Group Chat is a weekly series where HuffPost UK writers discuss friendship, diary dilemmas and how to reclaim our social lives in a busy world.
In one of the greatest days of Twitter drama the UK has ever witnessed, this week saw Coleen Rooney - wife of footballer Wayne Rooney - claim stories about her private life and her family were being sold to a British newspaper via the Instagram account of fellow-WAG Rebekah Vardy.
Vardy has denied she was personally responsible for any leaks but that hasn’t stopped intense interest in the story – not just because of Rooney’s exquisite delivery (look at that ending) but because it revealed what we’ve always known: Rooney is one of us.
Not in that she is married to a millionaire but because she chose the iOS Notes app on her phone as weapon of choice in executing ice cold revenge. Choosing to write the statement in Notes (later screenshot and posted to social media) she was able to keep her cards close to her chest till the final moment.
Ultimately delivering a blow that no rambling Twitter thread can hope to match.
This isn’t the first time the Notes app has been front and centre in celebrity scandal: Taylor Swift used it to draft a statement in her infamous spat with Kim and Kanye, Amy Schumer and Azealia Banks have both (separately) used it to respond to accusations of racism, and Lena Dunham wrote a two-page-spread when defending her friend who’d been accused of sexual assault.
But for those of us who aren’t using Notes as a career-saving PR exercise (the lack of character limit really lets you go to town) they are a place where the deepest corners of our brains, and hearts, go to hide.
In the last decade all of us have gone from only sharing our opinions with a few people in the pub to the entire world. Having access to social media platforms can be liberating (and give voice to those previously denied one) but it also means we no longer have space to mull over our thoughts, write then re-write, to ponder without fear of an accidental publish.
This is where Notes comes in, as a safe, scribbly haven. I imagine it like a filing cabinet, sat at the back of your phone, well out of the public eye and somewhere you can visit on your own when you’re sat on a bus or lying in bed.
In fact it feels so personal that you sometimes imagine you might be the only person using it - a discovery that no one else has made. That is until you catch a glimpse of a stranger’s phone on the bus, see them four paragraphs deep into a Note and it sends a shiver down your spine on the behalf of the recipient.
It seems, like Coleen, so many of us revert to Notes when we’ve got an angry rant to deploy, a groveling apology, the seventh re-write of why your partner needs to take the bins out more or a message that seems articulate AF when you’re drunk but you wait till morning to send.
But why? Put simply: having no audience is liberating. On Twitter or Instagram one slip could lead to embarrassing omissions or your latest hot take served cold.
Even on private channels like WhatsApp, the pressure of having someone watch you ‘typing’ if you’re sending a long, heartfelt message is intense (not to mention the person can see it coming), you can’t revise mistakes so easily, and even risk sending it to the wrong person.
The private Note session gives you the space to craft what you want to say over time. And even if these things never see the light of day, they have been committed to (digital) paper.
“Groveling apologies sit alongside the list of people you've slept with..."”
Not only is Notes perfect for pre-written speeches, but it is also good for the mundane, the everyday thoughts that are no less unique to you and are deeply revealing of the inner workings of your brain.
That to-do list you’ve had for months sits alongside a shopping list, an archive of all your banking passwords (yes, and what?), the names of all the people you’ve slept with, an email draft you wrote when you didn’t have WIFI, speculative headlines, book recommendations or other fleeting thoughts.
Unlike the first category of Notes they aren’t quite as shamelessly candid, nor are ever meant for publication, simply the ramblings of someone who keeps their life in their phone and not spread over hundreds of scraps of paper.
But they still say something about us: the things we hope to achieve in the future, the people we’ve been with in the past, the fears you have when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep. Notes serves as both a temporary home to messages we want to perfect and a more permanent place for the things we write when we don’t think anyone else will see.
We shouldn’t be so worried about Alexa or Siri spying on us, we’ve already told Notes everything there is to know.