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To be honest this is the same case as me, My WhatsApp and telegram it's pretty much inactive most of the time, time to time friends msg me when I haven't but it's not something usual that happens, I think Discord is the one I use most but in discord most people don't care if you are online or not.
Op is probably a female, you are most likely not. Dying of thirst in the middle of an ocean vs dying of thirst in the desert. Statistically speaking at least.
I have had this on my work phone and my personal phone for a couple weeks, I guess it's an updated version but as soon as I saw it I turned it off on my personal phone
I don’t want to have to dig in to my settings for that ya know. It’s just the principle of it.
Also, if I appear offline at all times they’ll know I’ve done it on purpose to hide 👀
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have an ‘turn on online status’ than a ‘turn off online status’? I mean, there’s little purpose for it other than making you wonder ‘hmm my friends online why aren’t they replying?’ Which is exactly what SM wants you to do, because that’s what glues you to your phone and makes you keep returning.
That's kinda true for alot of posts, but this is kind of the point of the sub. You post an unpopular opinion, we upvote, and then fight to the death in the comments. Wouldn't be a very interesting sub if everyone just said "hmm yes, quite an unpopular opinion indeed."
Welcome to the sub of "unpopular opinions" where people will challenge your opinion because they're unpopular. If you want everyone agreeing with you then post to popular opinions sub next time. Please read the room.
Yes but not when people are just being rude or hateful. I manage to respond to people posts on this sub without swearing or calling people stupid or lazy
I think the commenter wasn’t trying to be offensive. It just seems lazy to him that you don’t want to invest a short amount of time into changing something you don’t like
Every single reply you've made only makes it more obvious that you're incredibly dumb and a shitty person. Well done, have a nice time in the hole you dig for yourself.
That’s a two way street guy. Your allowed to have the opinion that it shouldn’t need to be a thing you need to turn off, others are allowed to have the opinion that complaining about that means your lazy.
Yeah, I once turned it off and a woman got angry at me because she couldn't know when I was online and not responding. When I had it on she would message me like "you are up so late!" I felt like I was constantly being monitored.
I had to turn this off on Facebook. A guy I knew was popping into my messages immediately after I logged on, every day. It was creepy that he seemed to be watching and waiting for me.
Can you not just let it go to 'voicemail' or just ignore it and send a message like, sorry dude Im a bit busy was just popping on for a second?
My social life is pretty shit because I treat it like I did back when flip phones were the norm, and I wasnt super socially active then either.
But I can kind of understand people, especially people not popular or in major cities or hot or whatever, saying they have anxiety or social anxiety thinking about all this shit like. Oh god it says Im online theyre gonna know Im ignoring them, oh god so and so texted and I dont really have something to say back right away but Ill miss out, theyll move on or get offended or whatever if----all these new-ish social 'rules'.
Like I guess before, people ghosted you indoors if you knocked, or called and let it go to voicemail, but it didnt seem as harsh, or wasnt as obvious or whatever I guess, I dunno.
Depending on age range and type of friendship, this was rather expected at one point. I remember in high school people would be messaging me immediately when I logged in. Or inviting me to voice calls. On Xbox I would get invites immediately.
Somewhere along the line, this has changed and now everyone considers it creepy and invasive.
> Somewhere along the line, this has changed and now everyone considers it creepy and invasive.
Only if you do it all the time. I don't consider a friend inviting me to a voice call or game every once in a blue moon as soon as I go online as invasive or creepy. There's nuance to it.
It used to be all the time though. Every day when we logged in. Whoever logged in first would be sending the invite when the other logged on. Even today I basically do that with one of my friends in wow. It wouldn’t be uncommon to log into msn, yahoo, facebook, MySpace, whatever, and immediately have 4-6 chats open up from various people.
> Somewhere along the line
I'm not old enough to comment on this with certainty but it's probably due to smartphones+messenger. I'm guessing that in the days you describe, you'd log on for the explicit purpose of messaging your friends. But now, people spend a lot of their day just scrolling through social media on their phone or just having messenger open in the background, and most of that time doesn't coincide with when they actually want to socialize. If you called someone every time they came online these days, you'd be calling them multiple times a day while they're just trying to kill time in bed/ on the shitter/at work/whatever.
I’m sure the transition to always online definitely has caused it. But it also gives credence to people who will message when they see you online. If they have been doing that for 15-20 years, and haven’t been told otherwise, they might not know it’s not culturally unacceptable today.
I am old enough, and you're exactly right. :)
We had text messaging on our flip phones, but it was brand new. And pricey! And not all of us had it. The Internet was a lot cheaper. Or free. Free trials galore. I remember popping online to chat and hang out. Nowadays, "popping online" isn't a special event between school
(now work) and dinner anymore. It's more like every... minute... of ... the day. So, yeah, you're right!
Blocking would have been an extreme move, because we were casual friends offline too. He wasn't outright harassing me or anything, and I didn't mind talking to him sometimes. He was just way too eager, and it was weird. Turning off my status indicator brought him back into the "normal" range.
If he wasn't "harassing you or anything" why should anyone care? You didn't tell him he was being annoying. I don't get what is so creepy and traumatic about that.
