It really thrills me to imagine that someone, a hundred years from now, will have a collection of their WhatsApp messages distributed as evidence that they were “one of the early 21st century’s wittiest minds.”
Most non technical people in my circles lose their messages every few years, when they change phones.
I didn't realize keeping years of WA messages was part of my data hoarding OCD until now :D
Anyone have a pointer to preferred solutions nowadays for extracting SMS/MMS?
I have this habit (a bad one) of doing long joke sessions with women contacts who are in some spectrum of interest in dating or friends. Alcohol and phones don't mix, but some of these contacts really enjoy these sessions. It's basically just straight improv which sometimes might go on for an hour or more. I mostly drink alone or with people who don't speak English, and are just there mostly silently hanging out. This would not otherwise be productive time for me, and I mostly don't chat when sober. I feel guilty for the women, because I'm taking up their time. But they would drop out if they didn't enjoy them. Some of them are really good improv partners, they send prompts and I keep the jokes flowing. I would talk to dudes, but there's something about the contrast of culture and gender which seems to make these work well. If the person on the other end is too much like me, then they don't flow. Often I'll wake up the next morning and crack myself over a long chat session that was hazy. Like, some of this stuff, I don't know how I come up with it. It's not necessarily the alcohol, but rather the setting puts me in a place where I'm 100% not thinking about work or anything else serious. My brain is totally free. Modern life inhibits this flow. So, now I download the chats in whatever form available, parse them, and stick them in a database app so that I can tag some of the highlights. ;)
I'm not. Texting as a form does not lend itself to the kind of high thought letterwriting does.
I mean, people still read Sam Pepys’ diaries, which are basically tweet-format (you can even follow along in realtime: https://mastodon.social/@samuelpepys )