my life without whatsapp

For a year and a half, when I give my phone number I add the tagline "I don't have WhatsApp".

The first reason is somewhat scandalous: I don't have Whatsapp.

The second and more important reason is to try to avoid a conflict.

On more than one occasion, someone has sent me his anger “because you gave me the wrong number” and one even thought that he had blocked it preventively;

according to him, as soon as he gave us our numbers, a little less than I had turned around to record his number and block it.

It wasn't, but I found the idea exciting.

For a year and a half, too, I have had to give so many explanations for not having Whatsapp that I would have saved more time by buying another line and signing up for the app twice.

I suppose the end of these explanations is this article, which has been asking me for the newspaper since my first month without WhatsApp.

It didn't seem like a big deal to me then —"not even that I was the only Spaniard without Whatsapp"—, but over time I've said yes to the newspaper: if I'm not the only Spaniard without WhatsApp, of course I'm part of a kind of extinction.

In fact, those of us who don't have Whatsapp quickly become aware of the people who don't have it, a bit like the conversation in

: “Is your son homosexual?

Well, then he has to meet my nephew;

he is a tall boy who studies in Albacete… ”.

I had several problems related to Whatsapp;

the most disturbing was that he wrote there more than in the newspaper.

That wasn't always a bad thing: sometimes, immersed in an eternal discussion, I noticed that my answers exceeded 600 words, and some were even well argued;

in fact, when I was arguing with a friend, he would give me funny licenses that worked very well in chat.

One day I deleted one of those answers and sent it to the newspaper in the form of a column.

Since then, every time he had to write a column, he would insult someone at random on the subject he wanted to write it about, and from the subsequent discussion he extracted, like a precious stone, the 600 magic words.

Over time I realized something.

I could spend an entire afternoon 'talking' with a friend about whatever it was, either spouting the usual bullshit or engaging in some serious conversation—if there are any serious conversations left after 40 years.

I found that by writing to us almost daily I didn't miss him.

And, living in the neighborhood next door, she hadn't seen him for six months.

He was suddenly in very close contact with a lot of people with whom he talked almost daily, through groups or individually;

We had so much contact that he didn't miss meeting them, even though we lived in the same city.

There were other things, of course.

The crazy number of Whatsapps that came to me every day, many unknown people who had a wonderful proposal to make;

the need of so many friends and acquaintances who write and, when writing, demands a response, sometimes immediate;

the feeling that when I picked up the phone to make a call, take a photo or go online I was picking up a mine that, if not controlled, would explode in my hands and steal three hours of commenting on a meme.

Is everything good now?

No, I think it's worse.

The time I have gained is not exactly spent reading Tolstoy.

But I've taken a liking to it.

I meet people on the street who ask me why I have blocked them, since they do not see my profile picture or their message.

Leaving all the groups at the same time when uninstalling it did not make me very popular either (“what the hell is wrong with this one”).

My colleagues at the newspaper are a pain in the ass that I don't have Whatsapp, of course.

I miss a lot of funny things (controversial tweets, gossip, commented live television broadcasts), my friends have been divided between those who have an iPhone (hence iMessage, similar to Whatsapp) and those who don't.

With those who do not have, I send myself SMS (15 cents a day);

For example, my parents do not have an iPhone and they have never written to me again:

It's obvious that they liked me.

And I still generally don't answer numbers that I don't have in my phonebook, but I pick them up a little more than before because there are a lot of people who don't know that you can send messages without WhatsApp.

Looking at it on the bright side again, I don't have the unconscious need to answer text messages right away and it's okay if they answer me within a week, because if it's an emergency, or I want to talk to someone about something that worries me, or meet him for a drink, or consult whatever, I do something quite revolutionary and I try to make it fashionable among my contacts: call.

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