But I don't communicate with any of them! I'm an American living in one of the most expensive cities on the planet. Everybody I interact with has a computer and

But I don't communicate with any of them! I'm an American living in one of the most expensive cities on the planet. Everybody I interact with has a computer and uses it extensively. Yet still, somehow, SMS messages everywhere. I don't mean to come off as callous, I'm just genuinely surprised that there are computer literate people in Silicon Valley who prefer SMS over just about anything else. There are messaging systems that treat both mobile and desktop as first class citizens, without using a harebrained sync-to-browser-by-routing-through-your-phone-after-scanning-a-QR-code scheme that doesn't work when your phone is offline or you're visiting a different country. I don't understand why one of these systems can't win over something that locks you to your carrier of all things. Don't people hate carriers? I totally accept that I have weird idiosyncratic preferences that others don't share, but this one honestly has me stumped.