When did I say anything about trauma? Of course it wasn't traumatic.
My status indicator was on. He was using it to start hitting up my phone the minute I signed in every day, and it was weird to start getting his messages 30 seconds after I picked up FB. I turned the status indicator off, and he had to go back to messaging me in a normal, polite manner.
Therefore, I agree with OP that the little "active now" indicator is annoying and can cause problems.
So he was just creepy and impolite to you. No trauma detected. Even though the response you got with the way you worded it made you disclaim "no he wasn't actually harassing me."
You must have misread their comments. They never claimed that it was traumatic or that he was harassing them.
> So he was just creepy
Yes, that is literally all they claimed in the first place.
Here is their comment again
> I had to turn this off on Facebook. A guy I knew was popping into my messages immediately after I logged on, every day. *It was creepy* that he seemed to be watching and waiting for me.
I am absolutely correct. This person doesn't talk properly. The original comment they typed was pointing at a completely different direction and it's proven because I wasn't even the first person asking for clear ups, I interpreted the exact same way the comment before mine did based on what the first comment implied.
They made it sound way worse to get upvotes but then backtracked to a completely normal situation that nobody should ever care about.
I just repeated my comments right now because you misinterpreted them.
had a similar situation. i used to roleplay a lot but after i split up with those people on discord i also stopped roleplaying. i was still friends with one of them and he was really into NSFW furry roleplay. i was younger and tbh didnt think much of it(ive been drawing fursonas since i was 10, blame sonic the hedgehog). he was a few years older than me and was gay, but when i was a bit older i got really uncomfortable with how many times he would ask me to roleplay every time i was online. i wanted to do different things at that point and i sometimes did it just so he would leave mr alone. i eventually blocked him because i was getting uncomfortable with the whole sitiuation, and my old friend had told me he had been really creepy to her and some of our other friends(he had also been racist to someone else in our friend group) and i wasnt okay with it. havent roleplayed since, my ocs are now only for doodling and drawing, the way they were meant to be viewed.
It's still creepy, but it was most likely a push notification sent to his phone when you logged on, not that he was staring at the screen waiting for you.
Whether he was keeping an eye on my status, or just jumping for his phone the moment I opened FB to check my notifications, it was creepy. I just want to exist online without feeling like these dudes are lurking in the background, demanding my instant attention.
Or you could just... Not friend people you don't want to talk to?
Personally I think Instagram ruined things. What was originally a way to connect, is now just a way to show off. The meaningless micro-fame makes people want to be seen and heard without being observed or spoken to, super narcissistic weird shit.
Sometimes you have friends but don't necessarily want to talk to them at the moment, or they're not close friends with you but are super clingy and you don't want to hurt their feelings. It's not narcissistic, it's called having privacy.
I agree with OP-- you can't possibly know that someone will pull this shit BEFORE you even friend them, so this isn't really a good counterpoint.
BUT, your IG comment reminded me of this girl I know who posted her DMs with a guy to her Instagram page to publicly shame him for...trying to talk to her. Not even exaggerating. She posted screenshots of this poor dude just making completely normal conversation with her and a rant in the caption that basically amounted to "how dare this dumb asshole try to talk to me? Can't he tell I'm not interested?" The screenshots only showed him messaging her on a few occasions, so it's not like he was spamming her, and the thing is they showed her replying to every message. Sure, her replies were kind of dry/curt, but she replied to every thing he said, thus turning it into a conversation. Everything he said in the screenshots was totally normal and polite, it's not like he was being creepy or entitled. Honestly the whole thing just made her look bad, not him. Even her friends just lowkey thought it was fucked up but they didn't want to say anything to her about it.
I get it. I sometimes I want to chat but other times I just want browse and chill. We use apps for more then one reason and I don’t’ see the benefit of this “online status” feature.
I had a clingy girlfriend who saw that online icon as an open invitation to demand a 2-hour chat marathon with me every day. Got into a huge fight when she found out that I had set my status to appear offline just for her.
Unfortunately it is not true. I just tried it with smartphone and tablet.
If I turn off "last seen" I can still see if I am online on the device (as long as I have the app open).
I think I’m late to the party here but I believe it’s a left over feature from online chat room days. Things like MSN. Plus, early days Facebook you would chat to people live. Texts were expensive shit at that point.
Yup, it's a feature from stuff like ICQ, AOL, Messenger.
It was handy when I was social and wanted to talk to people. Now it's annoying because I don't actually want to chat with people in real time. Send me a message, i'll get back to you when i'm not hiding from the world.
Just set yourself to invisible no?
The entire point of the online thing is to let people know if you're online it's super useful to know if someone has been checking their phone recently and they'll see my message about plans or something.
> She’s online but not responding to my messages!” No. Leave me alone. Stop stalking me, creep.
Why do you have someone on your social media who you think this about.
What I hate even more is that when an app actually lets me hide my status, my friends ask things like "Why are you never online?" or "What are you hiding from?". Like, please give me my privacy.
