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When you move to a new country that has a dominant messaging app, you can't avoid installing it without making your life a lot more difficult. And moving alread

When you move to a new country that has a dominant messaging app, you can't avoid installing it without making your life a lot more difficult. And moving already makes your life difficult enough.

mjgs 5y ago
The real question though is how you determine the “dominant app”, that’s really not that obvious, especially when you don’t speak the local language. Long term you might be right, installing an app would be beneficial, but in the short term it’s a lot safer to just use email.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  I think in most cases it's fairly obvious. I moved to a country that mainly use Whatsapp, and you can't miss it. People will tell you that they "Whatsapp" you, they ask for your "Whatsapp", your bank advertises customer support on Whatsapp, your local barber has the Whatsapp logo on his door, your colleagues want to add you to their Whatsapp group, your landlord sends the bills on Whatsapp, ads in the metro have the Whatsapp logo…
  - mjgs 5y ago
    That sounds awesome. In many of the places I’ve been I couldn’t read any of the signage, it’s often not even obvious where the word boundaries are, it just looks like squiggles to me. And the apps people tell you by word of mouth, I often had never heard of. I just decided to stick with email. Boring, perhaps old fashioned, but safe.
chriswarbo 5y ago
That's a heck of a claim. Could you give an example of such a "messaging app"? I don't have any "messaging apps"; although I do have a 'phone which supports SMS (I assume it supports email too, although I don't know how comfortable email would be without a physical keyboard). Do you have examples in mind about how my life might be "a lot more difficult" than if I installed the sorts of software you allude to?
- eythian 5y ago
  It's not a heck of a claim at all, it's a pretty reasonable one. I moved from a country that tended to use Facebook messenger and sometimes SMS (though that was fading), to one that primarily uses WhatsApp. While I already had WhatsApp installed from travelling there in the past, I almost never used it outside of travel purposes. When I moved, everything ended up in WhatsApp. If I met someone and wanted to meet up with them another day, it was WhatsApp. I'd get added to a group because it was someone's birthday, it was WhatsApp. Many apartment buildings have a WhatsApp group to discuss building related things. It was how I told my landlord that something needed fixing. So on, so forth. Lately there are some people I talk to on Telegram, and a couple on Signal, but most of my social (and other things) organisation goes via WhatsApp. I could uninstall it, but then I'd lose a chunk of social contact. For me, email has become mostly an avenue for notifications from companies or newsletters. The most back-and-forth I've done with it in a long time was when I was buying an apartment, a lot of documentation and organising was done through email. As for SMS, no one uses that except perhaps one automated reminder about something every few months.
- Zak 5y ago
  I can't speak to your life, but not having Whatsapp would result in my being left out of some conversations and activities I want to be a part of. Email or SMS could theoretically substitute with reduced functionality in most situations; Matrix could substitute with no loss of functionality. Most of the time the other people in the conversations prioritize their activity/task/goal/socializing over technical or ideological concerns about their communication tools, so getting them to change tools would be an uphill battle. In short, unless I'm really important to a group, I have to use what they use or get left out. If I'm the most important person in every group I'm in, I'm probably in the wrong groups.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  For example, in Spain, people will not communicate in written form with you outside Whatsapp. You can try sending an SMS, they won't answer to not risk being charged. Your friends will communicate and organize events only on Whatsapp. Your colleagues will have social interactions on Whatsapp, even send you work messages when on the go. Your landlord will communicate via Whatsapp, including sending you utility bills to pay. The person you want to buy second-hand stuff from communicates via Whatsapp. The real estate agent trying to find you a place to live will send proposals by Whatsapp. Many businesses advertise customer support on Whatsapp also, although in that case it's never the only option. It's not literally impossible to live without it. I know some grandparents without smartphones. But it does make your life a lot more difficult.

When you move to a new country that has a dominant messaging app, you can't avoid installing it without making your life a lot more difficult. And moving already makes your life difficult enough.

mjgs 5y ago

The real question though is how you determine the “dominant app”, that’s really not that obvious, especially when you don’t speak the local language. Long term you might be right, installing an app would be beneficial, but in the short term it’s a lot safer to just use email.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
I think in most cases it's fairly obvious. I moved to a country that mainly use Whatsapp, and you can't miss it. People will tell you that they "Whatsapp" you, they ask for your "Whatsapp", your bank advertises customer support on Whatsapp, your local barber has the Whatsapp logo on his door, your colleagues want to add you to their Whatsapp group, your landlord sends the bills on Whatsapp, ads in the metro have the Whatsapp logo…
- mjgs 5y ago
  That sounds awesome. In many of the places I’ve been I couldn’t read any of the signage, it’s often not even obvious where the word boundaries are, it just looks like squiggles to me. And the apps people tell you by word of mouth, I often had never heard of. I just decided to stick with email. Boring, perhaps old fashioned, but safe.

chriswarbo 5y ago

That's a heck of a claim. Could you give an example of such a "messaging app"? I don't have any "messaging apps"; although I do have a 'phone which supports SMS (I assume it supports email too, although I don't know how comfortable email would be without a physical keyboard). Do you have examples in mind about how my life might be "a lot more difficult" than if I installed the sorts of software you allude to?

eythian 5y ago
It's not a heck of a claim at all, it's a pretty reasonable one. I moved from a country that tended to use Facebook messenger and sometimes SMS (though that was fading), to one that primarily uses WhatsApp. While I already had WhatsApp installed from travelling there in the past, I almost never used it outside of travel purposes. When I moved, everything ended up in WhatsApp. If I met someone and wanted to meet up with them another day, it was WhatsApp. I'd get added to a group because it was someone's birthday, it was WhatsApp. Many apartment buildings have a WhatsApp group to discuss building related things. It was how I told my landlord that something needed fixing. So on, so forth. Lately there are some people I talk to on Telegram, and a couple on Signal, but most of my social (and other things) organisation goes via WhatsApp. I could uninstall it, but then I'd lose a chunk of social contact. For me, email has become mostly an avenue for notifications from companies or newsletters. The most back-and-forth I've done with it in a long time was when I was buying an apartment, a lot of documentation and organising was done through email. As for SMS, no one uses that except perhaps one automated reminder about something every few months.
Zak 5y ago
I can't speak to your life, but not having Whatsapp would result in my being left out of some conversations and activities I want to be a part of. Email or SMS could theoretically substitute with reduced functionality in most situations; Matrix could substitute with no loss of functionality. Most of the time the other people in the conversations prioritize their activity/task/goal/socializing over technical or ideological concerns about their communication tools, so getting them to change tools would be an uphill battle. In short, unless I'm really important to a group, I have to use what they use or get left out. If I'm the most important person in every group I'm in, I'm probably in the wrong groups.
benhurmarcel 5y ago
For example, in Spain, people will not communicate in written form with you outside Whatsapp. You can try sending an SMS, they won't answer to not risk being charged. Your friends will communicate and organize events only on Whatsapp. Your colleagues will have social interactions on Whatsapp, even send you work messages when on the go. Your landlord will communicate via Whatsapp, including sending you utility bills to pay. The person you want to buy second-hand stuff from communicates via Whatsapp. The real estate agent trying to find you a place to live will send proposals by Whatsapp. Many businesses advertise customer support on Whatsapp also, although in that case it's never the only option. It's not literally impossible to live without it. I know some grandparents without smartphones. But it does make your life a lot more difficult.