Dear Luv Doc,
I have a confession. I find my family group chat annoyingly “group-ish.” Over the last few months, my phone has basically blown up about soccer and the World Cup – and I’m not even a fan. Somehow I’ve been drafted into extra time against my will. It feels less like family updates and more like social media with Wi‑Fi: People post unprompted pictures of themselves, drop causes with “like/vote” energy, and I’m expected to react like I’m the comment section. It’s off-putting – the exact reason I’m not on social media. And no, I’m not an old geezer. I’m a millennial, thank you very much. What should I do to keep the connection without getting overwhelmed by the constant notifications and “broadcast network” vibe?
– A Millennial Who Wants Peace (and Fewer Notifications)
First of all, let me say I am impressed that your family has a group chat. Your kinfolk are clearly more on the proverbial ball than mine. Even more impressive is that you get family group chat notifications on your phone. Now, let me be clear, I am not marveling at the technology that allows you to get group chat notifications – although I’m positive the underlying technology is a goddamned miracle of science – I am simply amazed that you signed up for them. It seems clear that along with their love of the beautiful game, your family is also deeply involved in groundbreaking cancer research … or perhaps is on the brink of collectively coming up with a unified field theory. Regardless, it’s obvious these notifications are of such import that you would allow them to interrupt your morning coffee, work meetings, church services, or perhaps a hot makeout sesh?
I know if my family had a group chat, I would be getting pictures of noodled mud cat, creative plumbing workarounds, and, of course, PDF maps of bear sightings in Tarrant County. That shit is endlessly fascinating, but I am not sure I would enable notifications. I feel like that would achieve the same effect as smoking a modest amount of really good kid weed: Time would slow to a crawl and I would start hallucinating so badly I would have to call 911. Point is, some stones are best left unturned. Actually, scratch that. All stones are best left unturned. I have turned my fair share of stones and the result is almost always a snake, too many scorpions, centipedes, balled-up roly-polys, or a colony of ants that start scurrying around like you caught them fucking. Leave the stone where you found it and splurge on something quarried. It’s really poor form to make your friend suck the poison out of your ankle just because you were feeling curious.
All that said, it’s probably a good idea to keep in touch with your family – if only to know which ones might ask you to bail them out of jail. I’m just not convinced you need to get up-to-the-minute notifications rather than scanning their posts at your leisure. Now look: I know this solution is going to seem really boring, but you could just turn off notifications and set a daily calendar reminder to check the group chat. Maybe set it for the evening right before you go to bed. That way you could stay up all night wondering if the duct tape on your cousin’s sewer line is going to hold until his structured settlement check comes in.
But really, as a millennial you shouldn’t need me to solve what is clearly a non-problem in the age of AI. All you really need to do is create an AI chatbot to interact with your family’s group chat and have it distill the juicy bits for your consumption. Voilà! You’re freed from the grotesque tedium of social media! You could probably have your personal chatbot provide a daily bulleted list of cat photos/bail hearings/unified field theory solutions for your perusal. You could even have it filter out anything to do with soccer, but, in case this hasn’t been covered in your family Group Chat: The World Cup is over. Spain won. Trump is still a horrible person.
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This article appears in July 31 • 2026.
