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Behind every man without WhatsApp there is always a woman reading his messages

I have asked my boss what he would say if I told him that I have deleted WhatsApp and that, from now on, either he should call me by phone, or he should send me an email and I will see, or he should not count on me. Her short answer (I’ll leave the long one for an extended version of this article) is “you’re not privileged enough to afford that.” I have asked him because, like me, he shared with the same envy the column where last weekend Manuel Jabois He said he didn’t have WhatsApp.

I suppose it happens to you like me, that, as I have already told on occasion, I have a WhatsApp inbox full of insistent questions, unfunny memes, uninteresting press releases, people from communication agencies hurrying me with something that I am neither interested nor will I ever be and other sources of distraction. If I spend a couple of hours without looking at my mobile, it is most likely that, when I check it again, I will have 10 open conversations. I wish I could close the beach bar and forget myself, but can’t.

For now, disconnecting completely is only within the reach of a privileged few

Today, when luxuries have been democratized and one can travel to any corner of the world for a moderate price or order perfect copies of fashion clothes through Shein, the real luxury is to erase social networks, to disappear from the internet. And, as a luxury, it is only available to a few. They will tell you that everything is a matter of wanting, because whoever wants can, like getting rich. Today the growing obsession with disconnecting is clear, but I fear that, for now, it is only within the reach of a few; or very privileged, or just the opposite, pupils of diogenes willing to live in the barrel dostracism.

If I deleted WhatsApp, I’d be a social outcast and job failure in a matter of weeks.. At first my friends and colleagues may have found it funny, but I suspect that sooner or later the people who pay me to work would end up preferring someone less capricious. I have no doubt that, little by little, my face, converted into an empty profile, would disappear from my friends’ agendas, on its way to oblivion.

Notification graveyard. (Reuters/Rodrigo Garrido)

The key is whether you are important enough for people to chase you until they find you, or whether you are the one who has to chase people. Most of us belong to the second category. If we disappeared, no one would miss us. Or, put another way, if the only way to talk to us was on the phone, no one would call us. There is not enough demand for Héctor García Barnés to force others to adapt to me, but I imagine there is for Jabois. If you’re the boss of Jabois, if Jabois has bosses (I guess they do, because only God doesn’t), you know you have to make the effort to pick up the phone if you want me to write a column for you. They send me a WhatsApp.

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People who do without these instant messaging services usually say that if you want something from them, you will call them, that everything is a matter of will and good intentions. A colleague did it and, as usual, we promised him that we would not forget him, that, even if he had decided to go to the other side, we would continue calling him. Of course, it’s a lie: over the weeks, communicating with him required time that we didn’t have and an effort that wasn’t on our property list, so we stopped doing it. The responsibility of telling him that we had met was distributed in a diffuse way, so, in the end, nobody did it.

Deleting WhatsApp or Telegram would be a chore for colleagues, friends and acquaintances

Several things happen here, such as instant messaging is an always open channel with no beginning or end. I never say “good morning” or say goodbye. Conversations are simply put on hold, like the Spotify song you’re listening to when you close the player, waiting for you at the same point when you open it. We’ll be bad people, but it’s impractical in a world of communications without beginning or end to have to go through the tiresome ritual of calling every time you remember another person. Imagine picking up the phone to tell him a meme, which are still messages whose implicit meaning is to say “I’m still there”.

What also happens is that getting rid of certain channels of communication is a way of isolating oneself, but also of make demands on others. Deleting my WhatsApp (or Telegram) would basically be a chore for colleagues, friends and acquaintances, who would suddenly be forced to change their habits to adapt to mine. That I understand that people do those things for Jabois (I would, that he is more handsome and more talented than me!), But I, honestly, would not do it for Héctor García Barnés.

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Héctor G. Barnés Illustration: Irene de Pablo

Disappearing is a luxury: most of us need to be accessible, because today productivity is basically availability. As a new author, I have to insist that the reader buy my book and, furthermore, be accessible to anyone who wants to ask me a few questions, make myself visible. If you can afford not to have WhatsApp, you can probably afford it too. decline interviews. Until one achieves that status, as my boss would say, I don’t have enough privileges to force you to call me. as he sings Kevin Morby on their latest album, if you don’t show up, you’re disappearing.

unseen walls

We live surrounded by barriers that cannot be seen, that separate us even if we do not know it. Getting rid of instant messaging is one of them. Throughout my life, I have met many people who did not use a mobile phone, but who, conveniently, always had someone by their side. a person who had from one. How many times have I heard over the last two decades that “I don’t have a phone, but you can call my wife/girlfriend/friend”. Behind every man without WhatsApp, there is a woman reading messages from friends.

Deleting WhatsApp is like faking a voice and saying “the man is not available”

Before, that filter was the secretaries, who answered the calls that they did not want to answer, who made excuses when necessary. WhatsApp, like email, appeared as a weapon that made it possible to bypass that wall and directly blast the man from the office. Leaving instant messaging is a new barrier: that of the phone that is not picked up after reading the name of the caller, that of the message that remains in ‘seen’. For someone like me, deleting WhatsApp is like picking up the phone with a fake voice and saying “excuse me, but Mr. Héctor not available“.

The rebellion against technology is very beautiful, but unequal if we do not realize the implications of our practices, and to disappear today is to end up causing the effort to fall on the one who needs to locate you, who may sooner or later get tired of having to do it. Until I’m Jabois, and I’m afraid I never will be, I’ll have to content myself with being Héctor García Barnés, and save the digital disconnection for when I retire, win the lottery or die, the ultimate disconnect.

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