There was one thing I swore I’d never do on WhatsApp. And now I’ve gone and done it | Polly Hudson

Leaving your blue ticks on used to be a sign that you were trustworthy. These days it conveys a certain ‘pick me’ energy

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.

The only possible mitigating factor in turning your ticks off is that it instantly extinguishes the very worst aspect of WhatsApp: being stuck in blue-tick purgatory, AKA left on read. This is when the recipient has seen your message but is yet to reply. Even though, logically, you know they were just called into a meeting or run over by a bus, your mind starts to play tricks and you become convinced that they hate you.

Then, as more messages arrive in their inbox, you slip down the list, out of sight and mind, into the blue-tick abyss where you will languish, your paranoia increasing exponentially by the hour. Plot twist: the ticks-off brigade were the good guys all along?

• Polly Hudson is a freelance writer.

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