GroupMe… God bless. The app that any involved college student loves to hate. GroupMe is a great way to collaborate and get information to large groups efficiently, however, it can get out of control. When people do not respect its’ purpose, it then becomes a big chaotic mess and instead of being useful, it just becomes the bane of my existence. The endless notifications on the phone and death of my battery that soon follows is inevitable. For the sake of everyone, there has got to be some etiquette put in place for all GroupMe users.

One-on-Ones Don’t Belong Here

There is no need to blow up everyone’s phone just to ask one person a question. I understand the occasional quick response because of convenience, but think of others before yourself. GroupMe allows for direct message so you can easily do that instead, not having someone’s number is no excuse. Tap that picture, start a chat and carry on with your private conversation leaving everyone else unbothered.

Keep Self-Promotion to a Minimum

We are all guilty of this. Since we are often involved in multiple organizations or proud of an event being held, we want to share with others what is going on so we casually post it in the GroupMe. Nothing is wrong with that, just limit the amount of times you promote and more importantly, know your audience. If you are in a class GroupMe and none of them have anything in common, more than likely they are not going to want to come to ZaZas for a benefit fundraiser. Reach out to the people you actually talk to other than just whenever you are trying to promote something.

GroupMe After Dark Isn't Cool

Unless absolutely crucial and time sensitive that you say whatever you’re going to send, don’t start conversations too late at night, especially during the week. If it can wait until the morning, wait. If the GroupMe’s purpose goes beyond personal interaction, it may be good to establish a couple unwritten rules for when it’s OK to be active.

One Response Is Enough

If someone texts a group asking a simple question that has one possible answer, let one person respond. You may know that your meeting is at 5 p.m. on Bruce St., but if it’s already been said, you don’t get brownie points for answering, too. There’s no competition for who can answer first or who can be more right, so just let one person handle it. The “like” feature comes in handy with this as well, used as a “confirming” symbol that you understand.

Keep GroupMe Traffic To A Minimum

Do not respond to a question if you can’t do what is being asked. That creates more traffic in the GroupMe and just a longer thread for others to scroll up to see what the original message was for. I get it, you want them to know that if you could you would jump at the opportunity to do so, but unfortunately class, work and homework have you tied up. It’s OK, it really is. No one is going to be upset with you already having plans, however the group may get agitated with constantly saying how you’re spending your time, save it for private messages, not the GroupMe.

Don’t Drink and GroupMe

Maybe you just ran into whomever outside the bar and you just had to tell everyone in the GroupMe for your RSO project. Perhaps you’re having one of those emotional nights and you need to inform every member of your sorority how much they mean to you. Maybe you pre-gamed a lot, but don’t have any other plans and now you are drunk looking for friends to get in trouble with. Whatever the reason, keep the drunk GroupMe to a minimum.

The embarrassment factor is potentially a lot higher when you are with a large audience and few things are more annoying than a late night GroupMe explosion when you are sober and actually trying to sleep. Here is a tip: don’t mix business and pleasure. Keep two separate GroupMe’s for your organization, so no one has to worry about missing important information between long conversations held entirely in emojis after 3 a.m.

Mute Responsibly

This is, by far, the golden rule of GroupMe. You might have read through this entire post thinking “OK, yeah, this is nice but just mute the app if you don’t want notifications.” Yeah, that works, except you’re typically in these group texts for a legitimate purpose, even if it is just to keep your group of friends in one place. By muting specific conversations or the entire app itself, you might miss something that’s actually relevant and important.