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Comment by serial_dev | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I hear this iMessage thing I’m surprised. Is that a US / Canada thing?

Here in Europe, everybody uses WhatsApp and/or similar products for chat and they are all multi platform.

iOS/iPhones are the majority of phones in Canada and the US (~60%). However, if you take the upper half of household incomes that number skyrockets to 80-90%. Comparatively, in the UK it's 50/50. In the rest of europe android mostly has a 60-75% market share (tends to drift more towards android the more eastern you go - signalling wealth has a lot to do with it).

The reasons why are varied (everything from wealth signalling to switching being a pain and iphone mostly had a first mover advantage for quality and availability for the first several years), but it's only in the last two years that I've seen people start to use multi-platform chat apps here. Most of my peer group with other parents all default to imessage group chats for sharing photos, stories of our kids.

I am also starting to notice a loosening on apple's services. Spotify is used by more people than Apple music even amungst the apple households I know.

Kids are ruthless about anti green bubble discrimination and it’s part of the reason for the rise of incels. The overwhelming majority of incels are android users, and the mainstream cultural media likes to make clear that one of the reason for being incels is them using a “poordroid”

https://leafandcore.com/2019/08/24/green-bubbles-are-a-turn-...

https://outsidethebeltway.com/the-dreaded-green-bubble/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...

https://gizmodo.com/im-buying-an-iphone-because-im-ashamed-o...

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473453/why-green-text-bub...

https://www.fastcompany.com/90391587/why-we-dont-want-you-an...

Whoa hold on. I was with you until “the overwhelming majority of incels are android users.” How did you draw that conclusion?

The countless myriad number of TikTok’s, reels, etc from women calling out how using an android is a dealer breaker. The community made polls of “incels.us” about this exact question, and the other links I cited showing green bubble social discrimination.

My original post has enough receipts. If you don’t believe me you’re free to remain wrong. But here’s more anyway:

https://www.joe.co.uk/life/sex/owning-an-android-is-official...

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/android-relationship-iphone/

https://www.studentbeans.com/blog/uk/the-biggest-student-dat...

https://archive.thetab.com/uk/2020/10/16/girls-are-sharing-w...

These memes posted on short video sites also have parallel ones of women making fun of guys who try to do the whole “hold on let me pirate this movie and HDMI connect it to the TV thing” instead of having Netflix.

I don't doubt that some women make fun of men for green bubbles, but this doesn't mean the vast majority of incels are Android users. If that were true, wouldn't they just get an iPhone?

Also the HDMI thing is hilarious because it's exactly what my wife would say about me.

> but this doesn't mean the vast majority of incels are Android users

Is there such a thing as incels? I thought it was just a stupid concept to bully people. Not that it doesn't exist, but I wouldn't think that there is a category of people (kids, I guess?) who "are" incels, is there? In some contexts, some kids are "considered" incels by bullies.

Or do I get it wrong?

In this case, it's guys who want a girlfriend but are constantly rejected, which is a thing, also same in reverse. But if anyone ever says it's because of bubble color, it's probably an excuse for an actual reason.

Sure, but my point is that it is a dumb, irrational concept. And therefore I don't think that there is such a thing as a "description of incels".

I could get with "the vast majority of kids who get bullied have Android phones", maybe. And instead of saying "haha you're poor" (which is already moronic in itself), the bullies say "haha you're an incel". I guess because it hurts more?

But "the vast majority of incels have an Android phone" both implies that "being an incel" is an actual thing (which it is not) and that having an Android phone has an influence on one's ability to find a partner (which it has not).

> The overwhelming majority of incels are android users

Seriously ?

I have read your links, it shows that some kids are stupid and discriminate over what phone brand one is using.

First of all, that’s purely a USA issue.

Secondly, it says nothing about incels.

A phone brand doesn’t make you more charismatic, in fact in my experience I have seen more iPhone user being insecure than Android user.

Especially the one who invest heavily into Apple « ecosystem », they are more often than not (in Europe) nerds.

Just to be honest, I write that from my iPhone. Really got no bias.

If I remember my teenage years, perception feels a lot like reality.

Lmao. Don't pay any attention to the thing about incels, which whether true or not, so obviously does not establish that android was a causative factor. Look at the percentage of US people that have Android. iPhone is not nearly as dominant in the US as spoiled brat teens seem to think. Nearly half the population is Android users. I'm sure we are all incels.

Yeah, 99% of incels (at least the ones I know about, mostly because they hit the news) have an obvious mental health tick or manifestation that turns off potential romantic partners. These people are being excluded (rightly or wrongly) because of that, not because of Android.

WhatsApp never caught on in the US since cell phones and SMS were a great deal for keeping in touch. By the time WhatsApp arrived US carriers were not raping their customers for phone calls or SMS messages (in the early days of cell phones they were - be very careful responding as the state of the world has changed many times over the years and so it is quite possible you remember a time where your country was better than the US for reasons that are no longer true!). Note in particular calls and SMS to a different state is included, and typically Canada is included as well. As such we never developed the WhatsApp habbit as it didn't give us anything.

Yes. WhatsApp isn't nearly as popular in the US as in many other countries.

Idk what the stats are on this, but anecdotally, all my friends use FB Messenger if they want cross-platform group chat, but that's slowly changing to some fragmented list of alternatives. And usually it's not for semi-important things like get-together plans.

This. In 98% of all cases I get away with only having telegram (no phone number even) most people have one or multiple IMs

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