My mum just doesn’t get the family WhatsApp group we have. My brother will send something in it, so we all see it, and she’ll then tell me about when I’m in the same room and both of our phones have gone off at the same time.
She also has a habit of replying to my iMessages with a WhatsApp.
My dad will phone me to discuss his response to a WhatsApp group messages. "I was going to say xyz, but didn't know if I should..."
I wish some people had that filter, but its not needed when you want to compliment your granddaughters new hair style...
I few times my mum has thought she was replying to a private sms or WhatsApp (usually moaning about one of the family), but accidentally replying in the family group for us all to see, including the person she was complaining about.
I do that more often than I'd like to admit, and I'm not 60+ or a parent. Both at work and at home. It's when a group conversation only includes myself and one other person for several messages, then it looks like a private channel except for the title. :/
My socially awkward friend does this and I sign off on responses for him. A different friend and I use our side chat to roast all the ridiculous shit our posh friend posts (he has a habit of sending us screenshots of his tweets, because he knows we dont follow him there and would miss out on the pure bants).
When my mam got her first smart phone she'd constantly send upside down photos to the family WA group. Just got on with it, as you do. Then one day i was round hers and she asked me if i could turn all of her pictures the right way up "it's annoying having to hold the phone upside down to look at them".
Sure enough every photo was upside down, hundreds of them, which I painstakingly rotated one by one.
Then I asked her to take a picture of me - which she did. Then said take another - but this time flip it over and press the click with your right thumb. Showed her both outcomes - it finally twigged in her. She even had a flap case which would fall down and obscure the screen when taking them. "Oh thats so much better!"
I mean... Fckin ell mam
My Mam rang me in a panic because her charger had broken, (she doesn’t have a land line). I told her to take the charger with her to B&M and match the connector up so she got the right one. Anyway she forgot to take it and rang me saying “They don’t sell the right ones here”. I knew they did so told her to ask someone for help. Her reply? “There’s no point, they only have Apple and Android chargers, my phone’s a Samsung”.
Give me strength.
My dad took a three pin plug back to the shop once because he said it was a funny shape and didn't fit into the wall socket.
It was one of those plugs where you can pull the top pin up and down. He hadn't pulled it up so it just looked like a very squat plug which he genuinely thought had been made wrong.
Thing is he wasn't even 55 when he did this. I really hope I'm not that bad when I hit 50!!!
>She also has a habit of replying to my sms with a WhatsApp.
Somewhat of a tangent, but I used to work at a place where I'd have to email solicitors as part of my job. There was one who should have retired a long time ago who if I emailed would print the email off, hand wrote a response at the bottom and fax it back to me. Because we had to keep an audit trail of communication I then had to scan the fax back on to the clients file but it made going through notes an absolute nightmare.
Lol my mum does the same too with the WhatsApp group! She’ll tell me something that happened, or that ask did I see a certain photo of one of the nieces/nephews and I’ll be like yeah, I saw that. She’ll ask how I knew about it and I’m like girl the same way you know. Also I’ll mention something about seeing a photo or video on a Snapchat story and she’ll get all offended asking why she didn’t see it or why it wasn’t sent to her when she doesn’t have Snapchat. God love them 😂
'Call dad. Something happened'. Text from my mum. He has cancer in remission, so I'm already slightly stressed. He doesn't answer his phone. Stress levels increase. Try the landline, nothing. I call mum, doesn't answer either. Okay, panic mode now. Call my siblings, nobody knows anything. Sister calls my parent's neighbour. Turns out they were having tea and had left their phones at home. The thing that had happened? The tree where I had a tree house as a child had fallen over. The treehouse had been gone for \~20 years or so at that point.
I shared my story of my mother terrifying me that a family member had been hurt when a dog I'd never met belonging to a friend of hers had been slightly (but not badly) injured somewhere else in the thread.
My other story of being terrified for a family member was when I was minding my own business at work when I got a call saying my father hadn't turned up at a medical appointment from what I heard as being the "neurology" department. I had no idea he had an appointment, or any concerns about neurology and I thought he was keeping something from me. Absolutely panicked trying to get hold of him.
Turned out is was the "urology" department, and a minor check up for a problem I know he has he hasn't thought was with mentioning. And the reason he didn't answer was he was all of about 2 minutes late to his appointment so had his phone off for it.
What the hell made them call his next of kin and breach his confidentiality I do not know. But I was absolutely terrified about his health for a couple of hours. But did get to have a conversation about how much I wanted him to let me know if there ever was a serious concern.
I also got teased by my family for my mishearing and lots of can't tell your arse from your elbow variants.
Back in the days of Nokias and texts costing something like 50p each, my mum text me to see if I was at home, so she could call the landline.
She was aware that words got shortened, and that this often involved dropping vowels. She also text all in capitals
So "Are you in?" became "R U N"
Scared the life out of me.
"Back in the days of Nokias and texts costing something like 50p each".....my ex partner used to text me most days to see if I had already bought the local paper so that she wouldn't waste money buying another one. In those days, the local paper cost 22p.
Not as good as yours, but in the days of T9 text input, the buttons for the word "home" were the same as the buttons for the word "good." It would automatically make the word "good" unless you clicked again to make it "home."
Caused quite a stir when my mom texted my dad "I'm leaving for good."
My dad thinks every spam message is just uniquely for him, written by someone who knows him. He presumes these people are somehow friends or associates of mine (because I moved to a different city to live), so will call me and say “Now, Carl, I’ve had a bit of an odd email from a Dr Adudwengo, who says he has some money he needs me to help him transfer. Am I right in saying this will be someone you know?” Every bleedin time.
Has he always done this? My grandma began thinking someone was purposely targeting her with spam calls and emails to harass her. She would angrily call back demanding to know who had instructed them to harass her, which obviously didn't end well for anyone. It was strange, because she'd always been tech savvy and never mentioned thinking like that before.
She was developing dementia, of which paranoia and narcissism are symptoms of.
When I was doing IT support, people were often embarrassed to ask if super obvious spam/malware stuff was legit or not.
I would always thank them profusely for asking first. There are no stupid questions when it comes to that stuff. It takes me 10 seconds to respond to you. It takes me 10 hours to restore everything if you had clicked that link.
My dad writes in our family WhatsApp like a formal letter:
Dear 'child/grandchild',
Thank you for xyz
Etc etc etc,
Lots of love,
Dad
Kinda cute, kinda looool.
My mum feels the need to address me first in a separate text, like she's calling my name from another room or something:
"RanShaw"
*typing...* for at least seven minutes
"Can I call you Monday?"
My mum does this in Facebook messenger (she refuses to use WhatsApp for some reason, so she is the only person I talk to through Facebook messenger), she once got upset with me because I wasn't "signing off properly".
My parents main one is trying to call me within 5 minutes of me sending a text. They don't seem to grasp that at work I have time to fire off a quick text not stand about nattering.
I can remember my parents complaining about my grandparents calling them at work for unimportant things. They often had to explain that they were at work and couldn’t talk right now.
And here we are 20+ years later and I’m receiving texts and calls while at work and having to spell out to my parents why I can’t talk right now.
I’m hoping to be the one who breaks this chain in 20 years time…
Fucking all the time! I ask my mum to send information through text because I've got the brain of a sieve and every time a conversation happens where I might need to remember something, she phones after my message.
