There’s a massive cultural thing in the US about the iPhone being the preferred phone and if you don’t have one it must be because you’re too poor to afford one. Obviously this is a result of marketing and isn’t universal but it is a surprisingly widely held view.
Given that, showing up in a group chat as a lone blue bubble marks you out as the inferior group member (in some people’s eyes). It doesn’t matter so much 1:1 but if there are 10 people the odd one out stands out.
The real issue here is that people in the US are tied to using SMS for real-time chat groups when so many better (and private, and well known) alternatives exist. Thankfully, in Europe, nobody so far as I know ever really uses SMS anymore – whether for single or group chats.
There’s a massive cultural thing in the US about the iPhone being the preferred phone and if you don’t have one it must be because you’re too poor to afford one. Obviously this is a result of marketing and isn’t universal but it is a surprisingly widely held view.
Given that, showing up in a group chat as a lone blue bubble marks you out as the inferior group member (in some people’s eyes). It doesn’t matter so much 1:1 but if there are 10 people the odd one out stands out.
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The real issue here is that people in the US are tied to using SMS for real-time chat groups when so many better (and private, and well known) alternatives exist. Thankfully, in Europe, nobody so far as I know ever really uses SMS anymore – whether for single or group chats.
Not really a thing. Google is trying to make it seem like there is, but I’ve never met a single person that has ever cared.