Group Chat Hats

The group chat is the most important institution in modern friendship and nobody has ever admitted it out loud. It plans the trips that never happen. It votes on outfits, breakups and job offers. It has a founder, an admin, a person who only sends links, and a person who has not replied since March but is definitely reading. This collection is about the dynamics everyone recognizes and nobody says. Muting it and feeling instantly better. Leaving it and knowing someone screenshotted the notification. Being unable to make a single decision without asking it first. And the quiet, universal suspicion that there is a second group chat, smaller than this one, that you are not in. Some are set in blunt bold sans, because they are declarations. Others are set lowercase in serif, because that is how a text message actually looks when it lands on your screen at 11pm four days after it was sent.