WhatsApp is a social media and instant messaging application introduced with the purpose of letting the common miser send text messages for free over the Internets instead of squandering bucketloads of spondulix on SMS. Naturally, it functions primarily as a platform for the mass distribution of pixelated JPEGs warning of lunar curses, three-minute voice notes very few can be stomached to listen to, and heartfelt chain messages signed "forwarded many times" all carefully worded to ward off users from the path of "bad luck".
History[edit | edit source]
By February 2009, two wildly ambitious garage-dwelling tech enthusiasts, Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former employees of Yahoo!, had found themselves unceremoniously kicked to the curb of unemployment after subserviently taking the advice of one profoundly insightful Yahoo! Answers user who suggested, "Quit your day job, invent and app, and make millions. Either that or just do what I do and spend your days answering lunatic questions on a moribund website that may no longer see the light of day in a decade".
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, price hikes for SMS and calls were at their highest, turning every text message into a microscopic luxury purchase and every phone call into a semi-legal heist. As families frantically crunched numbers to figure out how to buy groceries without flogging an appendix on eBay for a couple hundred quid, booking a Thomas Cook flight abroad and prating with them in the flesh was arguably a cheaper process than maintaining a phone contract just to holler "Leeroy Jenkins" to someone on the other side of the globe. Acton and Koum purportedly came up with the name "WhatsApp" during an alcohol-induced sleep paralysis one Saturday night having downed one too many Budweisers while chatting on the phone. In a haze of half-formed ideas, the question "What's app?" was eventually born.
Presented to the iOS App Store that February as merely a status-sharing website only to be refined into a messaging platform eventually, WhatsApp's singular function involved letting users declare whether they were "available" or "busy", for it was palpable that the fate of humanity hinged on everyone knowing with complete certainty if you were free for a chat or simply ignoring everyone. Before long, WhatsApp had found its true purpose: providing an outlet for people to overshare, argue with relatives in ALL CAPS, and send enough unsolicited genitalia pics to populate an entire exhibition at the Louvre.
By mid-2010, WhatsApp had thrown its status-only balderdash through the window and evolved into a full-blown messaging beast, complete with push notifications which, for some users, were as exciting as their first orgy and just as confusing. The mobile phone was no longer a device, more so it was a needy ex with separation anxiety, vibrating violently in one's pocket as though it had discovered cocaine for the first time. Even corporate middle-managers were now hammering out messages like caffeinated squirrels attempting the simulate the illusion of real-time conversation, first on their beloved BlackBerries (rip in peas), then reluctantly on iPhones, where they fumbled between autocorrect disasters and trying to find that send button.
Acquisition from Facebook[edit | edit source]
In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg, sensing that his beloved exclusively for-profit data marketplace, Facebook, was leaking users like a sieve in a storm drain, decided it was high time to expand his ever-watchful surveillance empire. Accordingly, he casually lobbed $19 billion in couch-cushion change at WhatsApp and snapped it up, blissfully ignoring the fact that he could have just downloaded it for free and made a somehow shittier knockoff of it for only a fraction of the cost, keeping his pension nice and fat for when he retires - assuming he does - like the rest of us penniless peasants. Two years after Robot-in-Chief's acquisition, WhatsApp's privacy policy was silently updated to allow data sharing with Facebook, ensuring that his pension will more precisely be paid out in the form of metadata, targeted ads, and the complete physiological and psychological profiles of at least three generations of your family. Go figure.
Features[edit | edit source]
WhatsApp has evolved far beyond its humble beginnings as a text messaging service, developing into an all-encompassing digital ecosystem where users can share just about everything except for their sense of privacy. What began as a tool for straightforward communication has grown into a sprawling ecosystem that covers a wide range of features, from text messages to voice and video calls. Each addition reflects humanity's constant drive to complicate what was once a basic means of connecting with others. Behold its most infamous of features:
Text messaging[edit | edit source]
The cornerstone of WhatsApp, best known for enabling people to respond to sprawling confessions of emotion or rage with a cryptic, lowercase "k". Particularly useful for your ex who still insists on saying "Ay up me duck" at quarter to four in the morning as though that isn't grounds for arrest under some obscure UN resolution. Messages are instant, free, and regrettably unrecallable once read, though the shame remains eternal.
Voice notes[edit | edit source]
A feature primarily used by lazy fucks and the uncoordinated who believe typing is beneath them. Be it a seven-second burp of information or a three-minute manifesto delivered in heavy breathing, voice notes allow WhatsApp users to broadcast their thoughts without the inconvenience of coherence. Usually ends mid-sentence, or worse, doesn't end at all.
Group chats[edit | edit source]
The digital equivalent of being locked in a pub function room with forty-seven people you despise but cannot leave for fear of offending Aunt Cerys. In these lawless echo chambers, family members, school alumni, conspiracy theorists, and that one bloke who still types with his index fingers converge to share unsolicited medical advice and camera snapshots of people's lunch.
Status updates[edit | edit source]
Renowned for being WhatsApp's very first party trick, status updates are a delightfully passive-agressive method of flaunting your feelings to the world without actually talking to anyone. From vague heartbreak quotes to blurry selfies captioned "mood", status updates remain the go-to for broadcasting emotional instability to everyone you've ever met. Inspired Instagram to copy the idea wholesale, though without filters, taste, or mercy.
End-to-end encryption[edit | edit source]
Touted as the guardian of your privacy, ensuring that your deeply personal thoughts, drunk messages filled with embarrassing typos you fear will be transformed into "toxic dank memes" in the near future are seen only by you, the recipient, and the dozen data analysts quietly reading over your shoulder via some back door in the Matrix. Encryption with a wink and a handshake deal behind the pub.
Last seen[edit | edit source]
Designed to ruin friendships, fuel breakups, and inspire novels of paranoia. "He was online at 2:17. He read it at 2:18. Why has he not replied by 2:19?" Welcome to the psychological thriller that is watching the "Last seen" tick by, as does a countdown to despair.
Voice and video calls[edit | edit source]
A terrifying development in human communication. Now you can call anyone at any time of day, at any time of year, and in any part of the country; even if they absolutely do not want to speak to you. Particularly effective for catching people in compromising positions, accidentally showing your nose hairs, and freezing mid-sentence in 4K.
Media sharing[edit | edit source]
WhatsApp permits users to instantly transfer photographs, videos, PDF documents and in many cases, their last vestiges of dignity. Whether it's a birth certificate or a poorly cropped meme, it will be compressed into an unrecognisable smudge and delivered post-haste. Ideal for sending 37 out-of-focus photos of a lasagne no one asked to see but truly needed.
