Open your group chat right now. Scroll through the last 50 messages. How many are memes? How many are reactions? How many are “lmaooo” or a skull emoji?
Now ask yourself: when was the last time that chat made you feel truly connected to the people in it?
Group chats are great at keeping friendships alive. They’re terrible at keeping them deep. And the difference matters more than most people realise.
The illusion of connection
A busy group chat feels like an active friendship. Messages flow. People react. Someone sends a TikTok, three people respond with crying-laughing emojis. It feels social. It feels connected.
But it’s not connection — it’s activity. And activity without depth creates a strange kind of loneliness: the feeling of being surrounded by people you love but not actually being known by any of them.
You can talk to 8 friends every day in a group chat and still feel like nobody really knows what’s going on with you.
Why group chats stay surface level
The audience problem
In a 1:1 conversation, you’re talking to one person. You know exactly who’s listening and can calibrate your honesty accordingly. In a group chat, you’re performing for everyone simultaneously. The result: you default to the lowest common denominator of openness.
Nobody shares something vulnerable in a group of 8 unless they’re extremely comfortable with all 8 people. Which almost never happens.
The momentum problem
Group chats have a pace. Messages fly. Topics change every 30 seconds. If someone tries to say something real — “I’ve been struggling with something lately” — it either gets buried under memes or it creates an awkward pause that makes everyone uncomfortable.
The format doesn’t reward depth. It rewards speed, humour, and reactions. So that’s what people produce.
The anchoring problem
In a group chat, the first person to respond sets the tone. If they joke, everyone jokes. If they keep it light, the whole thread stays light. One person’s energy anchors the entire group, and nobody wants to be the one who disrupts it.
What group chats are missing
Group chats aren’t broken. They’re just incomplete. What they provide — ongoing banter, coordination, shared laughs — is genuinely valuable. What they don’t provide is structured depth. A moment where everyone in the group is invited to be honest at the same time.
That’s the gap Ohh Circles fill.
A Circle takes your friend group of 3 to 8 and gives everyone the same question. But nobody can see anyone else’s answer. Everyone writes their response blind. Then all answers are revealed simultaneously.
No anchoring. No performing. No adjusting your answer based on what someone else said. Just raw honesty from every person in the group, dropped all at once.
The group reveal moment is something no group chat can replicate. Five answers appear at once. You scan them, looking for surprises. And there are always surprises. The quiet friend writes the most interesting answer. The funny one says something unexpectedly vulnerable. Everyone learns something new about everyone.
Group chats + Circles = complete
This isn’t about replacing your group chat. Keep the memes. Keep the banter. Keep the chaotic energy that makes your friend group, your friend group.
But once a week, once a month, whenever the moment feels right — drop a Circle question into the mix. Give your group a reason to go beyond reactions and into real responses. You’ll be surprised what your friends actually think when they’re not performing for the group.
Create a Circle in Ohh tonight. Pick a deck. Wait for the reveal. And then take a screenshot of the best answers and send them to the group chat where they belong.