she asked, clearly surprised.
I dont know, I said.
All the periods, I think.
You might mean, Sure, that works for me!
but I read it like, Ugh, great, theyre coming at 3.
My sister-in-law then helpfully chimed in to back me up: Yeah, you need more emojis, too.
Why would you want to do such a thing?
There area myriad ofreasons to be so frustrated with someone that youd resort to passive-aggressive texting.
Perhaps theyre late to pick you up,yetagain.
Or perhaps they were passive-aggressive with you first.
(it’s possible for you to always one-up a Sure.
Mostly memes, tweets we enjoy, and work-related conversations riddled with exclamation points, thats what.
Exclamation points convey friendliness in text messages!
And what we have is things like periods, emoticons, other kinds of punctuation.
So people have repurposed the period to mean something else.
And that something else is passive-aggression.
With one-word responses, youalmostdont even need the period (but use it anyway for extra effect).
It leaves the recipient feeling like something is going left unsaid.
Consider these two examples:
Scenario 1
Person #1: Hey!
Is it cool if I stop by today to drop off these cookies I baked for you?
Person #2: Sure.
Scenario 2
Person #2: Sure, that would be great.
Scenario one is like, Holy shit, they hate my cookies!
Use absolutely zero emojis
Emojis have no place in passive-aggressive text messages.
Emojis are there to help us convey the emotions that our words and punctuation sometimes fall short of conveying.
There is one exception: A single thumbs up.
It doesnt get much more passive-aggressive than a single thumbs up.
If the conversation is over, thats one thing.
At some point, someone needs to press pause on the dialogue.
I swear its the last time!
and you send some radio silence back their way, Id say youre actually responding loud and clear.