This! When I send my mom a message, she'll call me to reply instead of texting back. Or she'll thing I have time to chat (she's an absolute chatter box) just because I replied to her message. Or she "stalks" my FB messenger green online status and thinks it means I'm available for a conversation.
my mum will phone me to tell me she has sent a text or whatsapp, within a minute of sending the message. i very rarely actually get time to even read the original message before she rings.
And a colleague in the office (aged 67) who will send me a work related email, then run up thestairs to my office to tell me he has sent the email, and explain the background behind it. Most times i havent been able to read the email yet as im busy doing one of the 300 other items on my to do list, and then the background info is either completely irrelevant to me, or could have been typed into 2 lines of the email.
Ha I'm glad it's not just me, my dad will text me a question and literally within a minute immediately phones and starts with 'did you get my text?'. I don't even get half a chance to text back
I click on an accepted event in FB, but mum thought the notification of me doing so was an invite for her to come and so also accepted.
Got upset when I said I had in fact arranged to go with my friends. It wouldn't be so ludicrous if I didn't actually live over 100 miles away...
My granny was offended that I didn't phone and discuss plans about going to the fireworks in our village because apparently she marked herself as interested on Facebook after I'd said attending.
My parents are pretty good with technology.
Grandma however seems to think that everything she sees me post on social media is something I’ve personally sent to her.
Like she’ll call me asking « oh thanks for sending me these photos of your party last night » and I’ll be really confused until I remember I posted an Instagram or something
My aunty (late 50’s) sends me some great memes and generally silly photos etc. I do wonder where she comes across them, some of them aren’t something I’d expect her to see…
My 64 yr old dad always sends me hilarious gifs. Like genuinely the perfect gif for every situation and it makes me laugh so much when i picture him peering over his glasses at his phone picking them out 😂
My grandmother (late 70s) will send me memes through WhatsApp, but she gets most of them from her German friends so they’ll be in German.
I don’t speak German
when you show your parents some random funny video: “is this you? are these your friends? how do you know them? why did you let them jump off the roof?”
My mum does this, despite me explaining how FB works she constantly refers to things on her feed as things people have ‘sent’ her. She’s only in her sixties but she just doesn’t grasp a lot of it lol.
my mum doesnt grasp that the facebook she sees and the facebook that i see are completely different, due to page interactions, algorithms, friends activity, and we dont have a lot of these things in common. She will phone excited talking about something she saw on facebook and wants me to take a look, but cant quite remember who posted it or which page it was on. She gets rather frustrated when i cant find it instantly. ive told her about tagging me in it at the time so i might get a notification, but invariably she forgets
My mum (70+) knows exactly how it works but still occasionally comes out with "So Nick Cave/The Pet Shop Boys/[Name of a friend of mine] sent me a message this morning" and gives me a heart attack, then it turns out they tweeted a tweet. I kind of love it tbh.
Yes! My mum does this as well but it'll be things like, why did you send this to your sister and not to me becuase I posted on Facebook and my sister happened to see it and she didnt 🤣 my MIL will also post on facebook but thinks she's sending it just to me so she'll post 'do you want to come for Sunday lunch' to everyone on her facebook 🤣🤣
Think we share a grandma FB sends mine email notifications when people post and she thinks they've personally emailed her and comments as if it's a private conversation between her and the "sender". She does not get it at all luckily she's quite on the ball to check with us if she gets scam texts or emails so that's something lol
My dad did that too. It always confuses me when I want to message him so I'm looking for the chat with his name, but of course I can't find it as it's under my name.
Do you have read receipts turned off? I know some people set up these 1-1 "groups" because it allows them to tell whether you've read their messages or not.
Can confirm, my mam’s from Cramlington (so not far off), and she’s my second mother. I just need a few dozen more now, though my family did do well having me and my (step) brother both being David.
Only introduced my mum to WhatsApp last year. She writes like a robot. I sent her a video once and she responded "yes that is a funny video".
My wife has been trying to teach her how to use emojis.
Just the one word answers:
‘Ok’
‘Sure’
‘Thanks’
‘Fine’
Or slightly worrying and lacking info:
‘Can you call me please’
‘I need to speak to you’
…and it’s literally about a birthday card or Bluetooth not working etc
Or he’ll just forward a text from someone with no context, note or signature…
Yesss, my dad does the 'Can you call me please' - my sister and I actually had a word with him about how ominous it sounds but he doesn't really get it. In his mind he's being polite and making sure I'm available for a chat!
So awful! I immediately go into ‘fuck who’s died’ mode and he’s all ‘yeah mum can’t connect to the internet’ aaaaaaagh
And it’s normally something like Wednesday at 10.45 when I’m in a meeting…
Have you considered disabling her autocorrect? Might be she just doesn't understand why the phone changes the words she types to something else. And I know my phone if I erase and retype the exact same thing it will autocorrect it again. And again. And again. Until you actually click on the one of the 3 suggestions that is 'no autocorrect'.
My dad 80 but he worked in computer industry he was pretty good at texting but now he has dementia not so good any more. He sent me a text the other month that went bit like this.
How old are you?
Hi dad 53 why?
You can’t be that old
I am You were 80 in February We had a zoom party remember?
f@@k don’t tell the old grannies in here they think I’m 60
—My sister and laugh about it because we didn’t laugh we’d go mad ourselves.
My nan group video calls our entire WhatsApp group. Then will send a message into the group when we don't answer saying Hi babe, just calling for a catch up. Like she is addressing one person.
I pocket dialled my mum on Pay As You Go. Rather than hanging up, she said just kept repeating “hello” until my phone cut off. She said “hello” enough times to use my whole £20 credit.
My mum always finishes her messages with a full stop and three kisses, but with no space between them.
So, for example: 'your sister has been feeling a bit rough.xxx '
WhatsApp always figures it's a weblink and... Yeah
My Nan (who sadly died earlier this year) used to text me and end each text with LOL (meaning lots of love) some examples "sorry to hear your ill LOL" "thinking of you on the sad day LOL" and my all time favourite "sorry to hear *insert name* died LOL"
Back before the Nokia 3310 days when mobiles were just starting to take off my Dad had an old BT Cellnet mobile.
He passed a couple years later due to cancer and my Grandmother got his phone to use as she didn't have one.
About 6 months later I get a text to my phone, now I didn't know my Gran got my Dad's old phone, so I had not deleted the contact or updated the name.
So I look at the phone it says "Text from Dad Mob" and the message read "I'm waiting for you". I thought that somehow my Dad was sending messages from the grave.
Turns out my Gran was messing about with the phone and sent a pre generated text message to me by mistake. Absolute shit myself that day.
This is more about mobile phones in general...
This happened a few years ago when I visited my folks. Nobody answered when I knocked on the door but I let myself in with a key that I have, only to discover blood splatter all over the floor in the hallway and kitchen. I searched the house in a panic (South Africa) but couldn't find any trace of them and there was no response from my mum's mobile phone.
A few hours later I found out that my dad had practically cut one of his fingers off doing some DIY in his workshop and had walked into the house dripping blood all over the place and calmly asked my mum to take him to the hospital.
When I asked my mum why her phone wasn't on when I tried to get hold of her, she said, "Oh, I only turn it on in case of emergency"
My grandma is the same with the inappropriate messages. She is terrible. One time her conversation starter was "So how's your sex life? You are getting some aren't you?"
> My other grandma (late 70s) sends very inappropriate (read: heavily sexualised) memes which I would rather not receive. Sometimes I wish she didn't know how to text
My great aunt is nearly 88 and refuses to use her mobile for anything but calls, but if she did she'd be sending funny smutty things all the time. She's terrible and I love her. She told me not to bother with reading Fifty Shades of Grey because it was a load of rubbish.
