The mystery has been solved

Unpopular (?) opinion - text/IM systems are asynchronous messaging systems, and in most cases it's totally reasonable to not immediately jump on your phone and answer a message as soon as you get the notification.
One of my friends is the sort of person who will stop mid sentence when their phone pings so they can answer whatever they've been sent and it drives me nuts
- Can't remember the last time I had my phone off silent.
  
  Yeah my phone gets attention when i want, not when it wants.
  I have all notifications off for all apps too, i don't need an app saying hey we haven't fed you crap for an hour come look
- My wife is like that, and it kills me. I might leave your text unread for hours because if it was important, you'd call. I have priorities! Like the next round of Helldivers.
  
  I'll never call. But I also understand that not everyone looks at their phone at all times.
  
  Don't forget to take breaks... If you want to be remembered as a coward!
  
  You'd call
  Does anyone call these days? Nobody seems to pick up for fuck all.
  I've received 158 calls in the last 7 days, and not one was a valid call. All spam and fraud.
- This is so annoying, I like to remain in the room even if I’m using my phone, but my friends literally check-out. Like they’re in another place and can’t communicate with me whilst using their phones.
- A relative does that, and sometimes completely forgets we were having a convo after they’re done with the phone
  
  I used to date a girl who would answer her phone mid-sex to have some innane conversation for 30 minutes and not see a problem with that at all. That relationship did not last very long.
- I feel so disengaged when someone does that to me that I just stop communicating with them in the future
- It's unpopular because it's so far removed from it's closes analogue analogue, envelope mail. And because it's on mobile phones people incorrectly assume it's closer to a phone call.
  I find it's simpler to simplify all internet scenarios to postal mail & home telephone scenarios.
- I always see the priority from highest to lowest as Calls, then texts then emails. Texts can be responded to immediately or later in the day, but more than ~4-8 hours is unacceptable
  
  I'd raise that to 24 hours, but you're right. I know two people like that. One just lets messages pile up until they feel like responding, which can take up to a month. Another straight up told me they have so much incoming messages that they have no hope of ever going throughб so if I wanted to reach themб I should keep messaging them like every few minutes to keep the dialogue up in the list. I'd say that's just a poor communications hygiene. Suffice to say I don't really talk to either of them anymore. I know smalltalk isn't urgent, but I cant see it as a dialogue anymore if it goes slower than a message/day.

Orrrrrr he has social anxiety and has difficulty replying.
Sincerely, somebody with social anxiety
- It could be both... PvP me!
  
  First reply> 12hrs ago
  Second reply> 2hrs ago
  Checks out...
- This is me too. That and there is this stupid goddamn idea of "caring too much." Like responding quickly is a bad thing because it makes you seem desperate... Ffs I wouldn't be messaging you if I wasn't interested, but now I need to wait and play a stupid mind game so I don't lose the persons interest because they might assume that stupid thing about quick replies being a bad thing...
  I hate mental games so freaking much...
  
  If the other person cares about silly games like this, they might not be that interested in taking to you.
  
  There's a Deathbulge comic for that, I just can't find it. Basically a dude taking forever to reply to get "cool points" and accidentally replying immediately a second time, immediately losing all his cool

If it's recently, its probably helldiver's 2 in which case wait your fucking turn lady! He's risking his life to spread liberty and force democracy on godless bugs and soulless robots. THESE ARE IMPORTANT THINGS
- Rock and stone for me. Also has bugs nad robots, but more capitalist ⛏️
  
  Rock and stone, brother!
- Thank you for your service, helldiver!
- I kind of wish helldivers had more downtime so I wouldn't neglect my gf's texts as much
  
  There's tons of downtime if you're trash like me! Two minute respawn timer hangout gang through and through

At one point in college some friends and i made up a system for just explicitly state what sort of response you needed. Ok, "made up a system" is a little over stating it. Basically it was "Hey this is important can I have your undivided attention?" through the lens of stupid nerd jokes. Like, "setPriority(10) i'm locked out of my apartment do you have a spare key?" vs "setPriority(0) i am so mad that fallout3 requires GFWL"
Now i'd probably just say "hey this is important do you have a few minutes?" in normal words.
- Thinking about it, I think I have 4 priorities as things stand: 4 - Message in the group chat 3 - Message in the group chat with @ 2 - Direct message 1 - Phone call
  
  Priority 00 - A regular text message and two phone calls back to back.
- If you used setPriority, does that mean all subsequent messages have the same priority? Or is this a dsl that implicitly takes the message as the second parameter?
  
  The priority would stay as set until explicitly changed, or it was set back to the default after a period of inactivity.
- I unironicly love that
- setPriority(4) Hmmm actually I like this

You have my undivided attention… while I queue for the next game.
- If you dont know why it takes me 25 minutes to respond, you dont know me well enough to get mad that you are only #2 on my priorities list.

