Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghodith | Hacker News Reader

Very much not a trope. I personally know multiple people who refuse to text green bubbles, to the point of refusing dates from people who have Android.

View on HN

And I know multiple people who refuse dates from those who have a zodiac sign that is “incompatible” with theirs. I think we can safely disregard that as a factor, despite how relatively not-that-rare it could be.

Yeah but bubbles sound like a class difference, astrology is just pseudoscience. People seldom get mocked for being a libra, but they often get prejudiced for having less money.

Given that there are Android phones on the market as or more expensive than iPhones, how can these people tell which Android users are poor?

Sure, but there are no dirt cheap iPhones, unlike Android phones. There doesn't have to be 100% correlation before people start making assumptions.

There’s literally no difference in price. The only difference is that people more receptive to retail sales pitch buy androids as the reps get spiffs to move them.

Only for top of the line android phones. There exists a huge lower-tier android market that iPhone doesn't compete in.

I mean, the argument isn't that they should accept the date (on the contrary, these signs are actually beneficial for staying the fuck away from these people), the argument, or rather statement is that this sort of "tech jewelry" is very embedded in modern society, with Apple being the frontrunner.

And this has real effects. For example, Im forced to use a piece of shit Macbook at work, where literally everything else in our cloud runs on linux, because the company issues Macs as a way of attracting talent since "tech" people also want tech jewelry.

> the company issues Macs as a way of attracting talent since "tech" people also want tech jewelry.

Only a very specific demographic, though. Such companies are missing out on a lot of talented tech people.

> I personally know multiple people who refuse to text green bubbles, to the point of refusing dates from people who have Android.

Those people don't sound like people worth knowing. Ignorant and judgy to say the least.

Life isn't so simple. What if that person is your boss or your client, or someone you love?

I mean the comment I replied to mentioned refusing dates from people with green text bubbles.

If it's a boss or someone I love and they want to ignore my messages that's on them. If it's a work issue possibly HR could be involved as discrimination or outright ignoring messages based on device wouldn't really fly.

> Those people don't sound like people worth knowing.

My boss could be refusing dates from people that have green bubbles, but not ignoring my messages. Same with a family member for example. Your comment says they aren't worth knowing either way.

I mean, sure if they are not ignoring your messages and you need or want to know them that's fine, but if they are still being that judgy for something so petty they seem like shitty people regardless.

Someone you love? If the affection is mutual they're not going to cut off communication with you because your phone doesn't run their favorite chat app.

A good friend doesn't have phone number for reasons that important to her.

She's not "cut off", but it requires a conscious effort to contact her. So while I may be keeping a group of people up to date or inviting folks for a bbq, open house, etc casually, I need to specifically invite her via some other channel.

Sometimes I forget. Feelings are hurt. I'm a single parent with a demanding job. Low friction rules the roost for me, and our group of friends all sort of support each other with these types of things and do alot of ad-hoc stuff.

Not having a phone number is much more unusual than having a phone that can do SMS but not iMessage. It adds considerably more friction; e.g. it makes some of the most popular third-party messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp difficult or impossible to access as well.

If your boss refuses to talk to you because of something as petty as imessage bubbles, they're petty enough to fire you for any number of reasons. That person is a horrible boss no matter what you do.

> to the point of refusing dates from people who have Android.

The people who were refused dates dodged bullets, then.

This is not even among the top five weirdest things I have heard some base a dating decision on. People are complicated.

That sounds like a people problem, not a tech problem.

It sort of becomes a people problem as people use messaging to communicate and organize events and exclude you because you'll break group chats.

Probably not a big issue if you already have a solid social circle of old tight friends who don't care about you breaking chats as they can also call you, but it can be huge issue when you move to a new city and trying to make new friend, as any extra friction you add to groups lessens your chances of being accepted and invited further.

Yeah, people can be quite lazy and petty even about such trivial things, when they don't know you and don't have any attachment to you yet, and you breaking group chats won't improve your first impressions and chances of being accepted. Hence the ever increasing loneliness crisis we're facing.

Thank fuck I live in Europe where nobody uses iMessage for group chats. Honestly fuck Apple for creating that unnecessary friction, it's not like they couldn't have accommodated blue bubbles to not break group chats but it's more profitable to emotionally extort people to buy your iJunk by making them feel outsiders.

> it can be huge issue when you move to a new city and trying to make new friend

Meh. I'm not interested in being part of a social circle that is as petty as that.

There's 40 million American teenagers who are very interested in being a part of petty social circles.

Pretty much. Peer pressure is an insanely powerful thing when you're young and trying to fit in and Apple knows teens aren't gonna die on the "stick to an Android to stick it to them" hill.

I was assuming this discussion was about adults, not children. Teenagers have always found petty reasons to reject others, but they usually grow up and learn better. This seems no different, so that part doesn't concern me much. If adults are doing it, though, that's entirely different.

Is the argument you're making that the people complaining about this on HN are American teenagers?

Seems like a completely different situation.... and really, again, a people problem.

People rightly criticise social media companies for the behaviour their platforms encourage, and iMessage encourages this behaviour as much as twitter encourages outrage.

I still believe that's a people problem.

On Twitter you can easily curate Twitter lists of people to follow without being forced to use the generated feed. I'm rarely if ever outraged or otherwise emotionally charged when I'm using it. (Maybe except when I come across reply-bots)

And as I said elsewhere in the thread, I've never experienced that problem with any friend groups when it comes to iMessage.

> I personally know multiple people who refuse to text green bubbles, to the point of refusing dates from people who have Android.

Sounds like not dating them is dodging a real bullet if they're that shallow.

Some mental illnesses can't be cured I guess.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com