#but the messaging is still the same im sorry | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

natsuminmin · 3 days ago

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─── ･｡ﾟ☆ CHATBOX LOVE -> kenma kozume !!!

ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ NEVER MET! by CMTEN , glitch gum

synopsis; in which kenma is sent into a spiral after seeing a familiar username cw: deff slight angst, discord type-love , usage of baby , erm exes trope , kenma crash out , unproofread + lowercase , implied f!reader but can be interpreted as gn!reader , idk if its ooc but prob eek,

"and even though it's been a week, i still think of your face"

already? wow, a week since you had ended things with kenma. to him, it felt like months. years, even, which was why he decided to stop counting the days.

so imagine his surprise when he had randomly matched up with you in roblox.

he swears it was you, had all the the same numbers in your user, all the same accessories in your avatar.

he just had to type in the chatbox, he didn't care how desperate he sounded, he wants you back:

kod5uken : [baby? baby thats u right? its kenma]

skibidi1234 : [uhhh no sorry dude idk you]

ah. and then skibidi1234 left, probably weirded out. damn it, he was hallucinating now. on top of that, he was stupid enough to say his real name online.

he left the game himself too, closing roblox in a rage. he wanted to sleep, but his puffy eyes and stuffy nose made it hard to do so.

─── ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ───

barbie : [kenma we need to talk ]

kennie : [what is it]

barbie : [lets break up]

kennie : [oh]

kennie : [okay]

barbie : [im sorry, i cant juggle you and studies]

─── ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ───

that was the last he's heard from you because you've blocked him on everything. hell, you even blocked him on spotify. he should've listened when everyone told him e-dating was going to ruin him.

but how could he resist? he had fallen in love with you already. you were his perfect partner; games with him (somewhat bad, but you both managed), funny, attractive, his type. it's just unfortunate that you had to live miles away from him.

kenma's done sooo much impulsive things just for you: blew all his money on the latest 2-player game from steam so he could play with you, vc'ed until the latest hours of night just so he could keep talking to you, he even skipped some volleyball practices so he could come home earlier just to see you in a video chat.

ugh, he can't count all the times he's lost his dignity either. he had called you "his barbie" and he called himself ken. oh god, that was probably one of the cringiest things he's said in his life.

and don't even remind him about online karaoke, god knows how much screen records you have of his voice breaking mid-song.

speaking of records, he can't bear to delete all the adorable pictures you sent while updating him about your day. he's always liked seeing what weird and interesting things you've done. but worst of all, he's kept screenshots of every loving and tender message from you that had flustered him (spoiler alert: anything you said made his ears red.)

he opened the album he had moved the screenshots to, scrolling through it until his eyes settled on a certain one:

─── ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ───

barbie : [baby u live in japan right?]

kennie : [mhm]

barbie : [nice]

barbie : [just wait, im gonna buy tickets to fly there soon]

kennie : [ur crazy]

barbie : [sure yes whatever... i luv u ken :P]

kennie : [i love you too]

─── ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ ───

oh, dear. he can feel tears running down his cheek again. yep, there it was. his recently cleared sinus was blocking up again. damn it, he thought, as he wrapped himself tighter in the sheet. he can't even enjoy playing his games anymore.

kenma still misses you, from the very day you left him. you were his perfect partner, even though you had heartlessly shattered his heart and he would probably never entrust someone with it.

you know what, he'll never respond to some random dm ever again.

unless it was from you, of course.

"it'd be better if we had just never met"

a/n: was a request from two of my dearest friends who suprisingly are kenma luvrs LOL hi guys @rahhhr @terrariumaura also this was a nod to his 2020-self ik this was so cliche and someone has probably done this but i hoped you like my own (short) spin on it guys do uu know the genius that thought of their chat names BECAUSE BECAUSE THE SONG GOES LIKE "REMEMBER WHEN I CALLED YOU MY BARBIE AND I WAS KEN" IT FITS SO WELL BECAUSE KEN-MA okay bye

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sternbilder · 2 years ago

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ok so today I had one of the most fascinating and enlightening discussions maybe of my life and I need to share bc it blew my MIND (warning: long)

here's the context. there is a friend I have. they are a pretty good friend of mine that I've known for many years now and I appreciate them as a person very much. lately I have noticed that they've been texting me fairly frequently. which, from my point of view, is once every couple of days. not because they had something specific to say, but just saying hello or asking how my day was.

