spinofflive
a pale pink and bright blue image, with lots of hands holding phones and a list that says "Etiqquette" with wee check marks
Group chats, emojis, and conversations that just trail off: there’s a lot to consider (Image: Tina Tiller)

InternetOctober 16, 2024

The Spinoff guide to life: How to send a text without being annoying

a pale pink and bright blue image, with lots of hands holding phones and a list that says "Etiqquette" with wee check marks
Group chats, emojis, and conversations that just trail off: there’s a lot to consider (Image: Tina Tiller)

In the latest edition of The Spinoff’s etiquette guide, we consider how to avoid some common text-messaging pitfalls.

Text messaging! We do it all the time – for many people, it’s the default form of private communication, superseding the phone call, letter or email. There are dozens of platforms, practical and more social reasons to text, occasionally unwritten expectations, and lots of possibilities for great enjoyment. 

Here’s a quick tour of the etiquette for sending and receiving texts, and enjoying both the messages and the relationships they are part of.

How to send a text message when you have been very, very late replying

Apologise for not replying. For things like a photo of your nephew at the community art show that you forgot to acknowledge, there’s no need to go into an orgy of apologies; be sincere, but brief. “Sorry I forgot to reply to this pic! He looks sooo cute” at the beginning of your next text is fine. 

However, if the text you ignored was something that might truly have hurt someone’s feelings, like not replying to your old flatmate’s message that he was really upset about a break up, or forgetting to congratulate a colleague who Whatsapped you photos of their new child, then skip the text message and give them a call instead. 

a nokia phone with a grey screen, looking very old school
We might have graduated from buzzy buttons to glass screens, but texting is as vital now as it was in 2004 (Photo: SSPL/Getty Images)

If someone didn’t pick up the phone

Send them a text explaining why you called. “Kia ora, I was hoping to know your dal recipe for making dinner tonight if you’re around!” or “just saying hi, nothing urgent – would love to talk to you soon” or a “we need to discuss what’s happening with Susanna’s lawyer, give me a ring when you can.” Not a voicemail, no one likes checking voicemail! 

How to use emojis and emoji reactions

Emojis and emoticons (made with text :)) can be a useful way to soften messages and convey tone. But with hundreds and hundreds to choose from, deciding between a green or orange heart can be confusing, and interpreting an elephant or broken chain emoji can be perplexing. Ideally, your messages will be clear, rather than artefacts that must be scrutinised like the Rosetta Stone. 

When it comes to emojis, keep it simple; one or two will do in most cases. A check mark or thumbs up is a good reply to show you agree with something, and a heart is an easy way to show some compassion and affection. Faces are a good way to convey what kind of mood you wrote something in. But remember that there is always a lightness to emojis. Saying “I’m so upset with him 😠” has a playful campness that a bare “I’m so upset with him” does not. 

Emoji reactions are good for efficiency, to show that you agree or support someone, especially in group chats; they’re ideal for situations where your reply would otherwise be a single emoji (or word like “yeah”). However, as discussed below, emoji reactions are inscrutable and less noticeable, so when it’s vital to get a message across, don’t rely on someone seeing your reaction. 

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

How to text your kid’s teacher/your dentist/your plumber 

When communicating with people you know in an official or service capacity, all of the above applies, with an added imperative: don’t waste each other’s time. Don’t confirm a dentist appointment with a heart reaction; be clear, brief and polite in each message. And reply quickly, because these messages are usually time sensitive, determining whether there will be oranges for the halftime at soccer this afternoon or you’re at home for someone to take a look at the garage door.

How to send a message to a group chat 

Group chats can be so fun! They can also be so annoying and distracting. Most group chats have their own culture, but if all you’re going to post is an emoji, then just use the emoji react – or if too many messages are annoying you, mute away. 

If you want to send information to some people in the group that not everyone will be interested in, then just make a spinoff group, even if it just gets used for the social netball season and never again. 

illustration of some family members sitting in front of a big phone screen filled with the rest of their family
Group chats put family life, along with their gossip and logistics, online (Image: Getty Images)

How to decide which platform to use to contact someone 

Ah, the eternal conundrum: your Facebook Messenger friends, Instagram DM colleagues, WhatsApp uncles, and SMS cousins. Which do you use to contact someone? Is it OK to have beloved friends whose phone numbers you don’t know after a decade of relationship? Does your girlfriend’s love of privacy mean that four years of messages need to migrate from Instagram DMs to Signal? 

In general, be consistent with what platform you communicate with a particular person on; remember that SMS messages aren’t particularly secure, while all Meta-owned messaging platforms (WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook) are encrypted, although they also use your data to make advertising revenue. Signal is a secure not-for-profit alternative.

