Local woman Kathryn Tepittin has set a world record by muting a group chat on her phone only 0.076 seconds after the initial message was sent.
“The moment I saw ‘Hey guys, sorry for the group message’ pop up, my brain immediately knew what to do and acted on pure animalistic instinct, muting the Facebook Messenger thread from sending any other notifications,” explained 26-year-old Tepittin. “If it’s important, they’ll text me directly, otherwise I don’t want to be involved in what will surely devolve into a pit of inside jokes and subpar reaction gifs.”
Reports suggest that every day thousands of Canadians fall victim to being added to unnecessary group chats. Whether it be the selfishness of those unwilling to create personalized invites to an event or the incompetence of not knowing how to spread information in a way that doesn’t subject others to a hellhole of automatic reply-all notifications, group chats continue to spread to those who wish to be no part of them.
“It’s a fascinating phenomenon really,” explained sociologist Marcus Lio. “62% of all group chats begin with someone apologizing for creating a group chat. So even the oppressor is empathetic of the grief they are causing their victims, and yet the trend continues.”
Despite Tepittin’s absence from chat participation, many of the other 64 members involved in the group chat continued to spam each other with notifications. The responses included images and gifs from a dozen popular sitcoms alongside a 45-minute discussion on whether the group is meeting at 7pm or 7:15pm.
“It’s not every day you set a world record so I’ll probably celebrate with a few friends this weekend,” stated Tepittin. “On such short notice, it’s going to take too long to text everyone individually so I’ll just throw together a group chat. I’m sure no one will mind.”