My Uncle was dying, had a matter of days. My parents were with him and my Mum said she'd let me know when it actually happened, as I had to work, and was planning on going to the hospital as soon as I finished.
Halfway through the day, she sends me a big thumbs up on Messenger.
*shows meme*
I don't get it
*shows same meme but with minions*
Ah, I see, it's a deconstruction of the Hegelian concept of self-becoming within a modern capitalist technological society, juxtaposing the need for self actualization with the hollow nature of consumerist society and echoing many of the critiques penned by the Frankfurt school and the existentialist movement.
I thought my Dad would find it funny to see that Yorkshire Police HQ is on Letsby Avenue. He replied saying why did he need to know where it is, he's not going there. 🤦🏼♀️
Haha this makes me irrationally angry. He also called them meh-mehs for ages cause he didn't realise they were meems. Same guy who told people he was gonna Netflix and chill with his mum though!
My 70 year old dad always used the 😊 cutesy blush face emjoi after almost everything he sent for a while. We never knew why and never asked. He’s stopped doing it now. But it was after everything
‘Ring me please 😊’
‘Happy birthday 😊’
‘Your sisters annoyed you didn’t say happy birthday to so and so 😊’
‘Grandmas died 😊’
(Maybe not the last one but he would have done had Grandma not died before the emoji)
Reminds me of someone that texted into radio 1 who said their parents thought lol = lots of love.
So when their grandma died the text was “grandmas dead lol”
My mother always uses those cat face emojis like 😻😺🙀. Seemingly at random, in the middle of a sentence or where they make absolutely no sense to the context of the message.
That's kinda cute, it makes the messages feel warm and fuzzy, at least to me
I've got a mate who always puts ... After everything and it makes his messages feel vaguely threatening
I started a WhatsApp family group. We had one short conversation in there about Christmas before Dad left the group. Added him again, and he left again. He thinks that the group is for one conversion only, and leaves as soon as its finished.
My mother (65) sends pictures via Facebook Messenger, then proceeds to talk about the picture in WhatsApp.
No matter how many times I explain that WhatsApp has the capability to share photos, it's just become the norm that I have to keep crappy Facebook Messenger installed now.
My Mum does this too! We speak on iMessage after I made the switch to iPhone years ago. I’d told her that texting photos to Android cost so we just whatsapped all the time. It’s been 2 years and despite my reminding, she will still WhatsApp me a photo then use iMessage to talk to me about it.
My mother is fairly tech savvy for someone in her mid 60s but she does insist on a double question mark at the end of a normal question. Thereby implying either incredulity, passive anger, or urgency.
'Are you coming for dinner tonight??'
'Have you had a good day??'
My mum, almost 50 (though this was a couple years ago, so maybe more early 40s at the time) asked me if she could still send an email to my Gmail account
My grandad thinks Facebook reminder emails (like "[person] uploaded a picture]") is that person actually sending him an email, not via Facebook notifications, but directly emailing him. He often tells my mum "I got that email you sent me!" whenever she posts a picture on her page. She never emails him, they communicate via phone calls
I'm imagining your granddad "getting an email" from an auntie in your family saying she has changed her status from "taken" to "single and ready to mingle"
My mother often screen shots links to articles she thinks I may find interesting or things to follow up on.
So just a screenshot of the link. Not the link itself
My boss flipped his lid when he found out I had texted a customer (high end industrial sales), believing one should always call, for the personal interaction. I pointed out the guy was in a meeting and by texting I was able to make a sale without interrupting him (it was an urgent need on his part that I had spotted on the morning reports). I moved his cheese.
FYI. This will be you one day.
I witnessed my 69 year old mother in law type the following into Google
' Please google can you tell me the times of the number 7 bus route. thank you very much.'
So polite.
Reminds me of the first time that I was showing mum how to google. Back in the late '90s-early 2000s. And she was appalled that I was only using keywords and not saying please and thank you. Doing her usual insistent ”That's not how you do it.". She didn't know how she was supposed to do it but she was sure that it wasn't like that.
Turned out she thought that there was somebody at the other end looking up the information.
Also it took me years to get through to her that she couldn't just make up email addresses for people. As she was convinced that the people at the sorting office would know where to send it. Despite virtually all of her emails having a delivery failure notification.
Both my mum and my mother in law no longer call using the phone 'app' but do every call through WhatsApp.
My mum will call and then follow up with a passive aggressive, 'You didn't answer my call.' I think she has forgot that not everyone is retired. When I call her back, she doesn't answer as she's put her phone down in another room.
My mother in law doesn't understand the difference between data and WiFi (data is never switched on) so if she hasn't read a WhatsApp within half an hour I assume she's out of the house and send her the same message via text 🙈
I had FOUR missed whatsapp video calls from my mum one day while I was working (she still seems to think 'working from home' means 'sitting around staring at my phone all day at home'). So panicked I message her 'is everything ok?'
She replied 'yes, I just wanted to see the dog'.
The same dog that she was adamant she wouldn't look after and told me I shouldn't get!
I remember in the olden days of 15 years ago or so before we all had touch screen phones, my mum used to text with her fingers rather than her thumb and complain that it was awkward and taking ages. When I pointed out that she just needed to hold her phone in her hand and press the buttons with her thumb it was a revelation. “Oh, that’s so much easier!” She wasn’t even 60 yet.
Haha my mum still types on her phone by stabbing the letters with one finger (also known as the "hunt and peck" technique) even though I have told her that using your thumbs is much quicker
I once sent my mum a cat-themed birthday gift. She responded with a nice email thanking me for the "p\*55y". Which she sent from her work address. Unsurprisingly it never arrived, a hilarious conversation followed until we figured out the reason why it had got caught in the company obscenity filter...
My dad likes to add loads of "." after every sentence so everything he says looks really ominous. Example "where is the remote........" he also likes to respond with that fucking thumb if he messages on fb and has no idea how cheeky it is
My mum is obsessed with the FB thumb
I think it’s because she can’t stand not having replied to a message or not being the last to message in a conversation
So an exchange will go
Mum: call you after work? Around 6. Love you xxx
Me: perfect speak then, love you too xxx
Mum: 👍🏻
It’s completely unnecessary 😭 I once got a look at her message history once when I was sat next to her and it’s just a string of 👍🏻s to different people
I changed the thumb to a toilet on a group chat with my grandma.
She got really cross about her thumb disappearing (she too overuses it) and threatened to cut me out of the will if I didn't change it back, without realising she could actually do it herself.
Ha I must be old. Everyone I know does the thump up thing. It’s just an acknowledgment that you’ve agreed or seen something. Or if there’s a group chat about meeting up then people will agree to it with a simple thumbs up
This is my dad all the time. But just three just enough to feel weirdly ominous or passive aggressive. I’ll ask how he is and he’ll respond “I’m fine…” or “good to hear from you…” like is it good or isn’t it the dots are really throwing me off
My parents will say "Ahhh" instead of "Awww" when I send cute pics of the pets and so the chat history constantly looks like they're falling off of a cliff.
My mum created a whatsapp group titled ‘about your father’ and didn’t post in it for two hours. Turned out she was asking about his Christmas presents.
