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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  Letter from... my ideal WhatsApp group
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Letter from... my ideal WhatsApp group

The ideal WhatsApp group in a way adds value to your life, your mind and your well-beingreally

Photo: BloombergPremium
Photo: Bloomberg

Look, WhatsApp groups are inevitable. Far too many people are too busy to actually meet other people, and too lonely to keep their thoughts to themselves. So WhatsApp groups are inevitable. But they don’t have to suck. 

The ideal WhatsApp group has between 10 and 15 people. Groups smaller than 10 people, and larger than 15, quickly become dysfunctional, but for different reasons. Groups smaller than 10 turn rancid because someone is going to say something stupid at some point, but everybody knows each other too well to censure them. Eventually only the racist/sexist/fake-news idiot keeps saying his stupid garbage while everyone else secretly sets up separate one-on-one conversations to help them restore their faith in humanity. 

Groups larger than 15 also eventually attain unbearability because people start treating the group like an audience. This means that members start speaking not to each other, but past each other, delivering monologues into the ether. And mankind rarely does worse than when it thinks it has an audience. No thanks. 

The ideal WhatsApp group has some sort of diversity. This has at least two benefits. First, it keeps the racists, sexists, homophobes and types of that ilk quiet. (Hopefully. But this is 2018, and being an asshole is a badge of honour.) And second, you have a slightly better chance of not talking about the same bloody nonsense—Modi, Gandhi, blockchain, salary, VC, PE—every minute of every day. This might seem like total fake news Illuminati confabulation... but there is actually stuff to talk about in life besides politics, religion, livelihood and news. 

The ideal WhatsApp group has some sort of voluntary theme to it. By which I mean people aren’t members thanks to some default criteria: alumni, housing colony, office department, etc. Instead, the ideal WhatsApp group has members who are all in it because there it has some kind of theme they are actually interested in: books, films, single malt, Arsenal and so on. The finest WhatsApp group I am part of comprises a ragtag bunch of people who are all academics in some capacity—master's students, PhD students, researchers, writers, etc. And we rarely talk about academics. In fact we just had a high-quality discussion on avocado this morning. 

But there is one huge potential problem with such themes: point scoring. So if I say I think The Potter’s Field is Andrea Camilleri’s best book, then not a single person in the group must say any one of the following things: 

1. What nonsense, only idiots like that book, it is very problematic. 

2. How can you like Potter’s Field when a book like Ulysses exists? 

3. Which one is Potter’s Field? I read too my books ya, what to do my reading speed is a curse… 

SIDIN VADUKUT HAS LEFT THE GROUP. 

That reminds me, the ideal WhatsApp group has an element of unfamiliarity in its membership. By which I mean there is no single person who knows everybody else, but there is also no single person who knows nobody else. Thus there is a gradation to my familiarity with the other members. One or two I know well. Some I know a little. Of course, over time you may come to know each other very well. But some amount of unfamiliarity, I think, self-regulates tone, language, behaviour, etc. 

Now you are probably thinking: My god, this Sidin fellow has a very low opinion of how human beings behave on digital platforms and social media and such like. One might even say he is super cynical. 

Correct. 

The ideal WhatsApp group keep thrumming along with activity. Perhaps there is more than one conversation happening. You are not interested in everything going on. But nobody seems to mind. You dip in and out of things when you like. 

Mind you, I said thrum along. Which means moderation. 

In summation, the ideal WhatsApp group in a way adds value to your life and your mind and your well-being. You enjoy being part of it. 

Always remember two things. There is already enough misery in human life. No need to add to it. And your mind is a temple, don’t fill it with garbage people or garbage ideas. Now some unbearable fellows will come and say, “See this is the problem, you will end up sitting in echo chambers..." Ignore them. One does not compensate for mutton biryani by eating methi paneer and then say look my diet is balanced. 

Thus the ideal WhatsApp group is full of people you wouldn’t mind meeting face-to-face. Talking about things you wouldn’t mind talking about in person. 

Which is why the ideal WhatsApp group is not your family WhatsApp group. 

But then what to do. We all have our personal crosses to bear through this journey we call life.

Letter From... is Mint on Sunday’s antidote to boring editor’s columns. Each week, one of our editors—Sidin Vadukut in London and Arun Janardhan in Mumbai—will send dispatches on places, people and institutions that are worth ruminating about on the weekend. 

Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.com

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Published: 17 Mar 2018, 11:48 PM IST
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