Typing Notifications
Typing Notifications
[A sequence of eight panels representing the same conversation in an electronic chat. The header always reads:] What did you think of my show? Did you like it? Be honest!
[The reply area on the first seven panels is empty, but on the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 7th the input is activated and showing three dots.]
[On the last panel the reply area reads:] It was great!
[Caption below the panels:] My least favorite aspect of typing notifications

Randall has sent an instant message to someone and is now watching the screen expecting a reply. The message contains simple questions about a show Randall had undertaken and he insists on an honest answer. The phone indicates that the respondent is typing a response, but then pauses, resumes typing, and pauses a second time, before sending a simple "It was great!"
Typing notifications, often called "typing awareness indicator", is a feature of some instant messaging systems. It lets you know when the other person in a conversation is typing and preparing a reply. It may appear in different forms, like the literal text "[Contact] is typing." or often has a empty answer (possibly a different color) containing three animated dots. It gives the sender confidence that their message has been received and the other one is working on a reply.
When the final response is received it is anodyne "It was great", suggesting that the first two deleted drafts could be far more critical. The fact that you know that a message has been deleted or edited twice provokes you to imagine what the deleted drafts may have contained. The issue with typing notifications that Randall is talking about might also just be the difficulty to interpret them. The distant contact might just have been doing something else at the same time, had a bad, unsteady internet connection, started typing in the wrong conversation, or corrected a typo, but because Randall has interpreted the long pauses the same way one would read face-to-face interactions, the typing notifications make it seem like they weren't honest.
If one partner of a conversation takes their sweet time to reply, possibly deleting their text and starting from scratch as shown in this comic, the typing notification feature can lead to anxiety, as the person waiting for a response starts to overthink the issue. Thoughts come to mind like the other person might not be honest, try to carefully word a sensitive subject or not care enough about you to quickly reply. If finally the answer arrives and consists of just a laconic "ok" or similar, these feelings become even stronger, leading to thoughts like the other person is trying to hide something. This phenomenon has become so widespread that many people have written about it in newspapers and blogs, calling it texting anxiety .
The caption below the screens summarizes that what Randall dislikes the most about these systems of notification that the other party on the conversation is actively working on a reply is the lengthly alternation between indications that the other party is composing a reply, amidst pauses wherein one presumes the other party is thinking carefully about what they are wanting to say, then more typing as in response to their deep thinking, etc. until at the end of this extended period when one expects the other side to have written a book's worth of notes given the time and work they appear to have dedicated to the reply -- and all they get is a simple 3-word reply.  It leaves him wondering what all the other party really typed, and really thought, that they ended up not sending. This type of notification was mentioned as rule no. 1 in the much later 2235: Group Chat Rules .
One way around giving your text receiver texting anxiety would be to open a blank note and work out what you want to say there. Since you're not typing in the messaging app, there's no typing notification.
In the title text, Randall expresses that he likes to watch when the recipient reacts and is trying to write an answer but he's also happy to not receive notifications that the texter is composing a response in a blank note file. Typically, one composes responses in blank notes when they need to be careful or thoughtful about how they respond (as well as avoid alerting the recipient, via the notifications, that they've received their text and are preparing a response). If Randall were to be notified about such actions, it would confirm his above fears that the writer was being tactful and guarded in their response, which would just lead to more anxiety about what they were trying to hide. Also, it would expose him if he wanted to compose his own message privately.
[A sequence of eight panels representing the same conversation in an electronic chat. The header always reads:] What did you think of my show? Did you like it? Be honest!
[The reply area on the first seven panels is empty, but on the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 7th the input is activated and showing three dots.]
[On the last panel the reply area reads:] It was great!
[Caption below the panels:] My least favorite aspect of typing notifications