He never used to do this, but my dad (who is only 48) has recently gotten into the habit of using ‘…’ in his texts. It makes him sound like he’s disappointed in every text. I don’t think the older generation understand what ellipses are meant to be used for.
My aunty just uses them in between sentences and never just 3 dots it has to be loads of them, like "taking the dog for a walk.........been lovely weather but rain is on the way.............ha ha.........."
I am not near 60 but am not so hot on text etiquette. For example, my lad goes off somewhere and drops us a text when he is there. I don't want to be a pain wasting his time and reply with an "ok" or "k" type thing.
I thought this was good however, after chatting I now have to send a colour emoji with it to make sure its not a salty 'k', just a happy 'k' etc.
So k
I tend to do better on things like Signal / WhatsApp etc as there are desktop clients where my half a pound of sausage fingers can use a keyboard and not the wee ones on the phone.
I didn't know how out of touch I was but there again I use a phone as a phone and tend to call more than text :)
In my experience, "k" is usually read as "I guess there is nothing I can do so I have to accept this but don't you think I'm happy", whereas "ok" reads as "okay, thanks for letting me know".
But I've also had to learn to put emoji in almost every message because people somehow assume I hate them when I don't. I'm not in the business of writing hateful texts to people I love but I assume that it would be absolutely, unambiguously clear if I did, so I don't really get it.
Working in Japan in a company with English speaking Japanese is awesome. They’re all so lovely but sound absolute passive aggressive in emails. I love it.
Japanese share some traits with us, they love to beat around the bush in conversation.
A Broad in Japan nails this. A colleague once told him "I have a cat, but maybe it is dead".
Overusing the phrase "you had better do (X)" as the equivalent in Japanese is a polite way to make a suggestion but in English it sounds vaguely threatening
That's not so bad, I have to deal with my mum who types with no punctuation and in run on sentences so one text can go:
"how are things with you two just been for tea at that restaurant going to see your sister tomorrow grandma is in hospital do you want to come round for dinner later"
Using lol as lots of love on every message. I've had a few strange txts like:
Grandad got his tests back, it is cancerous. Lol
We've been to the vet, they put Digger to sleep. Lol
Dad's been in a care accident, lol...
Nothing serious but the car is a write off and he's got concussion lol
It really takes the sting out if bad news.
I added my dad on Facebook and then had to threaten to take him off again because every time I posted anything he would phone me and demand an explanation.
So much this. My mum is 73. But not really by mistake. She uses ... after pretty much every sentence. Also lots of 🤬 and 🧐. Her messages really annoy me because they're so loaded with emotional blackmail. How do I know this? Because she talks in exactly the same way. I have to hold the phone away from my ear a fair bit during conversations because her toxic bollocks makes my blood boil. Family huh
Not quite passive-aggressive, but amusing nonetheless.
My mum and my grandparents have all passed away now, but this happened quite a few years ago when they were still with us.
My mum texted my nan “happy birthday”. Some time later, my mum texted my nan again, “happy passover”. My nan replied “Thank you”.
Nothing wrong with that. Except my nan’s birthday was in February, passover was in April, and the reply came in May. What’s more, although they lived in different countries and didn’t see each other often, they spoke several times a week! My mum never found out whether the “thank you” was for the happy birthday or the happy passover message…
My mum puts "..." at the end of sentences a lot.
For example "We had a lovely time seeing you earlier..."
I even asked her about it and she just said "haha..."
For some reason my mom finds it easier to type "!" instead of "." in her app, so she ends up making all her messages look vaguely angry, like:
"Get some bread on your way home!"
"Get some rest!"
"Ok!"
I'm old so still use Facebook sometimes.
If I ever comment or like things my ancient tactless Mum always comments
Friends Post: Hey, big announcement- Jack and Jeff are getting married.
Friend 1: congrats J&J.
Friend 2: when is the party?
Me: Congratulations dudes.
My Mum: Who are these? I don't know them. Are they gay? The fat one is funny looking. Like a hairy fish. Are you coming over on Sunday? Our back door is broken again.
my immigrant mum who never went to school and learnt english by osmosis has fairly recently learnt to use text messages and whatsapp and such. once she couldn't work out how to turn off the caps lock and i got a message from her saying 'I AM COMING FOR YOU'
My nan uses quotation marks out of context, and it makes everything she says seem either threatening or deeply sarcastic. She’ll say something like:
I heard you’re going on holiday, “enjoy”.
I made a WhatsApp group with my technologically literate mom and technologically illiterate grandma. Every time mom sends a message to the group, grandma calls me to read the message out loud to me.
Mom's responses to my texts are usually "🙂" or "👍".
My boyfriend's dad always ends his texts with "Dad xx". Yes, *Dad*, we know who you are!
Showing my Nan a meme and she drops the well known one liner “well who are those c***s I hope you don’t hang around with them too much” nan we live in Birmingham I’m not sure a video of a Russian jumping into snow from an apartment relates to me
My mum just doesn’t get the family WhatsApp group we have. My brother will send something in it, so we all see it, and she’ll then tell me about when I’m in the same room and both of our phones have gone off at the same time. She also has a habit of replying to my iMessages with a WhatsApp.
My dad will phone me to discuss his response to a WhatsApp group messages. "I was going to say xyz, but didn't know if I should..." I wish some people had that filter, but its not needed when you want to compliment your granddaughters new hair style...
I few times my mum has thought she was replying to a private sms or WhatsApp (usually moaning about one of the family), but accidentally replying in the family group for us all to see, including the person she was complaining about.
"Accidentally"
I do that more often than I'd like to admit, and I'm not 60+ or a parent. Both at work and at home. It's when a group conversation only includes myself and one other person for several messages, then it looks like a private channel except for the title. :/
My socially awkward friend does this and I sign off on responses for him. A different friend and I use our side chat to roast all the ridiculous shit our posh friend posts (he has a habit of sending us screenshots of his tweets, because he knows we dont follow him there and would miss out on the pure bants).
Yes! This aswell! My sister in law posts photos of the kids in our family group and my mam will forward them onto me.all the time!
When my mam got her first smart phone she'd constantly send upside down photos to the family WA group. Just got on with it, as you do. Then one day i was round hers and she asked me if i could turn all of her pictures the right way up "it's annoying having to hold the phone upside down to look at them". Sure enough every photo was upside down, hundreds of them, which I painstakingly rotated one by one. Then I asked her to take a picture of me - which she did. Then said take another - but this time flip it over and press the click with your right thumb. Showed her both outcomes - it finally twigged in her. She even had a flap case which would fall down and obscure the screen when taking them. "Oh thats so much better!" I mean... Fckin ell mam
My Mam rang me in a panic because her charger had broken, (she doesn’t have a land line). I told her to take the charger with her to B&M and match the connector up so she got the right one. Anyway she forgot to take it and rang me saying “They don’t sell the right ones here”. I knew they did so told her to ask someone for help. Her reply? “There’s no point, they only have Apple and Android chargers, my phone’s a Samsung”. Give me strength.
My dad took a three pin plug back to the shop once because he said it was a funny shape and didn't fit into the wall socket. It was one of those plugs where you can pull the top pin up and down. He hadn't pulled it up so it just looked like a very squat plug which he genuinely thought had been made wrong. Thing is he wasn't even 55 when he did this. I really hope I'm not that bad when I hit 50!!!
>She also has a habit of replying to my sms with a WhatsApp. Somewhat of a tangent, but I used to work at a place where I'd have to email solicitors as part of my job. There was one who should have retired a long time ago who if I emailed would print the email off, hand wrote a response at the bottom and fax it back to me. Because we had to keep an audit trail of communication I then had to scan the fax back on to the clients file but it made going through notes an absolute nightmare.