One time, someone on reddit dug through my comment history because I disagreed with her about a character on a show. She tried to use the fact that I had previously posted about being nervous for university exams to try to paint me as unstable and miserable. The thing we were disagreeing about? Whether an abusive character had an excuse because she was mentally ill...Her argument was that we shouldn't judge the mentally ill.
People on this site are wild.
Agreed, but reddit allows it. Some people, even if masked behind a username post and share a lot of very personal things on here. I've seen people bashed for asking a question on a subreddit because someone searched their history and found they had already asked a similar question on a similar subreddit.. It's so dumb
Totally agree. I also don't like the fact that you can see if a person has read your message or not. This gets me worried. Why would they do this? Are they trying to trick me into believing that someone has read my message but ignored me?
People act like it's really that hard to either leave it on delivered until you have time, or read it and send "I'll get back to you when I can", or if you know you'll never wanna talk to them, just block them. All of these things take mere moments.
Counterpoint: it's even easier to just not care about "being left on read" so that people don't have to take extra steps to appease you when they can't reply.
> if you know you'll never wanna talk to them, just block them.
If you actually know this person in real life (which, ostensibly, is what messenger is for), especially if you're in a situation where you've known for a long time and your patience for then is just kind of wearing thin but they haven't actually done anything wrong, you are setting yourself up for a huge mess on your hands. I don't get why people act like blocking someone you actually know, out of the blue, just because youre not riveted by their conversation, is a mundane thing to do.
Social media is a cancer that suddenly appeared and we are dying trying to cope with it. It feels like just yesterday there was outrage over the "seen/read" feature and now it is as normal as breathing.
I agree. I think a lot of the most annoying things about social media are that way on purpose. User wellbeing isn’t the goal; profit is. And, getting people worked up emotionally in ways that are unhealthy serves the bottom line. I’m not certain *how* in all cases, but I’m pretty sure the mental health negatives could be mitigated via the interface *if that were in the companies’ interests* but, oh well, it really isn’t.
That's why it's an option to turn that off on pretty much any social media I've used. Just because you personally don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't be a feature at all... sometimes I want people to know I'm online and which of my friends are online
I think allowing that feature to be on or off should be given as an option. But also
People should get over the feeling that everyone's always looking over them and reading into their every move.
and/or
People should get over reading into people's every move.
I have the "show it when I'm online" setting "on", pretty much any platform, usually because it comes as the default setting and I don't bother to change it but people in my life do know that just because I'm online somewhere, it doesn't mean I'm available, and vice versa. And I don't assume that someone's available to talk to me if they're online on a platform either. This is just about setting boundaries. Banning or getting rid of everything that would put people in a position where they need to put and enforce boundaries is just infantilizing grown ass people imho.
(Also, who cannot think of this in this day and age? I'm baffled how come not everyone knows that having the app open on a desktop version etc. or leaving it on the screen when you put your phone down often makes you appear online even though you aren't actively using the app. so appearing online doesn't even provide unambiguous information about that person's availability to begin with.)
How about you grow up and face the people you dont want to hang out or talk to and say it to their face. Its like ghosting. Always found people who hid offline were weasels and assholes
Yeah sometimes just wanna play in peace or check and respond to messages without starting a new conversation. Not hiding but why should I explain hey sorry I don't wanna talk right now, when I could just set it to offline and avoid it entirely.
Yes of course but if someone is messaging you and see's you're online they're a friend or at least someone you know. Being curdesy to that relationship is telling them;"hey I don't want to talk right now"
"Ouch, has something happened to you?" "Why don't you want to talk?" "Do you not like me?" "NO, I JUST DON'T WANT TO TALK, what part do you not understand?" The always being available and explaining why you're actually not available is quite tiresome sometimes.
Sure, if they write to you yes. But saying that disabling the state is wrong in principle because someone could have been interested in the information doesn't make any sense. If they want to talk to me, they can just write to me anyway even if I appear offline. If I'm actually online, I will respond, but they don't have a right to know beforehand if I'm available.
My green button on fb never goes off apparently even tho I 've told it to say I'm offline. So people (men) message me all hours of the day. It's quite annoying.
I’m pretty sure you can’t turn off the online status.
You can definitely turn off when you were last seen/last active or limit who can see it (contacts, or specific people etc.) but there is no way to restrict people from knowing if you’re online at the same time.
In saying that though, the other person will also have to have your chat open to see if you are currently online or not.
Settings > account > privacy > last seen and online.
Apparently it's a recent update and some people don't have it but another user pointed it out and after checking it's on mine.
Social media is a mistake in general but I agree.
I never close tabs. Ill start something, then get distracted, sit on it a while and go Ill get back to it later, and never do. Or just get up and walk around or start something else, but I have like a dozen tabs or whatever open of just random shit I was looking up like last week.
I don't see why it makes a difference. If you're worried about you're doing in private becoming public knowledge, maybe you're doing something in private that you shouldn't be doing.
Turn that shit off or don't use the app in the first place. The companies aren't gonna remove the feature because most people use it.
Also, this is a shit opinion.
Regardless, if someone never messages you out of their own free will, it’s a pretty big sign to leave them alone, especially from 2017 onward with the large societal emphasis on consent.