Facebook messages in purple tone blurred out with a chat box in the centre
Facebook Messenger: the reason many people retain a Facebook account (Image: Archi Banal)

When to let a text conversation come to its natural end 

Spending weeks in a slow “how are you”, “yup doing well” game of phone tag can be just as corrosive to a relationship as a flurry of hectic messages to your Slow Horses buddy after the latest episode before you decide there’s nothing more to say to each other. The “flurry” type messages are easy to draw to a conclusion, because everyone understands that it’s not possible to give undivided attention to your phone for long periods of time. Saying “It’s been lovely to chat, I need to go to bed/school/the supermarket now” is a good way to not leave someone else hanging. 

For the conversation that drags out with asynchronous responses, it’s best to end on something substantial that doesn’t invite immediate reply, like: “It’s been so nice to hear from you, I’m having such a great time pursuing my Masters in architecture and living in Prague, let me know if you need some advice in January about what Antonio might like for his birthday!”

How to schedule a catch up 

Wow, it’s so hard to see your friends these days! There’s a loneliness epidemic! And given it’s so difficult to keep in touch, and in many ways communicating via messages is so unfulfilling, then it should be a great joy to find a time to see someone you like without needing to tap on a screen first. (Or, second best, find a time to call them.)

When making plans over text, don’t be vague. Too many friendships have withered and died in people replying to Instagram stories saying “it would be nice to see you soon” and stopping there. Start with a general time: “next week” or “this evening” or “when I’m visiting in November”. If you have a specific activity to propose, or already know your availability, lead with that: “go for a walk”, “I’m free on Tuesday evening if you want to give me a ring anytime after 6pm” or “are you keen to try the new toastie shop behind the park”. 

Plans are confirmed when both parties have agreed to the plan, not when one person has proposed a date, time and activity, and the other person has heart reacted. When you’re agreeing to a plan, type it out; don’t send a voice message, just so it’s easy to refer back to when you’re like, “wait where did we agree to meet”?

More Reading

On ‘just checking’ texts 

You’ve managed to lock in a time! But no, the ordeal is not over: there is another text message to come. “Does tonight still work for you?”, “Just checking that we are still meeting for lunch?” If you are the person who is changing already agreed-to plans, the onus is on you to communicate it as soon as possible. 

The “just checking” text is understandable, but has to be used judiciously. The ideal is simply to trust that whoever you’re meeting will show up, and to have that same trust extended to you. But if you’re feeling the itch to check, there are three factors to consider: the time elapsed since the plans were agreed to, the reliability of the person/people you are meeting, and acts of God. If you agreed on plans within the last week then don’t worry about re-confirming. But if the person you’re meeting is very forgetful and/or busy, that rule can be ignored – go ahead and check again. 

The same goes for if there has been a major event beyond both party’s control, eg a natural disaster, a derailing on the train lines, or the news that there are likely to be aurora visible that evening, in which case circumstances will force changed plans. In that case, include this detail in the message: “Hi, I’m still planning to go for a walk with you at the beach this evening, but I know it’s been your lifelong wish to see the Southern Lights, so I just wanted to check that you’re still planning to be there?” This comes across as both thoughtful and compassionate, as well as pragmatic.  

If you’re running late 

If you’re running less than five minutes late, don’t bother texting. If it’s more than that, send an ETA.

Keep going!
three people stand in a row on a bright blue background looking at their phone. their heads are replaced by CAPTCHA systems, with one having distorted text, another a grid of images containing a blurry morbike, and one having a box saying "I am not a robot" with a mouse hovering over it
Correctly identifying blurry text is not a fundamental aspect of the human condition. Feeling annoyed by it might be. (Image: The Spinoff)

InternetOctober 14, 2024

I hate CAPTCHAs, the unnecessary ritual of having to prove you’re a human being

Contributing writer
three people stand in a row on a bright blue background looking at their phone. their heads are replaced by CAPTCHA systems, with one having distorted text, another a grid of images containing a blurry morbike, and one having a box saying "I am not a robot" with a mouse hovering over it
Correctly identifying blurry text is not a fundamental aspect of the human condition. Feeling annoyed by it might be. (Image: The Spinoff)

They are a frequent, frustrating experience in a society that puts digital technology first. But while finding all the traffic lights in a grainy image is irritating, for many New Zealanders it prevents them from accessing the site at all. 

At least four or five times in a standard week, I have to fill out a CAPTCHA form to log in to something, and every time it sucks a little bit of my life force out of my body and leaves me wondering why correctly identifying traffic lights is a sign of being human. 

It’s an experience shared with millions: the dementing feeling of staring at a grainy photo, asked to click the squares with motorcycles or traffic lights, and being told you have done so incorrectly. Or maybe you’ve been puzzling at a line of distorted text, trying to figure out if it reads r0QMjboh or r0OMj0h, or answering a maths question like “what does 4+11 =?”. Or, like this unfortunate Reddit user, you are puzzling over whether a glass of ice water, a soft-toy rabbit or leather jacket would make a louder sound when dropped – when all they wanted to do was pay their Spark bill.

