goodbye whatsapp
I am waving goodbye to WhatsApp, at least for a while. I’ve slowly been making my iPhone1 a ‘dumb phone’ over the years, waxing and waning in my commitment. My latest cold-turkey moment was when I realised I kinda miss 35mm photography2 and that WhatsApp is not really doing it for me. Not sure what exactly inspired that last thought, but it did hit me. So I uninstalled everything except FaceTime and a basically-essential 2FA app and a couple items I keep hidden single-use things like store discount codes. Oddly, it was the group chats I was most looking forward to leaving.
I don’t miss it … not yet anyway. I had a twinge of FOMO for a family group chat, but only when I was staring at it. Otherwise, out of sight and out of mind. It occurred to me that I get much fewer messages now—but when I do they are for me. And I like that. A lot. I was planning to run the experiment for a couple months but I already see myself going longer.
At least my personal one 😳. Full transparency: I am assisted by having a very app-enabled work iPhone, which does help for things like train tickets. I try to leave that at the office most days.↩
Instead of 1000s of photos that I have no hope of sifting through, I’ll end up with physical photos of what I actually would like to look at again!↩