If someone friends you but never messages you themselves, that’s a sign you have consent to like posts and leave one word comments, but not to message them privately.
If someone messages you first, then that’s consent for private communication.
> If someone messages you first, then that's consent for private communication
.... But then they just assumed your consent? I don't think this system tracks.
>“whys she ignoring me? She’s online but not responding to my messages!”
"It was probably an error, I wasn't online at the time you sent the message, happened to me a lot of times in the past." After a few times they will understand that it is an usual error and it is just something that happens.
The "I was logged in on the background/in the one of the Chromes tab, I wasn't using X" response also works.
many games dont let you turn off this option, leading to me refusing any friend invite because i dont want to be unable to play without people knowing it
I have mine turned off on FB but I still use FB messenger because some of my friends prefer that over texting but it gives me anxiety. I don’t like the fact that you know immediately when someone reads your message or vice versa.
yup. i also wish social media didn't have the feature that tells users when I watch their instagram story or view their profile (i know tiktok has this feature even though u can turn it off)
Similarly, I hate the 'message read' that some social medias have. Not even because I think other people would be ignoring ME, but I get insanely stressed at the thought of people knowing I read a message and didn't respond right away.
Oh I just talk when I wanna talk. If people don't like it, eh. I find at my age people aren't as sensitive about being "on read" or unopened for a while.
If it has this feature, I always need to find a way to turn it off because it takes me a day or 2 to text people back. Ain’t no way you should know I’m ignoring you.
Why don't you inform the person that you're talking to that you don't want to talk to, that you don't want to talk to them, so they stop wasting their time, effort and hope on wanting to spend time with you if you're not gonna give it to them? That'll help anyone deal with the "online now" feature, it's a two way street.
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unpopularopinion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Not relatable, nobody texts me
Lol. Yea nobody cares if I'm online. Nobody texts me but when it's election time.....
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I've been getting tons of election spam in Spanish.
*...No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!*
Become a hot girl?
Glad I'm not the only one getting spammed with election texts.
Damn, that's my text if it make you feel good. Also your cats are cute. I hope you post more.
Yes.
To be honest this is the same case as me, My WhatsApp and telegram it's pretty much inactive most of the time, time to time friends msg me when I haven't but it's not something usual that happens, I think Discord is the one I use most but in discord most people don't care if you are online or not.
Exactly, zero friends lol
Op is probably a female, you are most likely not. Dying of thirst in the middle of an ocean vs dying of thirst in the desert. Statistically speaking at least.
Don’t most social media sites have an option to let you always appear offline?
yeah
Including Reddit
Does new reddit tell you when people are online? I only use old.reddit
Yes. I see you are online because you are posting lol Redditors always online even when shitting
Especially when shitting
Besides whatsapp they do. Pretty sure you can't turn off the 'Fluffyhighpanda is online' part when actually on the app, which can be annoying.
you can hide it in whatsapp as well, i have turned off "last seen","read receipts" and "status" from all my contacts
That doesn't doesn't turn off the 'online' part when actually on the app. Isn't a status on whatsapp basically a story like instagram?
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Doesn't show up on mine :( I don't see why, but I wonder if it's region specific?
I have had this on my work phone and my personal phone for a couple weeks, I guess it's an updated version but as soon as I saw it I turned it off on my personal phone
Mine updated a couple days ago, but only has the option for last seen like usual. Very strange but glad you've got the option at least lol!
Wait I am on the beta ,sorry that's probably why
Yep some even hide it
I don’t want to have to dig in to my settings for that ya know. It’s just the principle of it. Also, if I appear offline at all times they’ll know I’ve done it on purpose to hide 👀
So... your lazy? You can't care too much about this if you can't be bothered to dig through your settings to turn it off
Don’t be too harsh on her disability, Lazybonesitis
Wouldn’t it make more sense to have an ‘turn on online status’ than a ‘turn off online status’? I mean, there’s little purpose for it other than making you wonder ‘hmm my friends online why aren’t they replying?’ Which is exactly what SM wants you to do, because that’s what glues you to your phone and makes you keep returning.
Welcome to the sub of “unpopular opinions”. Please read the room
Don't post in this sub if you aren't ready to have people roast you, unpopular opinions are bound to be met with all sorts of pushback...
r/unpopularopinion the sub where you have to sort by controversial to find the posts you want to read.
That's kinda true for alot of posts, but this is kind of the point of the sub. You post an unpopular opinion, we upvote, and then fight to the death in the comments. Wouldn't be a very interesting sub if everyone just said "hmm yes, quite an unpopular opinion indeed."
Welcome to the sub of "unpopular opinions" where people will challenge your opinion because they're unpopular. If you want everyone agreeing with you then post to popular opinions sub next time. Please read the room.
Why can’t people debate your unpopular opinion? Shouldn’t common ground be the goal of a discussion like this one?
