What’s in a contact anyway?
I noticed something peculiar a few weeks back. A colleague at office had not saved the number of a third-party contractor. A fairly mundane thing. But why would you do that? This was a person she had to contact on a regular basis, for months, if not years, and she did not save his number. My curiosity only resulted in a quick retort about her being good at remembering phone numbers. Too quick to be true, and not helpful. Even now, it is a bit exasperating to me, as I myself try my best to categorise all my contacts by company name and designations. To the unfamiliar, I work at a fairly small organization, and there’s no distinction between the personal and the official. No work phone, no Slack, no Teams. There’s only Whatsapp, and it houses everything. The family groups. The friend groups. All the third-party individuals. Colleagues. The Boss and the Manager. Email for the super serious business, and Whatsapp for everything else.
While this thought floated around somewhere on the edges of my brain, I observed another colleague, also a woman, not saving the phone numbers of people. I didn’t ask this one for any reason (too scared). My first guess was that perhaps this was new consumer behaviour being driven by Truecaller. But Truecaller doesn’t work on Whatsapp calls, which has become the primary mode of communication for most. So that’s out. But I think I have a convincing explanation to this phenomenon. A small hint, it’s to do with their gender. The scale of the filth the women have to put up with just to have an online existence is horrifying. I first saw this in real life when a college friend opened her Facebook to show me a glimpse of the thousands of friend requests waiting in her inbox. Alternatively, just go to any “dank meme” space on the internet and witness the rampant misogyny.
On a sidenote, I had a college classmate who, obsessed with the dank vs normie dynamic, simply could not comprehend my indifference to a meme shared by him. I had to painstakingly explain that I completely understood the structure and the attempt at humour. It was simply insipid and unfunny.
Anyways, back to the point. The internet is a horrible place for women, there’s a lot of stalking, lots of hatred, unsolicited messages, dick pics etc. etc. blah blah blah blah blah. My hypothesis is that these women don’t want strangers to view their display pictures (DPs), their read receipts, their status. Statuses? Stati (lol)? Maybe I’ll just refer to them as stories. While Whatsapp has provided comprehensive settings to fine tune everything, it’s too much of a hassle to update regularly. This is a straightforward way of maintain a wall of privacy. Contacts get everything, and others nothing. Simple. I once had a photo of my extended family as a DP, and had an unc at office ask me about my sisters, what they do, where are they, the usual suspects. Too many creeps in this world. I stopped setting a DP from that point onwards.
I am fairly satisfied with my hypothesis. But what do you think? Leave a comment, subscribe, and hit the bell icon. Or don't.
PS: No AI was used in this ~pathetic attempt~ at an essay/ article/ blog/ whatever this is.