Chat tools predate the Internet. Historically, before the smartphone took over (smart the phone, not the person using it), they were used exactly for that—chatting, like what you casually do with the greengrocer, with a neighbor you pass on the street, or with a buddy at the corner bar. When you contact a company or a public service, you're not doing it to chat, right? The fact that WhatsApp (proprietary tool, proprietary protocol) has been adopted as the main means of communication for everything, preferred over tools like email (open protocol, can be served and used from any machine, doesn't depend on a specific multinational) is just one example out of a thousand of how everything degrades a little more every day.
This trend is even more pronounced in Latin America, where the inferiority complex implanted centuries ago by Europeans makes the common denominator even more susceptible to being manipulated. Even the dumbest toy sold and promoted by whatever multinational is adopted by everyone without question, even by public organizations. Planning to visit my home country, Argentina (I've been living in Spain since 2001), I found out that with the public health service, WhatsApp is the official tool to request a visit with the doctor.
In my mother's time, the blame was put on limited access to information or education. Today it's obvious that it's a total lack of dignity.
©2026 Walter Alejandro Iglesias.