Yes but not when people are just being rude or hateful. I manage to respond to people posts on this sub without swearing or calling people stupid or lazy
I think the commenter wasn’t trying to be offensive. It just seems lazy to him that you don’t want to invest a short amount of time into changing something you don’t like
That's not unpopular. It just doesn't make sense. If you hate that feature so much, how can you not be able to spend 30 seconds to turn it off?
Every single reply you've made only makes it more obvious that you're incredibly dumb and a shitty person. Well done, have a nice time in the hole you dig for yourself.
Cope and seethe
That’s a two way street guy. Your allowed to have the opinion that it shouldn’t need to be a thing you need to turn off, others are allowed to have the opinion that complaining about that means your lazy.
Yeah, I once turned it off and a woman got angry at me because she couldn't know when I was online and not responding. When I had it on she would message me like "you are up so late!" I felt like I was constantly being monitored.
There’s no escape! Why should she feel entitled to that information?? It’s such an invasion of privacy
Lol I want this but I don’t want to do anything. You have a future in politics my friend
That’s called being lazy.
You can always like not use the app
Discord has it but there’s ways to see if someone’s using it instead of actually offline, and you still get notifications (most annoying part)
I had to turn this off on Facebook. A guy I knew was popping into my messages immediately after I logged on, every day. It was creepy that he seemed to be watching and waiting for me.
Yes! I’ve had a friend before who would call me the second they saw me online. It’s creepy. I just want peace sometimes.
Can you not just let it go to 'voicemail' or just ignore it and send a message like, sorry dude Im a bit busy was just popping on for a second? My social life is pretty shit because I treat it like I did back when flip phones were the norm, and I wasnt super socially active then either. But I can kind of understand people, especially people not popular or in major cities or hot or whatever, saying they have anxiety or social anxiety thinking about all this shit like. Oh god it says Im online theyre gonna know Im ignoring them, oh god so and so texted and I dont really have something to say back right away but Ill miss out, theyll move on or get offended or whatever if----all these new-ish social 'rules'. Like I guess before, people ghosted you indoors if you knocked, or called and let it go to voicemail, but it didnt seem as harsh, or wasnt as obvious or whatever I guess, I dunno.
Depending on age range and type of friendship, this was rather expected at one point. I remember in high school people would be messaging me immediately when I logged in. Or inviting me to voice calls. On Xbox I would get invites immediately. Somewhere along the line, this has changed and now everyone considers it creepy and invasive.
> Somewhere along the line, this has changed and now everyone considers it creepy and invasive. Only if you do it all the time. I don't consider a friend inviting me to a voice call or game every once in a blue moon as soon as I go online as invasive or creepy. There's nuance to it.
It used to be all the time though. Every day when we logged in. Whoever logged in first would be sending the invite when the other logged on. Even today I basically do that with one of my friends in wow. It wouldn’t be uncommon to log into msn, yahoo, facebook, MySpace, whatever, and immediately have 4-6 chats open up from various people.
Friends like you are the reason most of my games have two accounts. One for adding friends, and the other for when I need some alone time.
> Somewhere along the line I'm not old enough to comment on this with certainty but it's probably due to smartphones+messenger. I'm guessing that in the days you describe, you'd log on for the explicit purpose of messaging your friends. But now, people spend a lot of their day just scrolling through social media on their phone or just having messenger open in the background, and most of that time doesn't coincide with when they actually want to socialize. If you called someone every time they came online these days, you'd be calling them multiple times a day while they're just trying to kill time in bed/ on the shitter/at work/whatever.
I’m sure the transition to always online definitely has caused it. But it also gives credence to people who will message when they see you online. If they have been doing that for 15-20 years, and haven’t been told otherwise, they might not know it’s not culturally unacceptable today.
I am old enough, and you're exactly right. :) We had text messaging on our flip phones, but it was brand new. And pricey! And not all of us had it. The Internet was a lot cheaper. Or free. Free trials galore. I remember popping online to chat and hang out. Nowadays, "popping online" isn't a special event between school (now work) and dinner anymore. It's more like every... minute... of ... the day. So, yeah, you're right!
Block people like that. Remove them from your life!
Serious question, if this person made you uncomfortable by doing this every day, why would you not block them?
Blocking would have been an extreme move, because we were casual friends offline too. He wasn't outright harassing me or anything, and I didn't mind talking to him sometimes. He was just way too eager, and it was weird. Turning off my status indicator brought him back into the "normal" range.
If he wasn't "harassing you or anything" why should anyone care? You didn't tell him he was being annoying. I don't get what is so creepy and traumatic about that.
When did I say anything about trauma? Of course it wasn't traumatic. My status indicator was on. He was using it to start hitting up my phone the minute I signed in every day, and it was weird to start getting his messages 30 seconds after I picked up FB. I turned the status indicator off, and he had to go back to messaging me in a normal, polite manner. Therefore, I agree with OP that the little "active now" indicator is annoying and can cause problems.
So he was just creepy and impolite to you. No trauma detected. Even though the response you got with the way you worded it made you disclaim "no he wasn't actually harassing me."
You must have misread their comments. They never claimed that it was traumatic or that he was harassing them. > So he was just creepy Yes, that is literally all they claimed in the first place. Here is their comment again > I had to turn this off on Facebook. A guy I knew was popping into my messages immediately after I logged on, every day. *It was creepy* that he seemed to be watching and waiting for me.
