Read 12:53 p.m.

Men and The Year of The Read Receipt

“Want to grab a drink?”

We’d been texting each other for about a month. Two weeks on the Dating App and two weeks on iMessage. Our conversations were good. We tried to one-up each other by recommending even more obscure movies on Netflix to watch, and possibly Chill over, in the future. I told him about my love of Korean food and he told me that he had never tried it. Our conversations were long and definitely made me think that our conversations in person would be even longer.

So I suggested we get a drink. There was nothing more in the text, just a simple question.

I waited. An hour. Two passed.

Hmmm…This is strange, I thought to myself. The conversation seemed to be going so well.

I had thought about the worst, but wasn’t ready to check if my nightmare came true. I took a deep breath, opened up our stream of carefully curated Netflix recommendations and liberal emoji-filled responses to see my nightmare before my eyes.

“Read 12:53 p.m.”

My heart sank. I knew we were done and we hadn’t even met in person yet.

Why did he even have his read receipts on? I said, while furiously texting my friend screen-shots to see where I went wrong. Who even has them on anyways?

My brother. My dad. My step-dad. My ex. A guy I was working on a project with. The dad I babysat for. This one dude I hooked up with once a year ago.

I noticed a pattern: Men of all walks of life have their read receipts on and I wanted to get to the bottom of this.

Power Play

I spoke with a Millennial, my brother, Graham, 18. He turned on his read receipts about a month ago, during his first semester of college. He was texting two of his new freshman male friends and he kept seeing “Read 2:15 p.m” appear on the screen.

One of his new friends noticed that Graham was a texting outlier and gave him a nudge in the read direction. “One of my (male) friends complained about me not having them on. He told me to turn them on, so I did,” he said.

We sat on his bed in his childhood bedroom, with his face glowing, as he scrolled through his recent texts. In about 15 seconds, he was able to pull up six of his close male friends that have read receipts turned on.

Graham sees the benefits of read receipts when he is talking to other male friends. “When we’re making plans, it’s helpful to know if they have read my text to see if they can get together.”

More than that, read receipts put power in the hands of the recipient of the text message. “If you want to get back at someone without saying anything offensive, read receipts are the way to do it,” Graham said. “It’s a super passive aggressive way to piss someone off.”

One of Graham’s friends showed up later in the day. He also has read receipts turned on. For him, he didn’t have a choice. When he was pledging his fraternity, they made him turn them on, so they knew when their new pledges were avoiding instructions from the older, initiated brothers.

Read receipts allow men to show off their dominance, as, well, men. It is a way for them to troll a conversation, just by opening a message. For Graham, they allow him to decide when the conversation is finished, giving him the edge.“Cause I wanted people to know when the conversation was over, I guess,” he said.

However, the commonality of having read receipts turned on amongst the group of men I surveyed in my life is much more complicated than just knowing when another male friends wants to make plans.

Throw in the girl card.

Love, In The Time of Read Receipts

So Graham has been telling me about this girl. This one he really likes, but he doesn’t have time to have games be played on him, so he plays them on a girl.

Graham pulled up a series of texts with a girl we are going to call Anna. This girl, Anna, is someone Graham really likes. He sees something serious with her. Maybe serious enough to DTR — Define The Relationship — but she doesn’t feel the same way.

“Like when she (Anna) told me she didn’t want a relationship with me. She was into me and didn’t want a relationship and she explained that (over text). I didn’t respond,” Graham said. “Until the next morning.”

In an age of Internet dating, texting becomes the means of getting to know a potential suitor. Texting is like a free first date, but you get to curate your answers to basic questions.

When read receipts are turned on, the dynamic shifts. It gives the suitor with read receipts the control and brings anxiety to the recipient.

When you are in a bar and you see someone you think is cute, you go up to them. You start talking. If you ask a question, they have to respond or it would be seen as rude. However, if you ask that same question over text message, they can read it, and never respond.

Texting creates a paradox: intimacy and distance. You can share everything, with the possibility that the recipient won’t say anything in return. When someone turns on read receipts, it shifts the dynamic of power in the hands of one person, allowing them to control the speed and pace of your texting conversations.

Etiquette

I’ve spent countless hours with female friends, analyzing text message after text message, where read receipts are turned on. The common conversation goes like this:

Me: “What do I do now?”

Friend One: “You should double text.”

Friend Two: “No, don’t do that. It will make you seem crazy.”

*All ladies laugh*

Me: “But he read my text yesterday and it wasn’t a conversation-ending text.”

Me (cont.): “Should I just leave it?”

*All ladies sigh and I delete his number from my phone.*

According to Urban Dictionary, “Ghost Texting” is defined as: “When a person sends a text message to another person and then completely disappears.” However, this is just a general definition. It embodies the “Delivered” text messages where you don’t get a response and those “Read Yesterday” text messages where you don’t get a response.

So what are you supposed to do? Call them out on it? No, because that will make you seem crazy and give the man the justification to show off your “craziness” to his friends. Ignore it? No, because if you are having a good conversation with someone on-line and want to meet them off-line and they don’t respond, it makes you feel someone has just broken up with you.

Ghost Texting with read receipts turned on adds a new variable to the equation. One where you can’t just solve for x and get y, in this case, y being a date. When a guy reads a text, chooses to not respond and leaves you hanging, it puts women back into their Housewives place in the 1950’s.

Women were supposed to wait for the guy to ask her out. For men to ask them to dance. For men to open their car door. A man in 2015, with read receipts turned on, is doing the same thing. He has the power. There is no more chivalry, only a “read” notification.

Let’s Not Grab A Drink

So that guy. The one from the beginning. He never responded to my question, but he did like my Instagrams and started following me on Twitter.

Here lies the question: Did he simply forget?

While he could have just “forgotten,” I think he consciously forgot. He knew he had his read receipts turned on and yet, he chose not to respond. Men like to have the upper hand. They like the chase. When a girl makes a bold move, men can (sometimes, not always) metaphorically throw their phone against the wall and hide under their comforter.

I asked an adult male friend about why he has his read receipts turned on and he says it’s to stay accountable. So he doesn’t forget to respond. According to him, it’s a way of making sure he responds in a timely manner. It creates a period of pressure for him to make a move and make a choice.

My brother also agrees with this, claiming that he isn’t organized. For him, having read receipts on, makes planning events with friends easier.

While some men claim that read receipts make them more “accountable,” read receipts ultimately give them more power. In a symbolic sense, it reinforces patriarchal values, where men have the upper hand.

I’ve moved past that unanswered drink text to more men with read receipts turned on. I’ve grown accustomed to being “read” and not responded to. However, that is life in 2015.

Maybe, just maybe, 2016 will be the year of the timely response. Where men (and women) will be held accountable for their use of read receipts. I’m not confident that this will happen, but I can only hope that my message will be read and given the response it deserves.