WhatsApp’s New Tick Marks of Death

As if the ‘last seen today’ tag was not enough, WhatsApp has now introduced a feature that will tell you if your message was read. Apart from adding another feature for me to teach my elders, this has the potential to make life hellish for most people on our beautiful planet (and possibly a few on Mars).

To those who have absolutely no idea of what I am talking about, WhatsApp messages have these tick marks to show you that they have been delivered. Until now, we were used to seeing those familiar dull gray tick marks where a single mark meant that your message had been sent but not delivered/received.

Two marks indicated that it had been delivered/received.

This new feature however changes the color of the double tick marks to blue once the recipient has seen your message. All hell is expected to break lose due to these inferal colored marks!

Here are a few zingers that you, my poor child, shall have to face in the times to come:

1. Don’t you ever see my messages? They always have that grey color!
2. Your last seen says that you were online after I messaged you, and the marks are still gray! Why didn’t you see my message?!
3. I saw you come online and still the message had gray tick marks, it means that you ignored my messages! Why? Is it cause I am fat now?
4. You hate my mother don’t you? She messaged you yesterday and you did not even see her message!

Future historians will refer to this period  as The Blue Plague. In due time people will take to the streets in protest and widespread riots, confusion, boycotts against WhatsApp (or against people who don’t show a blue tick mark) and general pandemonium will spread. Random acts of violence shall sprout everywhere involving furious insecure girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives. And when this occurs the developers will introduce another feature that lets you hide these accursed blue tick marks of death (remember the ‘Show/Hide my last seen’ luxury?). Until then avoid WhatsApp or don’t avoid certain touchy people. Or better still, switch to Tango!

Being an optimistic with utmost faith in humanity, I can say that it will not cause more problems than those caused by Facebook Messenger’s ‘Seen’ feature. In any case, I implore you to follow my lead and stick to the following steps:

1. When your phone start’s buzzing, disconnect wifi
2. Unlock your phone and open WhatsApp
3. Read the messages and ignore/reply as needed
4. Close WhatsApp (end the sonofabitch from the Task Manager I say!)
5. Reconnect to wifi
6. Enjoy a problem-free existence

A side note, I have not tested it just yet so I take no responsibility whatsoever. If it works, wunderbar! If it does not and you get in trouble any way then warn your brethren against it!