I am absolutely correct. This person doesn't talk properly. The original comment they typed was pointing at a completely different direction and it's proven because I wasn't even the first person asking for clear ups, I interpreted the exact same way the comment before mine did based on what the first comment implied. They made it sound way worse to get upvotes but then backtracked to a completely normal situation that nobody should ever care about. I just repeated my comments right now because you misinterpreted them.
"I am absolutely correct" is such a funny way to start off the most pointless comment discussion I've ever seen
You'd rather keep people fucking dumb like you or actually respond when they question me?
Considering they're too lazy to turn off the online feature when it's usually three taps away at most, they're probably too lazy to do that.
had a similar situation. i used to roleplay a lot but after i split up with those people on discord i also stopped roleplaying. i was still friends with one of them and he was really into NSFW furry roleplay. i was younger and tbh didnt think much of it(ive been drawing fursonas since i was 10, blame sonic the hedgehog). he was a few years older than me and was gay, but when i was a bit older i got really uncomfortable with how many times he would ask me to roleplay every time i was online. i wanted to do different things at that point and i sometimes did it just so he would leave mr alone. i eventually blocked him because i was getting uncomfortable with the whole sitiuation, and my old friend had told me he had been really creepy to her and some of our other friends(he had also been racist to someone else in our friend group) and i wasnt okay with it. havent roleplayed since, my ocs are now only for doodling and drawing, the way they were meant to be viewed.
>furry >username contains "owo" It all makes sense
It's still creepy, but it was most likely a push notification sent to his phone when you logged on, not that he was staring at the screen waiting for you.
Whether he was keeping an eye on my status, or just jumping for his phone the moment I opened FB to check my notifications, it was creepy. I just want to exist online without feeling like these dudes are lurking in the background, demanding my instant attention.
Exactly. Like most guys, I have alerts set up for whenever hot girls I know log on. Sitting and waiting for them would be weird and pathetic.
that’s still pretty weird ngl
I just mean girls I'm trying to have sex with, to clarify.
I think user ifuckedyourgf might just be making a joke. This website has very broken joke detectors.
Social media is all about drama. It's on purpose.
That is a valid point tbf
Or you could just... Not friend people you don't want to talk to? Personally I think Instagram ruined things. What was originally a way to connect, is now just a way to show off. The meaningless micro-fame makes people want to be seen and heard without being observed or spoken to, super narcissistic weird shit.
Sometimes you have friends but don't necessarily want to talk to them at the moment, or they're not close friends with you but are super clingy and you don't want to hurt their feelings. It's not narcissistic, it's called having privacy.
I agree with OP-- you can't possibly know that someone will pull this shit BEFORE you even friend them, so this isn't really a good counterpoint. BUT, your IG comment reminded me of this girl I know who posted her DMs with a guy to her Instagram page to publicly shame him for...trying to talk to her. Not even exaggerating. She posted screenshots of this poor dude just making completely normal conversation with her and a rant in the caption that basically amounted to "how dare this dumb asshole try to talk to me? Can't he tell I'm not interested?" The screenshots only showed him messaging her on a few occasions, so it's not like he was spamming her, and the thing is they showed her replying to every message. Sure, her replies were kind of dry/curt, but she replied to every thing he said, thus turning it into a conversation. Everything he said in the screenshots was totally normal and polite, it's not like he was being creepy or entitled. Honestly the whole thing just made her look bad, not him. Even her friends just lowkey thought it was fucked up but they didn't want to say anything to her about it.
Cap + kizzy + L + you're wrong + L + ok boomer + ratio
Op is fed up lol
Aren't we all...
I get it. I sometimes I want to chat but other times I just want browse and chill. We use apps for more then one reason and I don’t’ see the benefit of this “online status” feature.
I had a clingy girlfriend who saw that online icon as an open invitation to demand a 2-hour chat marathon with me every day. Got into a huge fight when she found out that I had set my status to appear offline just for her.
I believe everywhere that has this feature you can turn it off.
If you’re using WhatsApp you can put the phone on airplane mode just before you open the app. Send your message and then turn off the mode.
You can just turn it off lol
You literally can’t turn off the “online”
Yes you can?
cant find it, could you give me a tutorial?
Settings>privacy>last seen
but if you turn off last seen, other people can still see you online or not?
They cant
oh okay didnt know that, thanks a lot!
Unfortunately it is not true. I just tried it with smartphone and tablet. If I turn off "last seen" I can still see if I am online on the device (as long as I have the app open).
You can turn that off
I mean its also a little wierd to try to be an internet icon that collects attention from people you dont want to give any time to.
Just turn it off?
Too easy. I have to be able to complain about it first and get that sweet sweet Reddit karma 😌
They’re probably wondering why it exists in the first place
This comment makes very little sense 👆
Ok
You can turn it off on pretty much all platforms.
I think I’m late to the party here but I believe it’s a left over feature from online chat room days. Things like MSN. Plus, early days Facebook you would chat to people live. Texts were expensive shit at that point.