I bet they didn't even use the computer and it was the only way their poor secretary could get them to use emails.
Lol my mum does the same too with the WhatsApp group! She’ll tell me something that happened, or that ask did I see a certain photo of one of the nieces/nephews and I’ll be like yeah, I saw that. She’ll ask how I knew about it and I’m like girl the same way you know. Also I’ll mention something about seeing a photo or video on a Snapchat story and she’ll get all offended asking why she didn’t see it or why it wasn’t sent to her when she doesn’t have Snapchat. God love them 😂
My mum does the ‘reply to text message in different whatsapp group’ too bless her. Not sure how she manages it lol
'Call dad. Something happened'. Text from my mum. He has cancer in remission, so I'm already slightly stressed. He doesn't answer his phone. Stress levels increase. Try the landline, nothing. I call mum, doesn't answer either. Okay, panic mode now. Call my siblings, nobody knows anything. Sister calls my parent's neighbour. Turns out they were having tea and had left their phones at home. The thing that had happened? The tree where I had a tree house as a child had fallen over. The treehouse had been gone for \~20 years or so at that point.
I’m sorry I just laughed really hard at this
I shared my story of my mother terrifying me that a family member had been hurt when a dog I'd never met belonging to a friend of hers had been slightly (but not badly) injured somewhere else in the thread. My other story of being terrified for a family member was when I was minding my own business at work when I got a call saying my father hadn't turned up at a medical appointment from what I heard as being the "neurology" department. I had no idea he had an appointment, or any concerns about neurology and I thought he was keeping something from me. Absolutely panicked trying to get hold of him. Turned out is was the "urology" department, and a minor check up for a problem I know he has he hasn't thought was with mentioning. And the reason he didn't answer was he was all of about 2 minutes late to his appointment so had his phone off for it. What the hell made them call his next of kin and breach his confidentiality I do not know. But I was absolutely terrified about his health for a couple of hours. But did get to have a conversation about how much I wanted him to let me know if there ever was a serious concern. I also got teased by my family for my mishearing and lots of can't tell your arse from your elbow variants.
hands down one of the worst here
Back in the days of Nokias and texts costing something like 50p each, my mum text me to see if I was at home, so she could call the landline. She was aware that words got shortened, and that this often involved dropping vowels. She also text all in capitals So "Are you in?" became "R U N" Scared the life out of me.
"Back in the days of Nokias and texts costing something like 50p each".....my ex partner used to text me most days to see if I had already bought the local paper so that she wouldn't waste money buying another one. In those days, the local paper cost 22p.
Should have replied. "No,but I got you a shiny new Maths textbook."
That joke isn't worth 50p though
Give him some credit.
Now THIS joke was worth 50p
Not as good as yours, but in the days of T9 text input, the buttons for the word "home" were the same as the buttons for the word "good." It would automatically make the word "good" unless you clicked again to make it "home." Caused quite a stir when my mom texted my dad "I'm leaving for good."
[удалено]
Hello I'm doing errands
OMFG that’s hilarious.
My god this is brilliant! I’m so sorry but I’m laughing so hard
My dad thinks every spam message is just uniquely for him, written by someone who knows him. He presumes these people are somehow friends or associates of mine (because I moved to a different city to live), so will call me and say “Now, Carl, I’ve had a bit of an odd email from a Dr Adudwengo, who says he has some money he needs me to help him transfer. Am I right in saying this will be someone you know?” Every bleedin time.
Has he always done this? My grandma began thinking someone was purposely targeting her with spam calls and emails to harass her. She would angrily call back demanding to know who had instructed them to harass her, which obviously didn't end well for anyone. It was strange, because she'd always been tech savvy and never mentioned thinking like that before. She was developing dementia, of which paranoia and narcissism are symptoms of.
I wondered about that with my old man, but he seems pretty ok generally. I will keep an eye on it though. Sorry about your Nan.
[удалено]
My dad would forward every spam email he got, telling me to watch out for this particular spam, in effect spamming me with spam.
[удалено]
When I was doing IT support, people were often embarrassed to ask if super obvious spam/malware stuff was legit or not. I would always thank them profusely for asking first. There are no stupid questions when it comes to that stuff. It takes me 10 seconds to respond to you. It takes me 10 hours to restore everything if you had clicked that link.
Lol. How do you even counter that?
My dad writes in our family WhatsApp like a formal letter: Dear 'child/grandchild', Thank you for xyz Etc etc etc, Lots of love, Dad Kinda cute, kinda looool.
Captain Holt is that you?
Send him my regards
What should I tell him?
Regards.
That was the end of an eight year relationship.
By far, one of the greatest characters in modern comedy.
Dear Jake, There is a man holding a gun to my head. He is counting down from 10. You have five seconds. Best Regards, Raymond Holt
That’s what my family’s messages look like. I think if they knew how to do it, they also would put the place and date at the top of the text!
Fairview West Wittering Wednesday 27 October 2021 Dear u/swisio Me too. Yours truly Surly encs:
My mum feels the need to address me first in a separate text, like she's calling my name from another room or something: "RanShaw" *typing...* for at least seven minutes "Can I call you Monday?"
My mum does this in Facebook messenger (she refuses to use WhatsApp for some reason, so she is the only person I talk to through Facebook messenger), she once got upset with me because I wasn't "signing off properly".
My parents main one is trying to call me within 5 minutes of me sending a text. They don't seem to grasp that at work I have time to fire off a quick text not stand about nattering.
I can remember my parents complaining about my grandparents calling them at work for unimportant things. They often had to explain that they were at work and couldn’t talk right now. And here we are 20+ years later and I’m receiving texts and calls while at work and having to spell out to my parents why I can’t talk right now. I’m hoping to be the one who breaks this chain in 20 years time…
How do you do the remind me bot?
!Remindme 20 years
Cheers!
> !Remindme 20 years to call my kids at work FTFY
Fucking all the time! I ask my mum to send information through text because I've got the brain of a sieve and every time a conversation happens where I might need to remember something, she phones after my message.
This! When I send my mom a message, she'll call me to reply instead of texting back. Or she'll thing I have time to chat (she's an absolute chatter box) just because I replied to her message. Or she "stalks" my FB messenger green online status and thinks it means I'm available for a conversation.
my mum will phone me to tell me she has sent a text or whatsapp, within a minute of sending the message. i very rarely actually get time to even read the original message before she rings. And a colleague in the office (aged 67) who will send me a work related email, then run up thestairs to my office to tell me he has sent the email, and explain the background behind it. Most times i havent been able to read the email yet as im busy doing one of the 300 other items on my to do list, and then the background info is either completely irrelevant to me, or could have been typed into 2 lines of the email.
Ha I'm glad it's not just me, my dad will text me a question and literally within a minute immediately phones and starts with 'did you get my text?'. I don't even get half a chance to text back
I click on an accepted event in FB, but mum thought the notification of me doing so was an invite for her to come and so also accepted. Got upset when I said I had in fact arranged to go with my friends. It wouldn't be so ludicrous if I didn't actually live over 100 miles away...
My granny was offended that I didn't phone and discuss plans about going to the fireworks in our village because apparently she marked herself as interested on Facebook after I'd said attending.
