no one does (and that’s a topic for a different day). Even the written interactions I’m not a part of make me smile. They make me feel like I'm in the same room as people I love, listening to them have an interesting conversation. It adds great value to my experience of a day. This is due, in large part, to the fact that these chains don’t usually demand an immediate response. They support the types of sprawling conversations that can take place over days and weeks – not because we aren’t prioritizing one another, but because we’re prioritizing authenticity over performance.
I can’t say the same for the school chats. I mean, sure, a certain degree of this positivity extends to school chats. They’re a place where we can exchange information on soccer teams, and what to bring on the field trip, and who to ask if you have administrative questions. I enjoy getting to know these parents, their minds, and their senses of humor. I value the camaraderie of our shared experience. And yet – and yet! – too often these chains run amok.
Like that time during Covid, when the parents wondered how often the kids were handwashing, and one immunocompromised mom generously offered to supply the classroom with hospital grade hand sanitizer, and then another holistic mom generously offered links supporting her view that hand sanitizer undermines our microbiome and, thus, our health. There are the threads where a kid is sick, and the parent feels compelled to announce this to the entire chat, and then people weigh in and say, “Oh no! Feel better!” to certain families but not to others. Could be because they’re busy; could be because they’re doling out “hearts” and “sad faces” based on who they’ve decided has the most social capital. The threads about class get-togethers make me feel warm and fuzzy; the ones about head lice make me feel like I’m living in a surveillance state. One parent recently invited everyone to his art exhibit, which felt like a beautiful, community-building, cultural experience; another recently asked if anyone knew an attorney specializing in infinity pool regulation, which, whether he meant it to or not, underlined our community’s wealth and class differences. There are the frantic messages asking if anyone’s seen that one kid’s lost coat, accompanied by insinuations that someone “stole” the coat, which says a lot about how that parent looks at the world, at the child, and at other children. And there are messages like the one that came in after the earthquake in Syria, where a parent mobilized the entire community to gather supplies to be sent overseas. There are the serious people and the enthusiastic people. People who never chime in, and those who feel the need to respond to every conversation that ever happens. And then there’s the guy who texts exclusively in jokes. I think he’s funny. But does everyone? I mean, in person, the humor would slay; he could adjust based on real time responses. But on a WhatsApp chain? Bold strategy, sir. Bold strategy.
Last night, after I put my kids to bed, I glanced at my phone to see 61 new WhatsApp messages on a single chat. In the 40 minutes it took me to get a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old from the dinner table to snoring (*pats self on back), the chat had amassed 61 new messages.
A little background: there’s a substantial administrative shift happening at the school right now, the details of which don’t matter for the purposes of our conversation, and the parents have thoughts. Here’s where it gets thorny. Some are coming at it with bleeding hearts and personal anecdotes; others are coming with spreadsheets and hard facts; still others are coming with humor. The whole thing reads like a new piece of legislature that’s also a live transcription of group therapy.
Personal and professional text chains work because the tone is explicit; it’s either personal, or it’s professional. But when it comes to school chats? People are all over the damn place. No one knows what genre we’re working in, and the result is pure chaos. As someone who’s worked on a zillion television shows, I can tell you that the ones without a clear tonal directive don’t work. That’s what they mean when they say things like, “the actors looked like they were acting in two different shows.” You gotta pick a lane.
If you can’t tell, I don’t thrive in areas where the commonly accepted etiquette is as of yet unstated. I need to know exactly what the manners are, why they matter, how they’re executed, and in what way they’re likely to be received. Or, if not manners, then general conduct.
Let’s take the middle finger, for example: it means “fuck you” in America, is a friendly greeting that means “brother” in Japan, and is considered so offensive in Germany that flipping someone the bird is literally against the law. You have to know where you are in order to know how to behave.
