Group chats, and other stories
Whispering into a hole in Angkor Wat
Dear friends,
There is an urban myth about a group chat of three girls masked under a weird name.
Well, it’s not really a myth. I myself am in at least four of them; one even consists of me, a girl friend and her girlfriend.
Most of the time, four storylines are run simultaneously, one monologue by each member and a mutual discussion by three. Roads are never crossed but often somehow lead us to a common destination – a conclusion of the current stage of global affairs or some philosophical viewpoints of the condition of being.
God knows how much of the world today has been shaped by rumors, or lines of texts spurred under fingertips of some girls curling up in bed in their dark bedrooms past midnight.
Why does it need three people to operate a dynamic group chat?
My theory is it always needs two members to drive a fluid conversation and a blank space for one is easy enough to fill. Once in a while, a member might withdraw into silence without triggering any awkwardness.
The rule of three is the gold standard of chatting. Yet a strange force is trying to break in.
MetaAI asked whether I wanted it to summarize some 20 messages a friend and I exchanged in our trio group chat.
“Unread messages are about discussions on the new Vinhomes development project and eating.
T. mentioned a purchase of an apartment at Vinhomes for US$3,800 per square meter.
V. shared about her experience eating hotpot in Taiwan and compared it with Haidilao.
T. and V. discussed on having beef noodle soup and boba at Yutang (a local Taiwan style street food chain)
They also mentioned other food options”
All of this was flushed out within five minutes as I was riding by a Vinhomes construction site on my way to Nội Bài Airport and was reminded of a friend’s down payment for his second home there.
15 minutes later, after I finished the security check, the conversation was already far away from the original touchpoint and flipped into Soobin Hoàng Sơn’s fan-made billboards at the domestic terminal then thunderstorms in Saigon to which I was heading.
The question lies at whether it is necessary to catch up on all unread messages. A group chat doesn’t perform as a 24/7 news channel, instead, it weaves a support system, provides a reasoning mechanism or simply acts as a vent.
Chatbots don’t listen to us lamenting the way group chat fellows do.
An overconfident me who thought I reached the final stage of grief asked the Bazi API on ChatGPT, once recommended by a tech girlie working at an investment bank, to calculate when I would meet a new romantic partner based on my birth information.
In order to customize the analysis, I asked it to interpret a lot drawn at Longshan Temple in Taipei two weeks after the breakup, then spreaded a deck of Tarot for it to have a holistic view of the root cause and status quo, just in case.
In a moment, I ignored the possibility of melting OpenAI’s GPUs to prompt my chatbot to build an action plan based on all the data I just fed it.
Within seconds, it generated a detailed to-do list for the next six months with an extremely positive outlook of having the Peach Blossom star appear in June, promising a high chance to meet a new lover.
I told my chatbot I would not meet anyone this month, and that I would spend the entire month in my hometown after intensive months of events and trips.
“Sometimes love begins when you're emotionally resetting, like you are now” – it tried to comfort me; “let’s look at how returning to your hometown in June (during your best romantic energy window) affects your love life” – another vain effort.
A friend might have already started talking about standing in the rain for five hours straight for her idols’ performances while another typed restlessly about her flight through turbulent air.
Till next time,
T.
Perfume River as seen from Vọng Cảnh Hill
This week’s top picks
On Our Own Strength: The Self-Reliant Literary Group and Cosmopolitan Nationalism in Late Colonial Vietnam
A social media flaneur:
Some lines of rap that stick and a thread that stays:
https://www.reddit.com/r/VietTalk/comments/1l1kk3f/thap_rơi_tư_do/