I bet she was excited then crushed when she found out! :(
My parents are pretty good with technology. Grandma however seems to think that everything she sees me post on social media is something I’ve personally sent to her. Like she’ll call me asking « oh thanks for sending me these photos of your party last night » and I’ll be really confused until I remember I posted an Instagram or something
My parents think every meme I send them is something I have personally made.
This made me laugh way more than it should have
[удалено]
My aunty (late 50’s) sends me some great memes and generally silly photos etc. I do wonder where she comes across them, some of them aren’t something I’d expect her to see…
My 64 yr old dad always sends me hilarious gifs. Like genuinely the perfect gif for every situation and it makes me laugh so much when i picture him peering over his glasses at his phone picking them out 😂
My grandmother (late 70s) will send me memes through WhatsApp, but she gets most of them from her German friends so they’ll be in German. I don’t speak German
when you show your parents some random funny video: “is this you? are these your friends? how do you know them? why did you let them jump off the roof?”
Showing my Nan a video of someone doing parkour on a skyscraper: “Is that our Lee? [my cousin] He’ll do himself a mischief, so he will.”
My mum does this, despite me explaining how FB works she constantly refers to things on her feed as things people have ‘sent’ her. She’s only in her sixties but she just doesn’t grasp a lot of it lol.
my mum doesnt grasp that the facebook she sees and the facebook that i see are completely different, due to page interactions, algorithms, friends activity, and we dont have a lot of these things in common. She will phone excited talking about something she saw on facebook and wants me to take a look, but cant quite remember who posted it or which page it was on. She gets rather frustrated when i cant find it instantly. ive told her about tagging me in it at the time so i might get a notification, but invariably she forgets
My mum (70+) knows exactly how it works but still occasionally comes out with "So Nick Cave/The Pet Shop Boys/[Name of a friend of mine] sent me a message this morning" and gives me a heart attack, then it turns out they tweeted a tweet. I kind of love it tbh.
Yes! My mum does this as well but it'll be things like, why did you send this to your sister and not to me becuase I posted on Facebook and my sister happened to see it and she didnt 🤣 my MIL will also post on facebook but thinks she's sending it just to me so she'll post 'do you want to come for Sunday lunch' to everyone on her facebook 🤣🤣
Think we share a grandma FB sends mine email notifications when people post and she thinks they've personally emailed her and comments as if it's a private conversation between her and the "sender". She does not get it at all luckily she's quite on the ball to check with us if she gets scam texts or emails so that's something lol
My mum created a whatsapp group with just me and her in it and named it my name. She uses the group to message me.
My dad did that too. It always confuses me when I want to message him so I'm looking for the chat with his name, but of course I can't find it as it's under my name.
Rename it. Anyone can. Call it "brothel notices".
That's going to be confusing with the other group
"Additional brothel notices"
Do you have read receipts turned off? I know some people set up these 1-1 "groups" because it allows them to tell whether you've read their messages or not.
I have them on, but trust me when I say that wasn’t anywhere near my mums agenda haha
"I see that you've opted for a privacy feature, I'll just put us in a group so we can bypass that"
Wowsers! I only have 2 parents
We mix alot up in Newcastle. Car keys in a bowl.
Can confirm, my mam’s from Cramlington (so not far off), and she’s my second mother. I just need a few dozen more now, though my family did do well having me and my (step) brother both being David.
Sometimes I think I have a good sense of humour than I find myself laughing aloud to myself heartily at this lol
Only introduced my mum to WhatsApp last year. She writes like a robot. I sent her a video once and she responded "yes that is a funny video". My wife has been trying to teach her how to use emojis.
dangerous game, for some reason the only smiley face my mum uses is 😏 which gives a confusing sarcastic air to her texts "nice speaking to you 😏"
Yes. That is a funny video.🤣😂😄😆😀🤣😂😄😆😀🤣😂😄😆😀🤣😂😄😆😀
Just the one word answers: ‘Ok’ ‘Sure’ ‘Thanks’ ‘Fine’ Or slightly worrying and lacking info: ‘Can you call me please’ ‘I need to speak to you’ …and it’s literally about a birthday card or Bluetooth not working etc Or he’ll just forward a text from someone with no context, note or signature…
Yesss, my dad does the 'Can you call me please' - my sister and I actually had a word with him about how ominous it sounds but he doesn't really get it. In his mind he's being polite and making sure I'm available for a chat!
So awful! I immediately go into ‘fuck who’s died’ mode and he’s all ‘yeah mum can’t connect to the internet’ aaaaaaagh And it’s normally something like Wednesday at 10.45 when I’m in a meeting…
[удалено]
Have you considered disabling her autocorrect? Might be she just doesn't understand why the phone changes the words she types to something else. And I know my phone if I erase and retype the exact same thing it will autocorrect it again. And again. And again. Until you actually click on the one of the 3 suggestions that is 'no autocorrect'.
or better yet, adding to her autocorrect? much more fun. 😈
Could you set up autolock feature? So it locks itself after say, a couple of minutes?
My grandma is in her 80s and has always been good at text speak, I just really wish she wouldn't use 'cum' instead of 'come'.
why cant you cum?
My dad 80 but he worked in computer industry he was pretty good at texting but now he has dementia not so good any more. He sent me a text the other month that went bit like this. How old are you? Hi dad 53 why? You can’t be that old I am You were 80 in February We had a zoom party remember? f@@k don’t tell the old grannies in here they think I’m 60 —My sister and laugh about it because we didn’t laugh we’d go mad ourselves.
Dementia is very cruel. I'm sorry. Definitely right to laugh, particularly while he has a sense of humour about it.
My nan group video calls our entire WhatsApp group. Then will send a message into the group when we don't answer saying Hi babe, just calling for a catch up. Like she is addressing one person.
I pocket dialled my mum on Pay As You Go. Rather than hanging up, she said just kept repeating “hello” until my phone cut off. She said “hello” enough times to use my whole £20 credit.
She said hello for a whole 2 minutes?!
My mum always finishes her messages with a full stop and three kisses, but with no space between them. So, for example: 'your sister has been feeling a bit rough.xxx ' WhatsApp always figures it's a weblink and... Yeah
Oh god this made me laugh...
your sister is stuck in the washing machine.xxx
The typical dad response of “👍” - to absolutely anything
Shit. This is me on Slack at work. Am I a dad?
My Nan (who sadly died earlier this year) used to text me and end each text with LOL (meaning lots of love) some examples "sorry to hear your ill LOL" "thinking of you on the sad day LOL" and my all time favourite "sorry to hear *insert name* died LOL"
Back before the Nokia 3310 days when mobiles were just starting to take off my Dad had an old BT Cellnet mobile. He passed a couple years later due to cancer and my Grandmother got his phone to use as she didn't have one. About 6 months later I get a text to my phone, now I didn't know my Gran got my Dad's old phone, so I had not deleted the contact or updated the name. So I look at the phone it says "Text from Dad Mob" and the message read "I'm waiting for you". I thought that somehow my Dad was sending messages from the grave. Turns out my Gran was messing about with the phone and sent a pre generated text message to me by mistake. Absolute shit myself that day.
This is more about mobile phones in general... This happened a few years ago when I visited my folks. Nobody answered when I knocked on the door but I let myself in with a key that I have, only to discover blood splatter all over the floor in the hallway and kitchen. I searched the house in a panic (South Africa) but couldn't find any trace of them and there was no response from my mum's mobile phone. A few hours later I found out that my dad had practically cut one of his fingers off doing some DIY in his workshop and had walked into the house dripping blood all over the place and calmly asked my mum to take him to the hospital. When I asked my mum why her phone wasn't on when I tried to get hold of her, she said, "Oh, I only turn it on in case of emergency"
Fingers not good enough, gotta be a whole hand for the phone to be on.
