WhatsApp blue ticks tick people off

As if the tiny "seen" message on the right hand corner of the Facebook chat window wasn't traumatic enough that now arrive the blue ticks.

Ignorance, they say, is bliss. Ignoring, they need to realise, is a greater bliss. And that is what the WhatsApp guys need to wake up to. It's not for nothing that people lauded the application and worshipped it day and night when they tweaked their privacy settings and made it somewhat more ignorer-friendly. People - at least some people - do not want to be seen, WhatsApp style, when they do not want to be seen. Maybe it's high time the app-tweakers realised that, no?

The app, despite its user-friendliness, initially came with the curse of the "last seen at..." notification. Right there, in tiny letters, the insidious words spelt doom for anybody who wished to evade some certain someone's messages. It's not always advisable to bluntly ignore certain people, you see. It's not even the fear of being discovered as having ignored his/her message. After a point of time, when our parents and tech-savvy relatives bit into the forbidden apple called WhatsApp, the "last seen at..." notification began to take on impressively frightening forms.

Then, a few days later, a miracle of sorts happened. The cursed "last seen" was made an optional factor. No one no longer needed to be mortified at the thought of being discovered by someone as having ignored a message - the "last seen" was buried, and with it, the fears of being caught red-handed as an ignorer.

However, when a messaging platform is as famous and as convenient as WhatsApp, moments of joy are not meant to last forever. Now comes the menace of the blue ticks. As if the tiny "seen" message on the right hand corner of a message on the Facebook chat window wasn't traumatic enough, we're being treated to the same on this hitherto-somewhat-less-nosier platform, too, now.

You want to ignore someone? But you want to respond to someone else's message on WhatsApp? You will be splashed blue, and your ignoring tactics will be bruised black. But then, necessity is the mother of invention. And when the necessity is as grave as protecting one's ignorer alter ego, the inventions are more than one.

So, while WhatsApp hits us with this bolt from the blue, with the blue ticks, one can always check the message in one's notification window and then decide whether or not it needs to be ignored.

Granted, visiting the actual destination is a call most of us find too tantalising to ignore, but at times, the need to ignore the message is greater than that.