Are you a friend or a finger?
The quiet ache of one-sided effort
You pride yourself on sending carefully considered and unhurried messages to others, now that phone calls are hardly the done thing and it’s the best that modern day conversation can offer. You choose your words with care — not too heavy, not too light. You want to express something meaningful, something real, something unambiguous.
And then you get the reply: 👍
That single, tidy emoji — efficient, polite, and utterly deflating.
You sit there, re-reading your message, wondering why you bothered to write at all. Did they even read it? Did it land anywhere close to where you hoped? Or was the response just one more task in an overloaded multitasking list? The thumbs-up is one of the great inventions of digital minimalism. There’s a reason it’s used more than many emojis. It says everything and nothing all at once. It’s a full stop where there could have been a comma — a closing door where an open one might have let something more human in.
It’s not cruelty. Most of the time, it’s not even neglect. It’s just how communication has changed. People are tired, overstimulated, scrolling through dozens of threads a day, replying in shorthand to manage the overwhelm.
But when you’re the one who still writes with intention — who believes that words are an act of care — it can sting. It can feel like you’ve spoken into a canyon and received only the echo of your own voice back. It can make you feel even more concerned about the quality and quality of your friendship.
The truth is, thoughtful communication will always feel a little risky. It requires vulnerability. It’s easier to react than to respond, easier to acknowledge than to engage. But when we default to the emoji instead of the effort, we lose something precious — the small, sustaining act of human connection.
So maybe this is an invitation — to pause before sending that thumb. To type a few words instead:
“I read this — and I hear you.”
“Thank you for sharing that.”
“Let me think about it and come back to you.”
Because behind every carefully written message is a person who hoped you’d meet them halfway.
And sometimes, that’s all any of us really need.