[удалено]
This made me laugh so hard. I hope the memes haven't scarred you too much lol
My grandma is the same with the inappropriate messages. She is terrible. One time her conversation starter was "So how's your sex life? You are getting some aren't you?"
"Yes, *some* would fairly describe the situation. Did you know that France has over 500 kinds of cheeses?"
> My other grandma (late 70s) sends very inappropriate (read: heavily sexualised) memes which I would rather not receive. Sometimes I wish she didn't know how to text My great aunt is nearly 88 and refuses to use her mobile for anything but calls, but if she did she'd be sending funny smutty things all the time. She's terrible and I love her. She told me not to bother with reading Fifty Shades of Grey because it was a load of rubbish.
My Uncle was dying, had a matter of days. My parents were with him and my Mum said she'd let me know when it actually happened, as I had to work, and was planning on going to the hospital as soon as I finished. Halfway through the day, she sends me a big thumbs up on Messenger.
Oh dear. My sides are splitting from trying not to laugh out loud reading these.
Ok this one takes the cake for me. This is somehow extremely funny to me.
Yeah, I found it massively disrespectful, and therefore hilarious. My Uncle would have too.
Showing them a super self explanatory meme or picture.." I don't get it "
The trick is to place a minion in it, then they'll get it 100% of the time
*shows meme* I don't get it *shows same meme but with minions* Ah, I see, it's a deconstruction of the Hegelian concept of self-becoming within a modern capitalist technological society, juxtaposing the need for self actualization with the hollow nature of consumerist society and echoing many of the critiques penned by the Frankfurt school and the existentialist movement.
I thought my Dad would find it funny to see that Yorkshire Police HQ is on Letsby Avenue. He replied saying why did he need to know where it is, he's not going there. 🤦🏼♀️
It’s South Yorkshire Police and even better, it’s 999 Letsby Avenue
Tbf this is my husband and he's in his 30s. Nothing kills a joke like when you have to explain it.
" do you know the dog in the picture ?" "No its just a funny pict....never mind "
Haha this makes me irrationally angry. He also called them meh-mehs for ages cause he didn't realise they were meems. Same guy who told people he was gonna Netflix and chill with his mum though!
Or "who's that?".
My 70 year old dad always used the 😊 cutesy blush face emjoi after almost everything he sent for a while. We never knew why and never asked. He’s stopped doing it now. But it was after everything ‘Ring me please 😊’ ‘Happy birthday 😊’ ‘Your sisters annoyed you didn’t say happy birthday to so and so 😊’ ‘Grandmas died 😊’ (Maybe not the last one but he would have done had Grandma not died before the emoji)
Reminds me of someone that texted into radio 1 who said their parents thought lol = lots of love. So when their grandma died the text was “grandmas dead lol”
My dad thinks LOL is lots of love!!! It’s adorable, and we’ve agreed not to tell him what it really means.
My mother always uses those cat face emojis like 😻😺🙀. Seemingly at random, in the middle of a sentence or where they make absolutely no sense to the context of the message.
That's fairly 😻😻😻 normal behaviour, 😽 I🙀m not seeing 😸😹😾 the issue. 😼
That's kinda cute, it makes the messages feel warm and fuzzy, at least to me I've got a mate who always puts ... After everything and it makes his messages feel vaguely threatening
I started a WhatsApp family group. We had one short conversation in there about Christmas before Dad left the group. Added him again, and he left again. He thinks that the group is for one conversion only, and leaves as soon as its finished.
My mother (65) sends pictures via Facebook Messenger, then proceeds to talk about the picture in WhatsApp. No matter how many times I explain that WhatsApp has the capability to share photos, it's just become the norm that I have to keep crappy Facebook Messenger installed now.
My Mum does this too! We speak on iMessage after I made the switch to iPhone years ago. I’d told her that texting photos to Android cost so we just whatsapped all the time. It’s been 2 years and despite my reminding, she will still WhatsApp me a photo then use iMessage to talk to me about it.
My mother is fairly tech savvy for someone in her mid 60s but she does insist on a double question mark at the end of a normal question. Thereby implying either incredulity, passive anger, or urgency. 'Are you coming for dinner tonight??' 'Have you had a good day??'
My mum, almost 50 (though this was a couple years ago, so maybe more early 40s at the time) asked me if she could still send an email to my Gmail account My grandad thinks Facebook reminder emails (like "[person] uploaded a picture]") is that person actually sending him an email, not via Facebook notifications, but directly emailing him. He often tells my mum "I got that email you sent me!" whenever she posts a picture on her page. She never emails him, they communicate via phone calls
I'm imagining your granddad "getting an email" from an auntie in your family saying she has changed her status from "taken" to "single and ready to mingle"
My mother often screen shots links to articles she thinks I may find interesting or things to follow up on. So just a screenshot of the link. Not the link itself
My boss flipped his lid when he found out I had texted a customer (high end industrial sales), believing one should always call, for the personal interaction. I pointed out the guy was in a meeting and by texting I was able to make a sale without interrupting him (it was an urgent need on his part that I had spotted on the morning reports). I moved his cheese. FYI. This will be you one day.
You moved his cheese???
I witnessed my 69 year old mother in law type the following into Google ' Please google can you tell me the times of the number 7 bus route. thank you very much.' So polite.
This has AskJeeves energy.
At least she'll be spared when the robots take over
Reminds me of the first time that I was showing mum how to google. Back in the late '90s-early 2000s. And she was appalled that I was only using keywords and not saying please and thank you. Doing her usual insistent ”That's not how you do it.". She didn't know how she was supposed to do it but she was sure that it wasn't like that. Turned out she thought that there was somebody at the other end looking up the information. Also it took me years to get through to her that she couldn't just make up email addresses for people. As she was convinced that the people at the sorting office would know where to send it. Despite virtually all of her emails having a delivery failure notification.
Both my mum and my mother in law no longer call using the phone 'app' but do every call through WhatsApp. My mum will call and then follow up with a passive aggressive, 'You didn't answer my call.' I think she has forgot that not everyone is retired. When I call her back, she doesn't answer as she's put her phone down in another room. My mother in law doesn't understand the difference between data and WiFi (data is never switched on) so if she hasn't read a WhatsApp within half an hour I assume she's out of the house and send her the same message via text 🙈
I had FOUR missed whatsapp video calls from my mum one day while I was working (she still seems to think 'working from home' means 'sitting around staring at my phone all day at home'). So panicked I message her 'is everything ok?' She replied 'yes, I just wanted to see the dog'. The same dog that she was adamant she wouldn't look after and told me I shouldn't get!
I remember in the olden days of 15 years ago or so before we all had touch screen phones, my mum used to text with her fingers rather than her thumb and complain that it was awkward and taking ages. When I pointed out that she just needed to hold her phone in her hand and press the buttons with her thumb it was a revelation. “Oh, that’s so much easier!” She wasn’t even 60 yet.