I'm sure this was well-intentioned, but this was starting to get a tiny bit grating for me. we just met up in person literally two days ago! and you had texted me not long before that, too! nothing new has happened since then! my day has been quite boring, actually! I thought, in my mind, as I swiped away the notification—and immediately felt like an awful friend.

I knew from past experience that responding to the message would invite an immediate and not easily escapable conversation that, due to my poor multitasking skills, would distract me from work or require me to context switch away from whatever else it was I was doing at the moment—cooking, doing chores, watching TV—and worse, amount to little more than idle chit-chat about the same boring quotidian complaints as usual. I am not one of those people who thinks they're above small talk or don't see its social value, but I found myself thinking, am I the one who is being not normal here in not enjoying having this specific kind of interaction MULTIPLE times a week with the SAME person?

so recently, I've been finding myself routinely avoiding opening this particular friend's messages for fear of hurting their feelings if they saw that I had left them on read for a prolonged period of time. I had even gone so far as to avoid posting in a group chat in which we're both participants so that they don't realize that I have, in fact, been online, just not responding to them, specifically. my hope was that after enough slow responses, this friend would eventually get the hint and give up on trying to maintain a steady steam of conversation, but somehow this has not worked so far.

this was starting to weigh on my conscience. I realized that I will have to eventually fight my conflict-avoidant tendencies and just confront this friend directly, for the sake of both my sanity and our friendship. but how to do this gently? tactfully? without implying that I don't value their friendship or that I perceive them as needy or annoying? that was the tricky question. because I know that my friend isn't doing anything wrong! if anything it is probably me that is weird and antisocial and I probably just need to work on my social skills!

but not wanting to feel like a total asshole and hoping to go in with an informed and reasonable mindset (knowing full well that my understanding of social norms isn't always the keenest), I asked a different group chat for their opinion, hoping to gain some perspective on what boundaries they generally considered normal and acceptable to exercise. I phrased my question thusly:

how many friends* would you say you have where you text on a regular basis (say, multiple times a week) 1:1 just to say hi, about nothing in particular *explicitly a friend, not a family member or SO

y'all. the responses were eye-opening.

there were four people who participated in this discussion, all four of whom were in different camps and had wildly different experiences:

0, and assumed most others were the same

0, but assumed most others were not the same

multiple, and assumed most others were the same

multiple, but assumed most others were not the same

1 was me; in retrospect, I am realizing that because I had assumed that these kinds of interactions were not typical, I had interpreted my friend's gesture as something much more significant than it probably was in their mind, which is to say something that they just happen to do with everyone they know and like—which created a sort of pressure in my mind not to let them down and caused a sense of intense anxiety when I found myself struggling to reciprocate. I am absolutely floored at the revelation that it is apparently normal and common for people to have MULTIPLE friends (not even partners!!! or family!!!) that they are talking to on a constant ongoing basis at any given time, and at the possibility that I was treating my friend's feelings with kid gloves when it REALLY wasn't that hashtag deep for them.

2 clarified that they never initiate these kinds of chats, but when others initiate with them, they're fairly comfortable with simply letting these kinds of pings go unanswered, assuming the other person will just move on to someone else without taking it personally.

3 confessed to me that they once tried to do something similar with me, and eventually gave up, but had felt a bit hurt and rejected at my lack of enthusiasm, because they assumed that I was doing this with other people, just not them specifically. they sympathized very strongly with my friend.

4 also recalled that they had at one point tried something similar with me, but sort of got that I wasn't one of those people who would be receptive to this style of communication and wasn't particularly bothered by this, agreeing with 2 that the expectation is not that the recipient HAS to respond, and that my friend should probably pay closer attention to the face-saving social cues I was sending by not responding or responding slowly.

but yeah, the takeaway from this conversation is that people's preferences and experiences and expectations when it comes to digital communication are WILDLY varied, and because both communication technology and the social conventions surrounding them are changing CONSTANTLY (just a few examples: are read receipts good or bad? what about typing indicators? online status? are emoji reacts or gifs/stickers an acceptable substitute for an actual reply? group chats vs. 1:1 DMs? synchronicity and formality of various communication methods like email and chat and video? are phone calls are still socially acceptable?) there are either no agreed-on norms or different camps of people have vastly different understandings of what the norms are

among the other highlights/a-ha moments of this discussion:

Friend 4 asked another friend who is even MORE extraverted than they are what their # was and they reported somewhere in the ballpark of 20-40 people in any given week which is absolutely buckwild to me (importantly, all four of us in the original group happen to be software engineers, a class of people notorious for their lack of sociability, so I have no confidence that I have captured a representative sample size even within this particular group—the numbers both 3 and 4 gave were still both in the single digits, though they are definitely the warmest and friendliest of the bunch)

I realized that one difference between me and 3/4 was that we fulfill our social needs quite differently? specifically, I mostly connect with friends over group chats, of which I have a handful that are quite chatty and at least one or two that I'm actively posting in on any given day. I also typically have at least one, often multiple, real-life social plans every week! I am, in fact, very satisfied with my social life, to the point where it is almost maxing out my social quota (especially recently now that I've started dating someone)! but anyway—I find group chats to be my ideal form of day-to-day communication because there's less urgency and pressure for any individual person to contribute if they're not feeling up for it, and ALSO in the case of group chats where at least one member is a straight man (which is the majority of them for me, and I call out straight men only because they are the only demographic I have historically had this issue with) there is less room for platonic interactions to be undesirably misinterpreted as romantic

3/4 expressed that they prefer 1:1 conversations because they feel more personal and they can be more vulnerable about sensitive topics, which I would generally agree with—though in several of my group chats, I personally do feel comfortable enough with all the members to share things about myself with the entire group just by virtue of having known everyone for a long time and having built group camaraderie, but they seemed to not be comfortable with this without having previously established a consistent 1:1 pattern of day-to-day communication (or maybe they meant they were uncomfortable with the group forum itself, even if they were cool with sharing with everyone individually)?

they also expressed that for them, frequent unsolicited checkins and 1:1 attention from a friend would feel exciting/flattering/validating for them, whereas for me it would feel overwhelming, especially if we weren't THAT close

I do use 1:1 DMs also, but for a very different set of use cases: 1) if I haven't caught up with someone in a while (read: weeks or months), in which case we'll often just not text super long and make plans to call or meet in person instead, or 2) if I have something specific to say, like "here's this meme/song/piece of news I think you'd like to see" or "I need advice on X" or "guess what happened that made me think of you" or "I heard X happened, are you OK?"

I found that whereas I have a very clear distinction between communication preferences with a friend (someone I talk to on a regular basis but don't have a constant line of individual communication with) vs. a significant other (more or less willing to do this, unless they preferred not to), such a boundary between a platonic and romantic relationship does NOT exist for all people which boggled my mind

but yes anyway. I am learning so much about the way people view socializing in the digital age and I am so curious to know more and I kind of wish more people talked about this more openly (specifically among friends! because in my experience this is something that is fairly common to sort out explicitly in a romantic context) because I think this is probably the kind of thing that no one talks about because people are either afraid of potentially hurting feelings or everyone is just kind of assuming by default that their takes are universal without realizing that no actually, many people have strong opinions on this that are the polar opposite of theirs

but my gut feeling is that there is a lot of completely unnecessary friction that could just be resolved if only we could agree that it's cool to be more upfront about what our communication preferences are without worrying about that being taken extremely personally by the other party? bc idk, every single person I talked to about this today was like holy shit this was a whole fucking revelation actually, I can't believe I hadn't thought about this before thank you for bringing this up

#cam thoughts #I still have to talk to original friend #but am thinking maybe doing this next time I see them in person bc I find it so much easier to convey tone not when typing #bc there is an external factor that I suspect may have to do with why they're suddenly reaching out so frequently and I want to be sensitiv #but now I want to know the answer to this question for literally everyone I know. Im SO curious what is actually objectively normal/typical #but my gut tells me that this is like #inherently a delicate question to ask bc it can really make it uncomfortably clear if 2 ppl are not on the same page re:their friendship #also I realized that most of this group are specifically SWEs who have worked ON a chat application in the past.#so of COURSE we all have super strong opinions about literally all of this which is hilarious #also I didn't want to say it but have I definitely been thinking *meme voice* is this attachment theory? this whole time? lowkey mayhaps.#also also if you're reading this and I ever left you on read please do know that I do feel bad about it and I am sorry #final postscript I do not mean to suggest that I never want to be reached out to or checked in on. just. my capacity for social threads #is extremely low so please don't take it personally if I cannot prioritize your message right away or scale back chatting to a slower pace #tl;dr everyone is normal and fine and just different and the sooner we realize this the healthier our digital social lives will become.

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