In some cultures, it’s downright rude to slurp your food; in others, slurping is how you compliment the chef. Rock your teeniest bikini on the beaches of Rio, but cover up a little in a Roman church, and a lot when you’re on business in Saudi Arabia. A Parisian woman I know does this huge, silly smile she calls her “American smile.” Because in America, we smile like our lives depend on it. In France, not so much. A countenance that would be judged as “cold” in Los Angeles, is just normal in Paris (the American smile, meanwhile, is seen as overenthusiastic, if not ingratiating). Along those same lines, it’s perfectly acceptable in most of America to self-disclose. Not surprisingly for a country built on rugged individualism, we’re big on the “I” of it all, to the point where we’ll tell a complete stranger what we’re working through in therapy. We’ll also ask you what your job is, where you live, and where your kids go to school, and based on these factors we’ll calculate your net worth within minutes of meeting you. When I’ve traveled elsewhere, I’ve been struck by people’s capacity to spend an entire evening together talking about books, films, politics, architecture, you name it, without ever knowing what any of the other people at the table do for a living. When you conclude a project in the finance sector, you shake hands. In entertainment, we hug. We hug in situations where, if you substituted any other industry besides entertainment, it would be completely unacceptable to hug. Have you ever watched the credits roll on SNL? That’s what I’m referring to. Liberal hugging. Now picture this happening at at the end of a court case. Prosecutor, defense attorney and judge hugging it out after the verdict has been delivered. It wouldn’t happen. And if it did, it would cross all sorts of boundaries, possibly even spawning another court case. When I watch Olympic gymnastics, the gymnasts slap each other’s asses, as if to say, “Go get ’em!” It’s a gesture of encouragement. Same in football. But if one surgeon slapped the ass of another surgeon as they headed into the operating room, it would be… a poor choice. I never met Queen Elizabeth, but – while acknowledging the complex conversation around the ethics and viability of the monarchy – if I had ever met her, I would 100% have curtsied. I don’t even know how to curtsy, but I know it’s what you do when you meet the Queen.
This is because much of etiquette comes from context clues. Which do not exist on school text chains. Maybe that’s why chiming in on these things feels like trying to balance on one foot in the dark.
It feels important here to differentiate etiquette from assimilation. I think of etiquette as being a part of acculturation, which can have downsides but is preferable to the problematic practice of assimilation. I’m no social scientist, but it is my understanding that etiquette is important on a societal level to maintain a baseline level of respect for one another and to avoid devolving into incivility and/or complete chaos. There are complex intersections between etiquette and code-switching, the nuances of which are explained well in this Harvard Business Review article. When I talk about etiquette, or manners, I want to be very careful not to suggest that anyone need hide their authenticity, their cultural identity, or any other markers of individuality in order to “fit in.” Code-switching is a complicated topic, and that’s not at all what I’m talking about here. I’m talking more broadly about the basic ways we treat one another, and how that varies as we move through the world in all its infinite variety. And, more specifically, how conduct is largely based on context clues, which are mostly absent in group text chains, especially the school text chains, where the players are not quite besties but also not quite colleagues, which is why these chains are tonally confounding and make my head explode. Cool? Cool.
Remember the old days when we used to use salutations in emails? We treated them like letters, and each other like pen pals. Now people use emails as text messages. One-word answers. No sign-off. A tongue-sticking-out emoji with no other explanation. And then there’s texting. It used to require some thought. Now it’s just… reactive stream of consciousness. Text anybody anything for any reason. Nothing means anything anymore, so it won’t matter anyway. Except that it does.
We’ve entered an era of profligate boundaries and promiscuous trust. Which seems dicey because we’ve also entered an era of total subjectivity. When there’s “my truth” and “your truth,” there’s no such thing as truth truth. And if you lack boundaries and are saying something on this group chat that offends another person’s subjective reality, you may want to consider that group chats are, by their very nature, in writing — a fact that might not pan out well in a society that’s also become hyper-litigious. I don’t know, you guys. I just don’t know! The whole thing gives me hives.
An update: I just checked my phone. There are 44 new WhatsApp messages. Might be time to mute the chat.
Another update: My husband just took his phone to the bathroom and accidentally sent the group chat a 3-second voice memo of himself flushing the toilet. I wish I were joking. Might be time to excuse ourselves from this chat entirely. Will report back when more info becomes available.
Okay, last update: Different chat. No lunch for one of the kids today because they’re doing a cooking thing at school. Brb, gotta go sub out this ham sandwich for tiny silverware.