Colm O'Regan: Text messaging - and its changing, boring role in our lives

Colm O'Regan: "What countless hours people have spent waiting on replies from crushes"

Later today, at 7pm to be precise, it will arrive. Regular as clockwork. (Which you’d expect from something that arrives at the same time every week). “Please present your Compost/Recycling/General Waste ‘Evil Smelly You Just Couldn’t Be Bothered’ Bin tonight to ensure collection tomorrow.”

It’s an important message. With all due respect to my loved ones, I can honestly say that the single best thing for my mental health is knowing I’m up to date with my bins.

But this is not about the message. It is about the medium. It is a simple text message. It appears in the demure understated blue speech bubble icon on my phone. Not the insistent LOOK AT ME of WhatsApp. More the ‘Remember Me?’ of ordinary SMS.

My list of texts is a fragmented, windswept place now. Like an old industrial estate, weeds growing out of cracks, perfunctory ads for businesses and one person with a Nokia burner phone hanging around. Whereas WhatsApp is community: shopping lists, gossip, sharing of memes with fake Greta Thunberg quotes.

There are approximately 11 different groups my wife and I share for various types of TODOs.

If we SMS-text each other now it’s almost austere. I might as well forward her the one-time-only passcode for Amazon dot co dot UK. Has the spark died?

Later, we send each other some emojis in the Bin Reminder WhatsApp group, just to get our marriage back on an even keel.

My phone is usually on Do Not Disturb. Not because I can’t be disturbed, but because I am disturbed and find it hard to stop checking it. But it means I miss texts.

Which means I don’t text anyone. And so it grows quieter. The local chipper sends me a reminder that my arteries are too open and draughty. “Text STOP to stop getting these”? I will not. You are at least keeping the tech-artery navigable.

Colm O'Regan. Photograph Moya Nolan

A gym reminds me of the time for spin class. Oh my sweet summer child, that is not going to make me come back.

And there are the scammers. Preying on our tendency to not look at things properly. The text message that you think is coming from the bank. The shnakiest of all.

The bank will send you a legit text: “You have requested to add ‘So and So’ to your payments list on your bank account via a rigmarole that makes you think about joining Revolut.”

Then right after that, there’s another message which looks like it came from your bank saying: “Hi click here. Don’t ask any questions. It’s totally fine.” You click, and before you know it your bank account is cleaned out and the thief is laughing all the way to, or rather away from, the bank. It’s like having a house with two six-point-locking doors and leaving a big bathroom window wide open.

It seems a shame that text message should wither so. What countless hours have people spent waiting for replies from crushes. 

Kidding themselves that maybe she lost her phone or has no credit because there was no other way of telling if she was ‘online’. How many hundreds of ‘Happy New Years’ wishes did we receive through the years, that crashed the network?

They say that in the Internet of Things era, SMS will still have a role. Not everything needs to be said with pictures or group chat. Our machines will communicate with each other and with us. Your kettle will message parents of small children to say: “I’m boiled, are you having that tea or not?”

So that’s something at least. Maybe it’ll be my bin itself that will text me to say it would like to be brought out. And I’ll thank it and wish it a happy new year.