Relationships
Read Receipts and the Typing Bubble: What Presence Signals Do to a Text Friendship
Read receipts, last seen and the typing bubble turned a reply delay into a tiny rejection, and changed how a text friendship reads silence.
Relationships
Online Relationships
Friendships that exist mostly in text, and whether the usual rules apply to them.
Text friendships leave room for different expectations about availability, silence, and closeness. The articles here examine reply times, group chats, friendships confined to one app, and the boundary between following someone and knowing them. Start with reply-time expectations if silence is causing friction, group chats if the conversation is the main meeting place, or platform dependence if you have no other way to stay in touch.
Relationships
The Friend You Only Knew Online Is Gone, and There's No Funeral to Attend
When a friendship lived entirely in text, losing it doesn't come with a service or a phone tree. The grief arrives in small, ordinary places instead — read receipts, a group chat going quiet, a suggested contact.
Relationships
A Friendship Across Twelve Time Zones
Your evening is their morning, and somebody always has to give up a good hour. The quiet logistics of an online friendship with a twelve-hour offset, and what happens when the compromise stops being shared.
Relationships
The Friendship Ends the Day You Both Stop Being the One Who Texts First
Most friendships don't end in a fight; they end in a standoff, when both people quietly decide it's the other's turn to reach out. The logistics of who starts, and how to stop keeping score.
Relationships
The Online Friendship That Only Existed Because You Had Something to Do Together
A lot of text friendships are held up by a single shared activity — a game, a show, a job. When that ends, there's suddenly nothing to say. Here's what actually happens, and which ones survive.
Relationships
The Friendship That Lives Inside One App
Some friendships never leave the app they were born in — no number, just a handle. What happens when the platform decays, and how to move it first.
Relationships
A Friendship Measured in Reply Times
A friendship that migrated entirely to text and voice notes, and the unspoken contract about how long you can go silent before it means something.
Internet
I Moderated a Forum for Six Years and Half the Members Thought They Knew Me
What it is like to be on the receiving end of a one-sided relationship at small scale, and what it taught me about my own feelings toward people I follow.
Internet
The Group Chat Is Doing More Work Than Anyone Admits
Six years of watching group chats form, sustain and die, including my own. What keeps one alive is not what people think.
Internet
Three of My Closest Friends Are People I Have Never Been in a Room With
A decade of friendships conducted entirely in text, what they are good at, and the specific thing they cannot do.