down with texting

I have no impassioned plea to make about this or some soapbox to stand on, just a long overdue self-reflection on how I communicate and...not so much the difficulty of texting, but the constant self-regulation I have to do to make texting "work."

I'm a pretty literal reader when I'm talking to someone—whenever, really, I'm not reading fiction (the world is deeply categorized for me, unfortunately; I'm highly analytical, which I've come to hate and actively work to undo...but that's a post for another time)—so this naturally causes some friction in any text-based based communication because, well, every pragmatic signal is lost. We know this: There's no tone, no pacing, no body language, and so on. We only have inferred intent and everything else as we conjure them in our minds. Texting is also entirely asynchronous; there really isn't a conversation happening at all, simply just the quickness of the transmission makes things feel real-time (and, of course, we want it to be and so we think that it is).

So this is hard, because I'll text someone clear of my intentions and my implications (neither of which are present in a text) and also expecting a reply in the conversation on my time since the person isn't there to actually participate in the conversation. Of course, then they reply clear of their own intentions and implications, but who knows what I'm going to read! This is where I'm intensely regulating my my interaction with a text message. Not even another person! A little, digital specter meant to represent them...I'm over it.

I've over making myself feel bad when I know whatever I'm reading into in the text isn't what's being conveyed. Why do this to myself? Avoiding text messaging entirely isn't really the answer; that's unrealistic and weirdly isolating in 2026. But I do think that I need to shift people's expectations of how much I will interact over text because I want to do as little texting as possible. That's how I'm feeling now about it.

I want to be a bad texter. I don't want to keep up with and participate in group chats. I don't want to send or listen to audio messages (increasingly feeling depressed about audio messages: Talking into a a little computer—not to anyone!—and sending it into a void...). For my friends who live far away from me, I will continue to text. The asynchronicity makes sense, then. Anyone can text me 1:1, but I don't want them to expect a reply. If you want to get ahold of me...call me! FaceTime me! No more deferred connection!