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Man, if you seriously would exclude someone from social interactions because of the colour of their speech bubble in group messages, I dread to think how m stressful it would be to interact with people who's entire bodies were different colours.

Not even joking. 'Its legit stressful if someone's messages use a different colour background' is not logically compatible with being ok having different coloured people in view. I'm not actually calling you a racist, because it would also mean you get distressed if people wear different colour clothes and have avatars that look different, and I think a social group like that would have struggled enough to realise that the solution might not be 'get the Wrongly Coloured Group Text Guy to purchase a different phone rather than, idk, stop spending so much time staring at screens.

But it was amusing to imagine how wildly conformist one would have to be to actually dislike someone because their phone number doesn't have enough 7's or their name is longer than everyone else's so it looks untidy or whatever.

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He's not saying HE is this way, he's saying the US culturally is this way.

Which... uh, yeah, it is. The US is superficial, it's vain, it's racist. I thought everyone knew that.

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If your "friends" care enough about small stuff like that to cut you out of their conversations, they're not your friends.
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You're misunderstanding the situation and reading malice into teenagers who are living in a world of decisions that were made before they were even born.

It's not "small stuff", it's the entire medium through which the conversation happens. It's the entire thing.

Do you "cut" your mom out of your group chats with your coworkers? Do you "cut" your coworkers out of intimate chats with your partners? Of course you do, because people maintain multiple overlapping group chats.

In group chats with your blue-bubble friends, they will be easier to read (because of the shades of color), media quality will be better, you can add more people to the group chat after it's made, you can text people from your iPad or Macbook, you can text people over WiFi even when you don't have service. When each text used to cost money, it was also a huge deal that iMessage (on WiFi) was free. This is on top of all the other chat features like playing games, pins, etc.

A lot of these limitations are intentional so that Apple can make more money, some of them are just limitations of SMS / RCS. But the point is that this is not the kids faults, this isn't bullying.

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I am not misunderstanding the situation. If you omit me from a group message with our circle of friends because of the color of my speech bubble, you are not a real friend. Full stop.
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Just the phrase "blue bubble friends" strikes me as absolutely wild, foreign and ridiculous. But, I admit to being almost 50.
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The "blue bubble" just signifies someone's using the iMessage platform, and we still have multiple messaging platforms nowadays. Think of it like "Usenet friends", "IRC friends", "ICQ friends", "AIM friends", etc.
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I don't know you, of course we're not friends. I addressed this in my comment. There are group chats you are part of and ones you won't be part of. Most people maintain multiple different overlapping group chats.
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Seriously, sounds more like a local user group than anyone who cares about you
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My favorite part about this is how you blame it on your friend, not on Apple.
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This just isn't true anymore (besides the green).
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