Social media
Five days later
To continue with the cultural differences I have noticed, social media is a strange thing where no one really seem to sync up internationally. Many times have I believed that people have tried to ignore me, but apparently, they do not use Facebook more than ones a week, or asking for someones Snapchat, but they never accept my friend request. This has become a common issue I still struggle with to this day.
Not that easy to plan anything
Snapchat
Daily, I use four different social media channels. When I want to show what is happening, I send a quick Snap to my friends. I quickly get response from my Norwegian friends, but from my Latin-American friends, I suddenly get a Snap two weeks later saying: “Haha, so true”. What is true? Some of the irritating things about Snapchat is that I do not remember what I sent to my friends two week ago. Was it a picture of the frozen fish in a pond, something funny happening at school, or just a statement I sent them? Who can say? I try to ask them what I sent, but when they respond to that two weeks later, they don’t know either.
Messenger vs WhatsApp
Then it comes to the real messaging apps: Facebook messenger and WhatsApp. This is where it gets really confusing. I am used to only using messenger, and that is why I usually use messenger. I try to send someone from Turkey or China a message, but it takes them approximately two moons to respond. Nice as I am, I give them some time to respond, to make sure it does not seem like I am spam’ing them. When I finally send them a text on WhatsApp instead, they usually answer right away, but now the two moons have passed, and they finally answer me on Messenger too.
This is when my old habits kicks in. I stop the WhatsApp conversation, and try to continue in messenger instead. Huge mistake. Now I realize I will have to wait another two moons until they answer there again, and since I don’t want to be ‘that guy’ that spams everyone, I delay the WhatsApp message until another two moons have passed. I send them a message on WhatsApp, they respond there, and finally on Messenger. I go back to the Messenger conversation, and we are back at it. And this gets repeated again and again.
To top it all off, I am a member of so many different group chats, and many times we have chats with the same people on two different channels. I live with two other Scandinavians, who rather use Messenger than WhatsApp. Even though we have groups with the same people in both Messenger and WhatsApp, we Scandinavians keep writing in messenger, and everyone else writes in WhatsApp. It is a shortcut to making poor plans and confusion.
But the most interesting channels of them all - Instagram. You are probably thinking that it is just for sharing pictures and experiences, but this could not be further from the truth. If you want to reach someone right away, without any trouble, the most reliable channel is Instagram.