A friend messaged me the other day. I saw it. I didn’t reply. A week later, I finally responded with the classic: Sorry for the late reply, just got to this.
She called me out. You didn’t just get to this, she said. I saw the double ticks.
Damn. She was right. I’d opened it. I’d registered it. But I’d also shelved it. It needed a proper reply, and at that moment, I wasn’t equipped.
Maybe it got lost between revisiting pictures from 2016 and the reminder I set to cancel my Nibble app 7-day trial on day 6. Maybe I got a call? Perhaps I’d wanted to sink back into that Substack article about reclaiming attention, ironically while still on social media. Maybe I was working one of the four jobs I need to survive under capitalism’s boot heel. Maybe I was doing nothing?
Does free time now equal availability?
I get a ping from the family group chat, which doubles as an IT helpdesk for my mum. My best friend just FaceTimed me about a White Lotus episode, and another left a voice note crying about a possible diagnosis. All this, lodged between videos of cats and genocide.
The boundaries between reception and response have collapsed.
It’s still your fault for lying in the first place.
“Just got to this” doesn’t really seem like a lie to me. If they said “just read this”, that would be a lie, but “just got to this” implies they didn’t have time to reply/think about it, without commenting on whether they read it. Honestly to me “just got to this” implies it’s been on their to-do list but they didn’t get around to it until now. If they hadn’t read it at all saying “just got this” or “just read this” would make more sense.
While you are correct, and the author deserves to be called out on their behavior, the context of the entire article is around how they are struggling with being bombarded with things taking up their attention and time. This response is seriously lacking in any compassion for the author’s struggle and more or less ignores the entire point of the article in order. Beehaw isn’t the place for one-liner gotchas. Please try to engage with the content if you’re going to comment.
No one is entitled to anyone one else’s time or energy. If you message me, I’ll respond when it’s convenient for me.