CAPTCHAs like these are so ubiquitous that they feel like they’re part of the fabric of the internet, sitting unquestioned. But they should be questioned – because there’s something very dehumanising about being asked to click an “I am not a robot” box, and the tasks the CAPTCHA asks the user to do are often not just confusing and irritating, but also particularly difficult for people with disabilities. 

a gride of different items like fire hydrants arranged in a CAPTCHA format
Identify all the squares containing fire hydrants, an item which is not commonly found on New Zealand streets

An acronym, CAPTCHA stands for  “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”, which does seem like it should be called CAPTTTTCaHA but I guess that ironically looks more like the kind of text that should be pixelated and have a line through it. A Turing test is named for mathematician and early computer scientist Alan Turing, as a way to assess whether a computer’s language ability is equivalent to a human; CAPTCHAs are a twist of the concept for megacorporations to protect themselves from bots and also get humans to do the work of digitising books for them while they’re at it. 

Even when they’re easy to solve, CAPTCHAs aren’t really about website users. Instead, they’re supposed to protect websites from having to use their server capacity to host bots. It doesn’t really matter whether you correctly identify the objects in the picture or not; the point is that you do it in a sort of slow and irregular way, like actual neurons are having to fire in your actual brain made of actual flesh in order to answer the question. If an automated system was ticking the box, it would do so quickly and efficiently, because bots don’t toggle to another tab, pausing to look at its phone, clicking then unclicking a box. (This is how “box tick” CAPTCHAs work – it identifies your mouse and browser behaviour as idiosyncratic enough to be organic.)

The problem with CAPTCHAs is that they’re actually not that good at telling humans and computers apart; if they were, it wouldn’t be so common to fail them, and have to try again and again just so you can fill out a stupid contact form on the plumber’s website. And sometimes, being unable to get past a CAPTCHA isn’t just about deciding whether one pixel of motorbike counts as being in a square or not: it’s a barrier that can make a website totally unusable.

“All CAPTCHAs introduce some kind of usability hurdle and many also present significant accessibility barriers,” says the New Zealand government’s very own website on accessibility online, which notes that CAPTCHAs should never be a website’s first line of defence against bots. “Most CAPTCHAs block access to one or more type of user, including those that use more than one modality, such as an image CAPTCHA for the sighted and an audio CAPTCHA for the vision impaired.” Even presenting these two options can make a website more inaccessible for someone with both visual and hearing impairments; logic puzzle CAPTCHAs could also make a website unusable for people with intellectual disabilities who cannot answer maths questions easily.

a room with different accomodation signs on the wall, like sloced captioning and hearing aid loops
Navigating disability services means accessing a complex system of funding and support administered by different departments – a process not helped by inaccessible websites (Image: Bianca Cross)

The New Zealand government’s accessibility standards are meant to support government websites to be as accessible as possible and, while I’m sure there are exceptions, government and local governments are mostly OK. Beyond that, many, many websites have increasingly obtuse CAPTCHAs, designed to obstruct increasingly sophisticated bots. As a non-disabled user I find CAPTCHAs incredibly annoying, and frequently give up on making purchases or creating new accounts because logging in just takes too long. (What this says about my attention span is another issue entirely.) The CAPTCHA systems are especially irritating given that contemporary AI can easily bypass them and so many alternatives exist. 

Given our ageing population, the number of people frustrated by CAPTCHA-guarded publications will likely grow. It’s estimated that 225,000 New Zealanders will be blind, deafblind or have low vision by 2028, up from 180,000 currently. 

More Reading

Happy birthday, ACC. Now can we all join the party? Thousands of people are still waiting for the coverage they were promised.

Blind people watch TV too Why are TVNZ and ThreeNow falling behind in audio description services?

What it’s like navigating the internet when you’re blind  “It’s the CAPTCHA systems that are truly evil.”

While private companies don’t have to adhere to the web accessibility guidelines, making services (including digital services) accessible is required by the Human Rights Act, although this is poorly enforced. Further legal accessibility requirements were to be included in the Accessibility for New Zealanders bill, from 2022. The Select Committee has reported back from the first reading with a number of amendments. Many disability action groups, including Blind Low Vision NZ criticised the bills for not fully accommodating accessibility needs; it hasn’t yet had its second reading. 

CAPTCHAs seem like a small, technical inclusion on a website, ripe for ontological jokes. If being human is proven by identifying traffic lights or sliding a jigsaw puzzle into place on a screen, what does that say about our ancestors who lived before the invention of cars or wooden jigsaw puzzles? But this quotidian irritation can be something else: a reminder of how frustrating it is to navigate the internet if you don’t meet the expectations of who a standard user is. 

Internet