The Group Chat - Tealy and the Crew

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The group chat was created on a Tuesday at 4 PM.

Tealy named it "the gang" which he immediately regretted because it sounded like something a middle schooler would name a group chat, but changing it would require acknowledging he'd named it that in the first place, so it stayed.

He added everyone. Dird, DumbDird, Blara, Beric, Bayla, Greeny, SuperDumbDird, UltraDumbDird. Nine people. A reasonable number for a group chat. A manageable number.

He would look back on this moment of optimism with tremendous sadness.

The chat was normal for approximately four minutes.

Then DumbDird posted:

"DURR HEY EVERYONE!! have you seen DUMB...HUH? the greatest game show with a catapult!! episode 2 coming soon!! subscribe!!"

Followed by a link to the YouTube video.

The YouTube video that every single person in the group chat had not only seen but had personally appeared in, been launched by, or in Tealy's case watched from a chair eating Banana Nacho gummies in real time.

Tealy stared at the notification.

Dird reacted with 👍

Nobody responded.

Forty minutes later, Blara posted a photo of a cheese plate.

Not a message. Not context. Just a photo of a cheese plate, shot from above, well-lit, no caption. It sat in the chat like a statement of intent.

Then, seven minutes after that, a photo of chips. Different chips than the ones she'd had at the game show. A new bag. Unremarked upon.

Then cheese again.

Dird reacted to the cheese with 👍

Nobody said anything.

Bayla had joined the chat with immediate and radiant enthusiasm, sending a string of wholesome good morning messages the following day that Tealy read with one eye open at 8 AM and did not respond to.

Then the TikToks started.

They were, without exception, the variety of TikTok that existed in a cultural dimension slightly adjacent to everyone else's reality. Wholesome compilations. Cats doing minor things. A video of someone's grandmother reacting to something. A clip of a sunset with an inspirational quote in the Impact font.

Dird reacted to every single one with 👍

Beric reacted to none of them and said nothing, which was somehow more of a response.

Blara posted cheese.

DumbDird posted another ad for Dumb...Huh?

"DURR!! did you know DUMB...HUH? has 44 views!! we are growing!! watch here!!"

Same link. Same video. Four new views since the last ad, two of which were probably DumbDird himself.

Tealy typed "DumbDird we are all in this chat" and sent it before he could reconsider.

Dird reacted with 👍

DumbDird sent back "DURR, I KNOW!! sharing is caring Tally!!"

The Minion meme arrived on a Thursday.

Tealy saw the notification, opened the chat, and looked at it for a long time.

It was a standard Facebook Minion meme. The kind that had been circulating since approximately 2013 in the group chats of people's aunts and uncles. Yellow. Slightly pixelated from being screenshotted and reposted approximately nine hundred times across a decade of social media. It said something vaguely motivational in a font that had never been chosen intentionally by anyone.

Bayla had posted it unironically.

Bayla was twenty years old.

The chat was silent for three full minutes, which in group chat time was an eternity.

Then Tealy typed: "Bayla."

Dird reacted to the Minion meme with 👍

"Bayla what is this," Tealy typed.

"It's so sweet right!!! 🥺" Bayla responded.

Dird reacted to Bayla's response with 👍

Tealy looked at the Minion. The Minion looked back.

He removed Bayla from the group chat.

It took him less than ten seconds. He felt nothing. He felt, if anything, a mild sense of restoration, like a painting being rehung straight on a wall.

Bayla sent a confused message in a separate DM asking what happened. Tealy replied "wrong chat" which was a lie so fundamental it barely qualified as communication.

The chat continued.

DumbDird posted a third ad for Dumb...Huh?

"DURR!! episode 2 is coming!! bigger catapult!! you won't want to miss it!! watch episode 1 here first!!"

Blara posted a photo of a different cheese. A brie this time. Unprompted. Uncontextualized.

Beric sent one message at some point asking if anyone had a soldering iron he could borrow, received no relevant responses, and did not follow up.

Dird reacted to the soldering iron message with 👍 and nothing else, which meant Beric was either borrowing a soldering iron or he wasn't, and Dird's 👍 had contributed nothing to resolving this either way.

Tealy posted: "Can you guys stop?"

DumbDird reacted with 👍 and then immediately posted a fourth ad for Dumb...Huh?

Dird reacted to "Can you guys stop?" with 👍

Blara posted chips. Then cheese. Then a photo that appeared to be chips AND cheese together, which was either an escalation or a resolution depending on how you looked at it.

Tealy posted: "Bro the friend group is cooked."

Dird reacted with 👍

UltraDumbDird, who had been silent for the entire existence of the group chat up to this point, sent a photo of a plate.

Just a plate.

A dining plate, on a table, photographed as though it were a meal.

No caption.

Dird reacted with 👍

Tealy put his phone face-down on the table and left it there for forty-five minutes.

When he picked it back up there were twenty-three new notifications.

DumbDird had posted the link to Dumb...Huh? twice more.

Blara had posted four separate cheese photos, each a different variety, in what was beginning to look less like casual sharing and more like a deliberate cataloguing project.

Dird had reacted to all of it.

Every single item.

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Never once typing a word.

Tealy opened the chat, scrolled up through the entire history, and looked at it as a complete document.

It was, objectively, one of the worst group chats he had ever seen. It was nine people, one of whom had already been removed for Minion crimes, operating in entirely separate dimensions with no acknowledgment of each other whatsoever. It was DumbDird advertising a YouTube video to its own cast. It was a rolling photographic survey of Blara's snack consumption. It was Dird silently 👍-ing the entire observable universe. It was UltraDumbDird posting a photo of a plate and receiving a thumbs up as though that was a normal thing that had happened.

Tealy typed a new message.

"This is the worst group chat I've ever been in and I made it."

He sent it.

Three seconds later:

Dird reacted with 👍

DumbDird sent: "DURR, TALLY!! speaking of group chats, have you seen DUMB...HUH?? link below!!"

Blara posted cheese.

Tealy set his phone down.

Picked it back up.

Changed the group chat name from "the gang" to "this is a disaster."

Dird reacted to the name change notification with 👍

Tealy left the chat, immediately realized he'd made himself the only one who could add Beric back if needed, rejoined, and said nothing about it.

Dird reacted to his return with 👍

The chat continued.

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