Haha

A woman writes in about a friend in her group chat who replies "haha" to everything.

Not funny things. Everything. Job loss — haha. Diagnosis — haha. Somebody had a baby — haha.

Girl, that is not a friend. That's an automated reply with a phone plan.

And here's what's really going on. She's not laughing. She's not even reading. "Haha" is just the sound a person makes while their thumb is already moving to the next thing.

Welcome to Bitch Fest!

I'm Joseph Tito. Gay dad of twin girls, bestselling author, publisher, and a man currently sitting on four hundred and six unread messages with no plan and no remorse.

Coming at you from King City, Ontario, where I am in eleven group chats, have muted nine of them, and will absolutely still say "sorry, just seeing this" like it's a mystery.

These letters, by the way, come to me through Between the Covers — that's the magazine I publish. And apparently what people do with a literary publication is send me their worst relationships. And I read every single one. Some of them I read twice. Out loud. To my husband. Who has asked me to stop.

Today's theme: the group chat. The place where friendship went to become admin.

Because a group chat is not a conversation. It's a feed. And once your friends become a feed, something changes in how people treat what you tell them — and today's letter is what that looks like when it goes all the way.

Let's get into it.

This one's signed "Left On Haha." She writes:

"Dear Bitch Fest, I've been in a group chat with the same five women for nine years. We're close. Or I thought we were.

One of them, Nadia, responds to literally everything with haha. I got laid off in March. Haha. My mom went in for surgery. Haha. Our friend announced she was pregnant after four years of trying. Haha, with the crying-laughing face.

Here's the one that ended me. Another friend's father died. She posted the funeral details in the chat — the church, the time, Saturday at eleven. And Nadia replied, haha so cute.

So cute. To a funeral.

Nobody said anything. We all just kept typing around her, like she's a piece of furniture we've agreed to walk past. And I've realized I've stopped sharing anything real in there, because I can't take one more haha landing on something that actually hurt.

Do I say something after nine years? Or is this just what group chats are now?"

"Haha so cute." To a funeral.

Ma'am. Which part. The church? The eleven a.m.? Was it the casket that read as cute to you, or the grief?

That woman looked at a dead man's funeral arrangements and thought, this feels like a haha situation. And then added an exclamation point. Two of them. She punched it up.

And I want to be fair here, because she wasn't being cruel. Cruel would require reading it. She didn't read it. That's the whole story.

Here's the turn. "Haha" is not a response. It's a receipt.

Nadia isn't participating in your friendship. She is clearing it. That chat is a notification badge and she is dismissing it. "Haha" is the cheapest possible key on the keyboard that makes a red dot go away, and she has found it, and she is using it four hundred times a day.

You didn't get a bad reaction, honey. You got an acknowledgment of receipt. You got the friendship equivalent of a delivery confirmation.

But let's be honest about the bigger thing, because Nadia is just the symptom.

A group chat is not a conversation. It's a feed. And feeds have one rule: everything in them is the same size.

A meme about a cat and a message about your mother's surgery arrive in the same box, in the same font, one after the other, three seconds apart. The medium flattens them. It genuinely cannot tell the difference between a joke and a crisis. And after nine years of that, some people stop being able to either.

That's what happened to Nadia. She's not a monster. She's been trained. She scrolls, she reacts, she scrolls. Somebody's father died between a photo of a patio and a link about a sale, and her thumb did what her thumb does.

Nine years, five women, one endless thread — that's not a friendship, that's a timeline.

And here's the part that'll sting. That's exactly why nobody said anything. A feed has no floor. There's no moment where things stop and somebody says wait. It just keeps scrolling. Nadia said haha so cute to a funeral, and the chat simply continued. Because that is what chats do.

And by the way — if your group chat is a war crime, write to me. Betweenthecoversmag.com. I read all of them, I roast the worst of them, and your friends will never know it was you. Unless you tell them. Which you will. Immediately.

Now. I have to confess, because I am not clean here either.

I'm in eleven group chats. I have muted nine of them. Including — and I want you to sit with this — including one that is my own family.