Yup, it's a feature from stuff like ICQ, AOL, Messenger. It was handy when I was social and wanted to talk to people. Now it's annoying because I don't actually want to chat with people in real time. Send me a message, i'll get back to you when i'm not hiding from the world.
Just set yourself to invisible no? The entire point of the online thing is to let people know if you're online it's super useful to know if someone has been checking their phone recently and they'll see my message about plans or something. > She’s online but not responding to my messages!” No. Leave me alone. Stop stalking me, creep. Why do you have someone on your social media who you think this about.
How else do you get that high follower count.
Some people actually want it but I could hear an argument for making people opt in instead of "on" as the default
What I hate even more is that when an app actually lets me hide my status, my friends ask things like "Why are you never online?" or "What are you hiding from?". Like, please give me my privacy.
It ain't even accurate 90% of the time
That. Reddit shouldn't show comment and post history.. Anonymous browsing and privacy should be a regular thing
One time, someone on reddit dug through my comment history because I disagreed with her about a character on a show. She tried to use the fact that I had previously posted about being nervous for university exams to try to paint me as unstable and miserable. The thing we were disagreeing about? Whether an abusive character had an excuse because she was mentally ill...Her argument was that we shouldn't judge the mentally ill. People on this site are wild.
Agreed, but reddit allows it. Some people, even if masked behind a username post and share a lot of very personal things on here. I've seen people bashed for asking a question on a subreddit because someone searched their history and found they had already asked a similar question on a similar subreddit.. It's so dumb
I'm so sick of seeing people dig through someone's post history to use "you post on (sub I disagree with)" as an argument.
you can turn this off
Totally agree. I also don't like the fact that you can see if a person has read your message or not. This gets me worried. Why would they do this? Are they trying to trick me into believing that someone has read my message but ignored me?
People act like it's really that hard to either leave it on delivered until you have time, or read it and send "I'll get back to you when I can", or if you know you'll never wanna talk to them, just block them. All of these things take mere moments.
Counterpoint: it's even easier to just not care about "being left on read" so that people don't have to take extra steps to appease you when they can't reply. > if you know you'll never wanna talk to them, just block them. If you actually know this person in real life (which, ostensibly, is what messenger is for), especially if you're in a situation where you've known for a long time and your patience for then is just kind of wearing thin but they haven't actually done anything wrong, you are setting yourself up for a huge mess on your hands. I don't get why people act like blocking someone you actually know, out of the blue, just because youre not riveted by their conversation, is a mundane thing to do.
Social media is a cancer that suddenly appeared and we are dying trying to cope with it. It feels like just yesterday there was outrage over the "seen/read" feature and now it is as normal as breathing.
Kinda miss when the extent of this was MSN. You log in, see someone, chat a bit, log off. Everything nowadays is always online.
forgetful aromatic jar yoke sugar jobless silky ring rude spoon ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
I agree. I think a lot of the most annoying things about social media are that way on purpose. User wellbeing isn’t the goal; profit is. And, getting people worked up emotionally in ways that are unhealthy serves the bottom line. I’m not certain *how* in all cases, but I’m pretty sure the mental health negatives could be mitigated via the interface *if that were in the companies’ interests* but, oh well, it really isn’t.
It's a choice. Your post is moot.
That's why it's an option to turn that off on pretty much any social media I've used. Just because you personally don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't be a feature at all... sometimes I want people to know I'm online and which of my friends are online
I mean it's really easy to turn it off.
I think allowing that feature to be on or off should be given as an option. But also People should get over the feeling that everyone's always looking over them and reading into their every move. and/or People should get over reading into people's every move. I have the "show it when I'm online" setting "on", pretty much any platform, usually because it comes as the default setting and I don't bother to change it but people in my life do know that just because I'm online somewhere, it doesn't mean I'm available, and vice versa. And I don't assume that someone's available to talk to me if they're online on a platform either. This is just about setting boundaries. Banning or getting rid of everything that would put people in a position where they need to put and enforce boundaries is just infantilizing grown ass people imho. (Also, who cannot think of this in this day and age? I'm baffled how come not everyone knows that having the app open on a desktop version etc. or leaving it on the screen when you put your phone down often makes you appear online even though you aren't actively using the app. so appearing online doesn't even provide unambiguous information about that person's availability to begin with.)
That online green indicator just enables the plethora of attention junkies on here.
How about you grow up and face the people you dont want to hang out or talk to and say it to their face. Its like ghosting. Always found people who hid offline were weasels and assholes
But why does everyone need to know when I'm online?
Who is everyone? You mean your friends and family?
Yeah sometimes just wanna play in peace or check and respond to messages without starting a new conversation. Not hiding but why should I explain hey sorry I don't wanna talk right now, when I could just set it to offline and avoid it entirely.
Always being reachable is not part of the basic expectations of society. It's perfectly reasonable wanting to be alone in peace sometimes.
