LITTLE CRANSWICK —
A Little Cranswick man deliberately waited nine minutes before replying to a text so he would “seem busy,” sources confirmed, despite spending the entire time lying in the dark holding his phone.
Callum Weir, 25, received the message — “hey what are you up to?” — at 9:41pm. He saw it instantly, as the phone was eleven centimetres from his face.
“You can’t reply straight away,” Weir explained. “It looks like you’ve got nothing going on. I wanted to give the impression of a man with a full life. A man at a dinner. A man with a hobby.”
During the nine minutes, Weir stared at the message, then the ceiling, then the message again, and drafted four replies, including “not much, just chilling,” “bit busy tbh,” and, briefly, a voice note he deleted for being “too warm.”
At 9:50pm he sent “not much hbu,” which was accurate. The other person replied in eight seconds, prompting Weir to wait a further twelve minutes “to stay mysterious.”
Communication researcher Dr Leah Okafor said the strategy was common and doomed. “Both people are usually lying in the dark. Both are waiting. It’s two people in separate rooms pretending to be at a party.”
At press time, both parties had fallen asleep mid-conversation, which each later described as “playing it cool.”
This article is satire. The people, places, quotes and studies described are fictional.