Yes I will have one round of video games please
- 25 Minute Civilization rounds are a thing. Just one more round bro
  
  You can tell this if your man starts replying in one minuite, but gets progressively slower and slower until it's one hour each by the end.
  
  Battlefield rounds can easily be that too. In custom matches in can be 1½ hours!

Wait.. some people immediately text back, over and over? Huh.

But what do women do when they respond somewhere in between 4 hours to 30 days?
- Actual games. Obviously I'm generalizing here and that isn't fair, but there are times when I feel like my wife is a Great Wife Buffalo who has never had the patience for that bullshit. She's very direct when communicating.

I’m actually thinking about the Roman Empire when this happens.
- Me too, but that's because I'm playing Crusader Kings
  
  Any breaks during CK3 make me forget which country the daughter was to be married to compared to the country who's line you were exterminating to get a title, yeah I need to sort that out before replying to a text about what flavour ice cream is the best. I do need to work on my memory though.
- Reminds of peep show where David Mitchell injects the Battle of Stalingrad into every other conversation he has with a woman lol

Sounds like Battlefield, COD or any battle royale game. 25-35 minute average on all those
- 1 turn in Civilization (it's late game and there are 15 other players).
  
  And Ghandi got his nukes. So time is very limited before world destruction begins.

So what's her excuse when it's the other way around?
- Why wouldn't it be video games?
  
  Because women don't play video games, silly!
  
  Because the text makes it sound like the person disapproves of the delay being caused by video games.
  
  Fully half of women report they never play video games, and even more report specifically playing The Sims and nothing else.
  Lots of chicks out there for whom gaming isn't part of their world.
- We’re not allowed to ax that question.

My priority list goes:
People in front of me What I'm doing now Thoughts in my head Digital communication
- People in front of me What I'm doing now Thoughts in my head Digital communication
  Gotta leave an empty line in between
  
  Yeah but now you put them in a code block
  It should be
  People in front of me
  What I'm doing now
  Thoughts in my head
  Digital communication

My wife plays way too many video games at work apparently. Or is this just a guy thing?

Oh I'm busy doing some other aspect of my life. Might possibly be that I'm working, at my job, which by the way was one of your requirements on the dating profile.
Not absolutely everything in my life is about video games.
- It's almost as if it's a joke.
  
  Oh, yeah, I forgot that kind of humor where it sounds exactly like a bad take.

If you want immediate responses, CALL THEM.
- Yeah, it's weird that we've relegated this amazing technology that lets you communicate by voice (and now video) to the back burner in favor of a far more cumbersome one that removes so much context in terms of tone.
  
  I hate the ringing of a phone, so I think it is a very acceptable level of cumbersome.
- Ew. Call? Like on a phone?

Whenever someone sends me an important message and I don't read/respond in time, they call to get my attention so I can do so. My ex used to get mad at me for "ignoring" her for 2h or more and would call. I was just busy doing whatever and ignoring the phone as usual.
- I hate that. Also in a business setting. By definition a message (be it text, email, whatever) is not urgent. They might be important and of course you shouldn't leave them unread for days, but for urgency there's calls.
  
  I always perceive an IM as high but not immediate importance, an email as "get to it when you can", and phone call as immediate.
  The older people I work with tend to call for email level things.

For me it's not video games, but adequacy. I found out that if I'm tired, I behave like shit and may respond with some gibberish

If you send me more than three texts in a row, I'm calling your ass to sort things out.
I don't want to be repeatedly distracted from real life. It's annoying.

I'd like to imagine it causing some situations similar to this.

- Would probably be a lot faster if he was

For an average guy, you'd be lucky to get more than one convo.
As another user mentioned, there are bigger priorities at the moment on top of texting-- like you're working. And personally, I don't like texting especially with crappy autocorrect of phones. I prefer speaking in person.

Nah... If I'm taking long to respond, I just don't particularly like you. Simple as that.
- Texting is a non-instantaneous form of communication for when things aren't time sensitive. If both of you are choosing to communicate via text then both of you are in agreement that immediate response is not required.
  Therefore the lack of intermediate response is not indicative of anything.
  Get out of here trying to put significance on things that have none.
  
  Uiuiui, someone got hurt

she cute
- Oh for god sake. Yeah those six pixels that you can see are real attractive.
  
  Hey! When I was 14, living under the tyranny of dial up, I jerked off to fewer pixels on a regular basis.
  Stop bandwidth shaming!
  
  We can tell from those 6 pixels:
  She's a girl
  Has long dark hair
  Has the ability to smile
  That's all we need to know. Good enough for me

This is what happens when your boobs can no longer distract people from their lives and you have to fall back on your lack of a personality.
- Pretty yikesy take. If your first response to a post is to reduce someone to a sex object, that's some incel-ass vibes.
- With that personality, I'd prefer you to have boobs.
- Or, alternatively, you have difficulty relating to others and so all you notice is their "appearance/perceived wealth".