I’d share stuff with my partner—I have! She’s asked me why I’m laughing out loud, and then I show her. Generally, she finds the chat to be boring and silly, which I understand. I like that the chat is a politically-minded group of left-leaning men that I can talk about the world with. It’s a healthy outlet to share my thoughts and feelings without Getting Mad On Main, which I think is much less productive.”
Location: Pittsburgh & Cleveland
Ages: 35–36
Number of members: 5
About: The chat is on iMessage and has been around for several years. The guys have been friends since their undergraduate days.
What’s going on in there?
“We use it probably every other day. There’s three doctors, a lawyer, and me on this group chat, so we get a pretty funny look into daily medical life or whatever’s going on at the D.A.’s office. We talk about sports all the time. We tend to focus on the down-the-middle guy stuff; we really don’t talk about politics or religion and stuff in the chat.
I wouldn’t say that there’s big secrets in there. We could all get ourselves into a little bit of light trouble if our partners looked at the group chat. We share some tools of the trade, like how long it actually takes to build your daughter’s play house for her birthday versus how long you want to sit in the garage and drink beers, stuff like that.
All engagement ideas, proposal executions, wedding planning—we’ve been through that with all of the guys. They all have kids, so all the birth announcements are really exciting, pregnancy announcements too. Baby photos, a lot of pictures of beers we’re drinking, what we’re having for dinner, getting dressed up with the wife.
One of the doctors had a vasectomy, and he live-chatted his whole process with us. He wasn’t put out for the procedure so he just texted straight through it. It was absolutely hysterical, him just giving his opinion on how everything’s going as well as the people that he kind of knew who were doing the surgery and prepping him. And then, some follow up too. It is really funny to take all your college friends and think about them now, three kids later and getting vasectomies, like who’d have thought we’d get here. To this day these guys are some of my best friends, keeping all the old memories alive and growing up together, it’s been really rewarding.”
Location: Cities across North and Central America and Europe
Ages: 35–37
Number of members: 9
About: The chat exists primarily on WhatsApp, and has existed since 2017. The group has been friends since high school.
What’s going on in there?
“We post in there a couple times a week, sometimes it’s just a picture or a post. It’s never really an in-depth conversation. It’s pretty exclusive to us. Since it’s been around for the last almost decade, I would never want it to see the light of day. But I can tell [my girlfriend] if we’re talking about something. Not all of it is super secret, but sometimes it turns into locker room talk. [For example,] typically when it’s somebody’s birthday, I would say happy birthday and send them a picture of a very attractive, hot, naked woman, like Playboy quality. Everyone started doing it to each other, and it became a funny thing.
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