There is the initial group. Then the side group. Then another splinter group. Suddenly, in your bones, you know the wrong message is going to end up with the wrong person …
I
t’s the new last taboo. Officially added to the list of topics you absolutely must not discuss, along with politics, money and religion: the WhatsApp side group. Apparently nobody told Melanie C from the Spice Girls though, because she has just revealed far too much about theirs.
“There are subgroups within the group,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald’s Sunday Life magazine. “I definitely know there is a chat group that doesn’t contain me, but somewhere else we keep Ginger or Posh out.”
Staying up to date with your side chats – not least ensuring each message you send doesn’t go on the wrong thread – is the most anxiety-ridden full-time job most of us have ever had. A friend of mine has a group with five mums from her daughter’s class, and another whittled down to four of them, then more with three, two and one. How she keeps track without the use of a murder investigation board with red strings pinned to photographs is genuinely a mystery.