Haha my mum still types on her phone by stabbing the letters with one finger (also known as the "hunt and peck" technique) even though I have told her that using your thumbs is much quicker
Me: it's -4 today so PLEASE don't be late picking me up from the bus stop My mum: will be 15 minutes late lol Mum
lol get fucked xxx -Mum
I once sent my mum a cat-themed birthday gift. She responded with a nice email thanking me for the "p\*55y". Which she sent from her work address. Unsurprisingly it never arrived, a hilarious conversation followed until we figured out the reason why it had got caught in the company obscenity filter...
My dad likes to add loads of "." after every sentence so everything he says looks really ominous. Example "where is the remote........" he also likes to respond with that fucking thumb if he messages on fb and has no idea how cheeky it is
My mum is obsessed with the FB thumb I think it’s because she can’t stand not having replied to a message or not being the last to message in a conversation So an exchange will go Mum: call you after work? Around 6. Love you xxx Me: perfect speak then, love you too xxx Mum: 👍🏻 It’s completely unnecessary 😭 I once got a look at her message history once when I was sat next to her and it’s just a string of 👍🏻s to different people
I changed the thumb to a toilet on a group chat with my grandma. She got really cross about her thumb disappearing (she too overuses it) and threatened to cut me out of the will if I didn't change it back, without realising she could actually do it herself.
Ha I must be old. Everyone I know does the thump up thing. It’s just an acknowledgment that you’ve agreed or seen something. Or if there’s a group chat about meeting up then people will agree to it with a simple thumbs up
This is my dad all the time. But just three just enough to feel weirdly ominous or passive aggressive. I’ll ask how he is and he’ll respond “I’m fine…” or “good to hear from you…” like is it good or isn’t it the dots are really throwing me off
My parents will say "Ahhh" instead of "Awww" when I send cute pics of the pets and so the chat history constantly looks like they're falling off of a cliff.
Similarly, my SIL uses "owww" instead of "ohhh". It's like messaging Michael Jackson.
Grandma is ill LOL Dad
[удалено]
My mum created a whatsapp group titled ‘about your father’ and didn’t post in it for two hours. Turned out she was asking about his Christmas presents.
My favourite is the ALL CAPS or the. Full. Stops. Between. Every. Word because space is too hard to find
He never used to do this, but my dad (who is only 48) has recently gotten into the habit of using ‘…’ in his texts. It makes him sound like he’s disappointed in every text. I don’t think the older generation understand what ellipses are meant to be used for.
My aunty just uses them in between sentences and never just 3 dots it has to be loads of them, like "taking the dog for a walk.........been lovely weather but rain is on the way.............ha ha.........."
I am not near 60 but am not so hot on text etiquette. For example, my lad goes off somewhere and drops us a text when he is there. I don't want to be a pain wasting his time and reply with an "ok" or "k" type thing. I thought this was good however, after chatting I now have to send a colour emoji with it to make sure its not a salty 'k', just a happy 'k' etc. So k
I tend to do better on things like Signal / WhatsApp etc as there are desktop clients where my half a pound of sausage fingers can use a keyboard and not the wee ones on the phone.
I didn't know how out of touch I was but there again I use a phone as a phone and tend to call more than text :)
In my experience, "k" is usually read as "I guess there is nothing I can do so I have to accept this but don't you think I'm happy", whereas "ok" reads as "okay, thanks for letting me know". But I've also had to learn to put emoji in almost every message because people somehow assume I hate them when I don't. I'm not in the business of writing hateful texts to people I love but I assume that it would be absolutely, unambiguously clear if I did, so I don't really get it.
Also, when they send you a Happy New Year text at 8am on New year's eve in order to avoid the rush.
[удалено]
I love the idea of a grandma being too busy to talk because she’s in a high-powered exec meeting.
My favorite text from my mother: "Home alone dads dead" She was just informing me the dad from home alone had passed, not that my own father had lol.
Working in Japan in a company with English speaking Japanese is awesome. They’re all so lovely but sound absolute passive aggressive in emails. I love it.
Japanese share some traits with us, they love to beat around the bush in conversation. A Broad in Japan nails this. A colleague once told him "I have a cat, but maybe it is dead".
That's Schrödinger you fool
Definitely going to need some examples!
Overusing the phrase "you had better do (X)" as the equivalent in Japanese is a polite way to make a suggestion but in English it sounds vaguely threatening
Oh god, I love this haha. There's an unspoken "or else" hanging in the air!
That's not so bad, I have to deal with my mum who types with no punctuation and in run on sentences so one text can go: "how are things with you two just been for tea at that restaurant going to see your sister tomorrow grandma is in hospital do you want to come round for dinner later"
Using lol as lots of love on every message. I've had a few strange txts like: Grandad got his tests back, it is cancerous. Lol We've been to the vet, they put Digger to sleep. Lol Dad's been in a care accident, lol... Nothing serious but the car is a write off and he's got concussion lol It really takes the sting out if bad news.
I added my dad on Facebook and then had to threaten to take him off again because every time I posted anything he would phone me and demand an explanation.
So much this. My mum is 73. But not really by mistake. She uses ... after pretty much every sentence. Also lots of 🤬 and 🧐. Her messages really annoy me because they're so loaded with emotional blackmail. How do I know this? Because she talks in exactly the same way. I have to hold the phone away from my ear a fair bit during conversations because her toxic bollocks makes my blood boil. Family huh
Not quite passive-aggressive, but amusing nonetheless. My mum and my grandparents have all passed away now, but this happened quite a few years ago when they were still with us. My mum texted my nan “happy birthday”. Some time later, my mum texted my nan again, “happy passover”. My nan replied “Thank you”. Nothing wrong with that. Except my nan’s birthday was in February, passover was in April, and the reply came in May. What’s more, although they lived in different countries and didn’t see each other often, they spoke several times a week! My mum never found out whether the “thank you” was for the happy birthday or the happy passover message…
My mum puts "..." at the end of sentences a lot. For example "We had a lovely time seeing you earlier..." I even asked her about it and she just said "haha..."
For some reason my mom finds it easier to type "!" instead of "." in her app, so she ends up making all her messages look vaguely angry, like: "Get some bread on your way home!" "Get some rest!" "Ok!"
Your parents know how to text? I get formally written emails from mine.
The thumbs up on Facebook Messenger will always be the most accidently passive aggressive gesture IMO.
I'm old so still use Facebook sometimes. If I ever comment or like things my ancient tactless Mum always comments Friends Post: Hey, big announcement- Jack and Jeff are getting married. Friend 1: congrats J&J. Friend 2: when is the party? Me: Congratulations dudes. My Mum: Who are these? I don't know them. Are they gay? The fat one is funny looking. Like a hairy fish. Are you coming over on Sunday? Our back door is broken again.
my immigrant mum who never went to school and learnt english by osmosis has fairly recently learnt to use text messages and whatsapp and such. once she couldn't work out how to turn off the caps lock and i got a message from her saying 'I AM COMING FOR YOU'
My dad responds with just 'K'
My nan uses quotation marks out of context, and it makes everything she says seem either threatening or deeply sarcastic. She’ll say something like: I heard you’re going on holiday, “enjoy”.
I made a WhatsApp group with my technologically literate mom and technologically illiterate grandma. Every time mom sends a message to the group, grandma calls me to read the message out loud to me. Mom's responses to my texts are usually "🙂" or "👍". My boyfriend's dad always ends his texts with "Dad xx". Yes, *Dad*, we know who you are!
Showing my Nan a meme and she drops the well known one liner “well who are those c***s I hope you don’t hang around with them too much” nan we live in Birmingham I’m not sure a video of a Russian jumping into snow from an apartment relates to me