
In the classroom, there was a question that I dreaded. I hate it more than the lecture cold call or “is everyone feeling ready for the exam next week?” (The answer is not always.)
It’s “can we do a GroupMe?”
GroupMe represents everything I hate about consumer technology: when developers abandon their products after being milked dry, when software survives because of its availability rather than its quality. GroupMe, like Ed Sheeran, is an artifact of the early 2010s that refuses to acknowledge that its time is up. Yet its widespread use prevents us from imagining what a more connected, more user-friendly Internet could become.
GroupMe was launched as a private startup in the spring of 2010. At the time of its conception, the Internet was managing an uneasy transition from the desktop to the smartphone, with established services such as Windows Live Messenger and MySpace. which has been replaced by new software such as WhatsApp and iMessage . At this point, the digital communication landscape is a free-for-all – the word “texting” hasn’t even been added to the dictionary. GroupMe, like many of its competitors, hopes to fill the void left by the lack of built-in smartphone texting services.
A year later, GroupMe was bought by another juggernaut of technological innovation – Skype Technologies, the company that dominated video calling for nearly a decade before blowing an Atlanta Falcons-sized lead to Zoom. Skype, too, fell, a demise that many attributed to the company’s inability to figure out what its users really wanted as it played with Snapchat-like filters instead of fixing core functions. such as notifications.
GroupMe has seen similar parental neglect from Microsoft. The app receives updates intermittently, and added basic features like links and photo sharing in late 2017. It still doesn’t support voice or video calling (except for the aforementioned Skype), which means that GroupMe with WAS to ultimately force its users to leave the platform. I have a laundry list of other complaints about GroupMe: the app never syncs between your devices, so opening notifications on one device doesn’t open them on the other, the app doesn’t’ y encryption and seemingly indifferent to the privacy of its users, it is treated. phone numbers and contacts separately even from numbers linked to GroupMe accounts, and its search function is useless. Most importantly, GroupMe only felt more dated than its competitors. Perhaps no feature better encapsulates Microsoft’s departure from its product than the built-in “meme” function, which displays a “top text, bottom text” format that hasn’t been popular since 2015. .
Why does any of this matter, exactly? Because our campus – and all campuses – must have ways of connecting with others that are actually pleasant to use. Despite the lack of functionality, the app still fulfills a unique niche on college campuses. It offers a form of impersonal intimacy that no other platform can: less private than exchanging numbers, less formal than email, and less professional than Slack – perfect for a casual club meeting or group project. But GroupMe’s general lack of quality makes us less inclined to connect with others through it, whether we realize it or not. It’s a phenomenon not unlike “green bubble bias,” which prevents iPhone users from texting their friends who use Android. I personally relegate GroupMe notifications to my infrequent “Notification Summaries”, and I know many others who turn them off completely. After all, why invest time in an app that doesn’t seem interested in investing in its users?
Some would say that the problem is not GroupMe, but the types of communication it uses are naturally more difficult to maintain. To an extent, they are right: a group chat of hundreds of quasi-strangers is likely to die independently of the platform it is hosted on. In this respect, GroupMe just reveals how poorly our online infrastructure is designed for talking to people we don’t know.
Many studies have shown the benefits of talking to lots of strangers. Doing so will elevate emotions and strengthen a sense of community. Yet social media and the Internet have made it easier to associate only with those we already know – to look down at our phones in the elevator instead of looking at other faces. Sociologists have written about the importance of “weak ties” – our classroom friends only, our occasional “let’s eat” contacts – to our overall well-being. I fear that these “weak ties” will disappear, and we will rapidly become an increasingly isolated society. Our technology habits aren’t solely to blame, but GroupMe’s unfriendly interface and glitchiness only make it easier to retreat into our shells.
This is especially true for the Class of 2024, which enters Duke in an environment where an online presence is essential for forming any sense of community. While the infamous GroupMe class was a major hub for social activity before the move, it has fallen out of relevance throughout the year. That spring, the class’s GroupMe became a hub for finger pointing rather than community building. Today, people mock its dying corpse, boasting of their inactivity or indifference.
To some extent, this decline was inevitable as students joined their own clubs and classes. But GroupMe was never meant to replace the interpersonal bonds we formed throughout college. It is intended to facilitate and increase them. I can’t help but think how much better our class, which most blame the pandemic for the lack of identity, would be if we had a better software, one that makes us look. ahead to put faces to names or one-on-one conversations. GroupMe cannot be held responsible for the huge void in “online Duke”. But it certainly didn’t help either.
GroupMe shows us what happens when our online tools aren’t designed with their users in mind. Bad software design has the devastating effect of breaking our “weak ties” with each other. Yet the stalled momentum of alternatives like Patio and Discord on-campus suggests the app is here to stay. This will save our whole class group chats. This goes beyond our club group conversation. It lives on in many of the friendships we make as students at Duke. That’s probably the worst GroupMe crime of all.
James Gao is a Trinity sophomore. His columns run alternate Fridays.
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