Initiating a WhatsApp group and then adding members with a message to a contact “I’ll add you to the group” is easy. But maintaining the group and making it productive has become a challenge. I felt honored when invited by my immediate senior in school to join a WhatsApp group of Schoolmates in March-April, 2020. The group has a senior Banker, an Aero-Scientist, a Dentist, a senior Public Sector Administrator, a distinguished Poet, 2 medical practitioners, a Chartered Accountant, a horticulture scientist apart from me, a Pharma Sales Person. Interestingly, the group was put together by the daughter of the Senior Banker. She wanted to present her father with a facility to recall and reminisce school days with his schoolmates. I am ever grateful to her for giving me a wonderful gift of connecting with old friends after decades of leaving the school. This is the latest WhatsApp group of which I became a member. I am also a participant in 2 groups of my relatives and have scores of direct one-to-one WhatsApp contacts.
A few years ago, exactly on the last day of January, 2016 a few of Pharma sales persons who had worked in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh state formed a WhatsApp group. We all had retired from active working life representing different pharmaceutical companies. We were bitterly competing sales guys while in our working life, in this WhatsApp group we are currently a bunch of retirees engaged in sharing love and affection having ball of a time within our groups. The aim of this group is to gain better understanding of Hindu Philosophy, indulge in literary creativity and have light hearted banters recalling past and present incidens. In short, have good time in the evening of our lives. For me, being part of these groups, means to keep in touch, be informed, supported, and maybe even entertained.
Partaking in these WhatsApp clusters gave me a mixed bag of very pleasant and annoying experiences. Many of WhatsApp contacts surprised me with new talents which they hadn't exhibited earlier. In fact, spurred by my schoolmate poet friend, I myself found new flair for writing. I couldn't believe myself when I penned a 150 page ebook detailing experiences, incidents from my past. I never knew about my story telling ability. Humour, wit and satire are instruments which bring members closer. But sometimes they can also cause misunderstanding if carelessly used. I enjoyed the typos of a member in a group because it made me read the message repeatedly to understand it correctly. I had a feeling that he deliberately made those typographical errors to draw special attention and create uniqueness to his writings. There was another guy whose grammatical errors were his trademark. Another member made it his style by his special lexicon making the reader scramble towards a dictionary.
Information you share must be relevant to the group whilst you respect the rules of the admin. What I do not want is the build-up of fear, confusion or annoyance. My phone is my refuge, my sanctuary, my haven. It is a place where I can seek solace from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I am saddened when someone floods my WhatsApp group chats with negativity and bitching.... or pumps in "forwards" that he received in his other groups, often without going through those messages himself to ascertain their correctness or relevance to the group. Quite often spammers keep forwarding same messages repeatedly, to our utter disgust. These spammers are responsible for making others as "block deleters" frustated with irrelevance of the "forwards". Some share information offensive to others' sensitivity often disregarding objection from them.
Messages with Political views often draw ire from others holding differing views. Often it results in angry exchanges and cause some to leave the group. In a group chat, everyone holds equal interest and requires equal attention. If you won't interact with everyone then you might end up offending someone unintentionally.
As we are re-thinking the behaviour towards our resources and our lives today, let us respect the tools we have which help us come together and be informed. Let us value how we use these services, bringing them to harmonic effectiveness – to inform, encourage, and support.
So true mama. There was one member of a group who persistently kept calling another member vilest names and when as admin I asked him to moderate his lnguage became very agitated. Had to remove him from the group.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest bane as you said is cell repeaters, becomes very difficult when your inbox gets.floided with incessant videos and malignant rhetoric for or against some issues. Other is political sycophancy which sticks in my craw everytime. I learnt to ignosmre and just delete the message which the others seem to enjoy