I muted my family. There is a thread with the people who raised me in it, and I have turned the sound off, and I did it on purpose, with intent, and I have never once regretted it.

And then I do the thing. Somebody sends something at two in the afternoon. I read it. I think, I'll answer that properly later, when I can give it the attention it deserves. And then it is nineteen days later and I'm typing, oh my God, sorry, just seeing this.

Just seeing this. I saw it in March. I saw it while standing in a grocery store. I have thought about that message more than the person who sent it has.

And here's my actual crime. Which is worse than Nadia's, and I'll tell you why.

I heart things.

Somebody writes a real paragraph. A genuine, vulnerable, three-in-the-morning paragraph about something falling apart. And I hold my thumb down, and I put a little heart on it.

That's it. That is my entire contribution. A heart. On a paragraph about a divorce.

And I tell myself it means, I see you, I'm holding this with you. What it actually means is, I have processed this and require no follow-up.

It's the same move Nadia is making. Mine just has better branding.

Nadia says haha, and everybody knows exactly how little she's giving. I put a heart on it and I get credit. I have found the socially approved version of not caring, and I use it constantly — and until I wrote this episode I genuinely thought I was one of the good ones.

So the whole segment I just spent roasting this woman? I'm her. I'm just quieter about it.

Right. Nine years. Do you say something?

Yes. But not in the chat, and not about Nadia.

One — take it out of the group. Text the friend whose father died, alone: "I never said properly, I'm so sorry about your dad. How are you actually doing?" That's the repair that matters. Not the confrontation. The thing that was actually lost in there was her. Not the chat's honour.

Two — for Nadia. One-on-one. Light. "Hey, I don't think you saw what you replied to on Saturday. You might want to check."

That's it. No lecture. If she's mortified, she's not a monster, she's careless, and she'll fix it. If she shrugs, you've learned something real for the price of one text.

Three. And this is the actual solution. Stop putting real things in the group chat.

I mean it. The big stuff — the diagnosis, the job, the loss — goes in a direct message, to one person, who will call you. Group chats are for logistics and jokes. That's what they are for. You've been putting your heart into a filing system and getting upset that it filed it.

Here's why you don't post the callout in the chat.

The second you write, guys, can we not respond to a funeral with haha — you become the problem. Not because you're wrong. Because you'd be the person who introduced tension into a space everybody uses to avoid tension. They'll all agree with you. And then they'll be careful around you forever.

That's what nine years buys you. A group that will absolutely take Nadia's side by simply saying nothing — because saying nothing is what the room was designed for.

Now the part you don't want to hear. This chat is probably already over, and nobody has told you.

You said it yourself. You've stopped sharing anything real in there. So has everybody else, most likely. What you've got now is a maintenance thread. Five women keeping a nine-year-old artifact alive because turning it off feels like a decision nobody wants to make.

And that's allowed. Not every friendship has to end. Some of them just move to a smaller room. Pick the two out of those five you'd actually call at midnight. Text them separately. Let the big chat become what it already is, which is a place where people say haha.

You're not losing four friends. You're finding out which two you had.

To Left On Haha: you are not upset about a word. You're upset that you told five people something true, and it landed in the same place as a coupon. That's a real thing to grieve. Text the one who lost her father. Start there.

And Nadia. Girl. "Haha so cute." To a funeral. One day something is going to happen to you. Something enormous. And you're going to type it into that chat with shaking hands. And four women are going to reply haha.

And listen — if you want more of this, the magazine's whole thing is in the app. It's called BTC Magazine. It's free, it's on the App Store and Google Play. Stories, the podcast, the perks, all of it, in your pocket. Download it — and then, I cannot stress this enough, do not put it in the group chat.

Next week: the wedding guest. Because somebody wrote in about a woman who wore white to a wedding and then said, oh, is this white? And I have questions, and none of them are about the dress.

Until then, keep being unapologetically you. Loud, chaotic, and typing three dots and then not sending anything.

This is Joseph Tito — and I bitch so you don't have to.