Genuine question: am I the last person in the world who still has my blue ticks on? In the early days of WhatsApp, if someone had gone into their privacy settings and turned them off, so you could never be sure when or even if this person had read your message, that told you all you needed to know. No blue ticks = red flag. Here was a slippery, sneaky individual, not to be trusted under any circumstances. As opposed to those of us who left them on – honest, noble, open books with nothing to hide. No blue ticks was an indicator that you were probably messaging a serial killer.
But recently the tide has turned. Now everyone seems to have gone all mysterious and switched them off, to leave you guessing. I’m starting to feel like a desperate blue-tick loser, over-keen and needy, falling over myself to volunteer the unnecessary information that I’ve read your message, when you are far too cool to care. Blue ticks on has real “pick me” energy. It’s attention-seeking, the coloured symbol equivalent of sending a selfie of you reading the message in question, while grinning and doing a thumbs up.
