One of my more specific social anxieties is The Fear That Everyone In Your Group-Chat Is Also In Another Group-Chat Which Includes Everyone But You And Is Also More Active.

Normally this doesn’t bother me, if only because I don’t think about it. But there are subtle ways to induce an attack of TFTEIYGCIAIAGCWIEBYAIAMA on me.

“Hey Dina,” says Arashi as we’re leaving Tony’s Mediterranean, “thanks again for paying the bill! Could you post the receipt in the group-chat?”

And everyone opens her phone and starts calculating with tax and tip how much they should send Dina, and I haven’t seen the receipt yet.

It’s a sickening feeling. You’ve sort of assumed you’re close to everyone, but then it turns out that in your group of seven you’re only everyone’s seventh friend. You’re not actually part of the group, you’re just sort of floating uneasily around the periphery.

“Sorry Grace!” says Dina. “Here’s the receipt.” She messages you privately. She has suddenly realised that there is another group-chat with you in it, although it isn’t very active and it would take her a while to find. (Most of the posts in this group-chat are yours, and they go mostly unanswered, and they’re spaced out in time because you feel terrible about being a spammer.) She could find that group-chat, send the receipt in it, and just pretend like she totally forgot to send a receipt in the first place. But you saw everyone calculating taxes and tips and she knows that and how’s she going to explain that away? So she messages you privately, so as maybe to retain some semblance of ambiguity to keep you guessing. She’d prefer you didn’t dwell on this.

I also worry about this from the reverse side. I do know that I am a part of group chats that include everybody else but one person. But these group chats are mostly inactive; they’re ad hoc affairs spun off for the purpose of coördinating birthday surprises and such.

Maybe that’s the case with all of the group-chats that I’m not a part of? Maybe they’re also one-and-done things, and I’m actually a co-equal member of the friend-group? But I’m not going to ask, that would be quite rude. So there is no way of knowing.

What kinds of signals would confirm that TFTEIYGCIAIAGCWIEBYAIAMA is false? I’m not sure. Everything could be consistent with all of my friends being tight-lipped about a more active group-chat that includes everyone but me. I don’t know how you’d disprove that.

A comforting thought: TFTEIYGCIAIAGCWIEBYAIAMA is a conspiracy theory, in the most literal sense of those two words. Once I’m aware that something is a conspiracy theory I am more likely to dismiss it consciously, in accordance with the heuristic Most conspiracy theories are false.

Most of them.