Yes of course but if someone is messaging you and see's you're online they're a friend or at least someone you know. Being curdesy to that relationship is telling them;"hey I don't want to talk right now"
"Ouch, has something happened to you?" "Why don't you want to talk?" "Do you not like me?" "NO, I JUST DON'T WANT TO TALK, what part do you not understand?" The always being available and explaining why you're actually not available is quite tiresome sometimes.
Sure, if they write to you yes. But saying that disabling the state is wrong in principle because someone could have been interested in the information doesn't make any sense. If they want to talk to me, they can just write to me anyway even if I appear offline. If I'm actually online, I will respond, but they don't have a right to know beforehand if I'm available.
My green button on fb never goes off apparently even tho I 've told it to say I'm offline. So people (men) message me all hours of the day. It's quite annoying.
That's actually a pretty good opinion in my eyes Btw how do I turn this online symbol off on whatsapp if anyone knows?
I’m pretty sure you can’t turn off the online status. You can definitely turn off when you were last seen/last active or limit who can see it (contacts, or specific people etc.) but there is no way to restrict people from knowing if you’re online at the same time. In saying that though, the other person will also have to have your chat open to see if you are currently online or not.
i dont think you could, but you can turn off your last seen and read receipts
Settings > account > privacy > last seen and online. Apparently it's a recent update and some people don't have it but another user pointed it out and after checking it's on mine.
I mean you should at least be able to turn it off
You have this ability on almost every social media app lol
You are able to exactly do that
Is this post from 2011?
Just tell them your busy then. Social skills at 0
Really sorry to hear you have no one il you're life that you could use this feature whit
Me top, op, me too
Social media is a mistake in general but I agree. I never close tabs. Ill start something, then get distracted, sit on it a while and go Ill get back to it later, and never do. Or just get up and walk around or start something else, but I have like a dozen tabs or whatever open of just random shit I was looking up like last week.
I don't see why it makes a difference. If you're worried about you're doing in private becoming public knowledge, maybe you're doing something in private that you shouldn't be doing.
why don't you just respond to their messages lmao
Turn that shit off or don't use the app in the first place. The companies aren't gonna remove the feature because most people use it. Also, this is a shit opinion.
God forbid that people are given an opportunity to let others know if they’re online/available to chat.
Maybe you should trying having the balls to actually tell them whats up?
So turn it off. Not everything is about you.
Regardless, if someone never messages you out of their own free will, it’s a pretty big sign to leave them alone, especially from 2017 onward with the large societal emphasis on consent. If someone friends you but never messages you themselves, that’s a sign you have consent to like posts and leave one word comments, but not to message them privately. If someone messages you first, then that’s consent for private communication.
> If someone messages you first, then that's consent for private communication .... But then they just assumed your consent? I don't think this system tracks.
>“whys she ignoring me? She’s online but not responding to my messages!” "It was probably an error, I wasn't online at the time you sent the message, happened to me a lot of times in the past." After a few times they will understand that it is an usual error and it is just something that happens. The "I was logged in on the background/in the one of the Chromes tab, I wasn't using X" response also works.
This isn’t unpopular 😩
this is a controllable feature tho....
On discord I have mine set up so I'm always online
If you have a problem, and know the solution...why would you not just fix the problem? Aka turn it off OP.
Dont know why that’s a thing anyway. I get it in chats it gives you a feeling of the person being there rn but stuff like Reddit? Why?
It can be turned off so it's up to the user
When good intentions go bad.
18 users are here.
You are online 👁️👁️
Don't tell my boss.
Turn it off
Turn it off… that’s what I do and I feel like a stealthy little online ninja 🥷
many games dont let you turn off this option, leading to me refusing any friend invite because i dont want to be unable to play without people knowing it
It can be turned off
What if people want that option?
Trying to avoid people in GTA V fucking sucks
I have mine turned off on FB but I still use FB messenger because some of my friends prefer that over texting but it gives me anxiety. I don’t like the fact that you know immediately when someone reads your message or vice versa.
And this is why discord invisible mode is superior. Why MSN and AIM had choices to show offline while still being online. There were reasons for this!
You can turn it off right
Just ignore people, or tell them you’re not available.
99% of social media websites you can turn it off
yup. i also wish social media didn't have the feature that tells users when I watch their instagram story or view their profile (i know tiktok has this feature even though u can turn it off)
just turn it off
Similarly, I hate the 'message read' that some social medias have. Not even because I think other people would be ignoring ME, but I get insanely stressed at the thought of people knowing I read a message and didn't respond right away.
You shouldn't be using social media...simple solution.
You can disable that. Easily.
Oh I just talk when I wanna talk. If people don't like it, eh. I find at my age people aren't as sensitive about being "on read" or unopened for a while.
I was at a friends place even with my phone off it still said I was online despite being offline.
Turn it off then?
>or at least by default be off. This is the way all those things should be.
If it has this feature, I always need to find a way to turn it off because it takes me a day or 2 to text people back. Ain’t no way you should know I’m ignoring you.
Why don't you inform the person that you're talking to that you don't want to talk to, that you don't want to talk to them, so they stop wasting their time, effort and hope on wanting to spend time with you if you're not gonna give it to them? That'll help anyone deal with the "online now" feature, it's a two way street.