Beautiful Bridging Bubbles - Creating a Wholesome Network of Communication in a Globalised World

A Girl's Guide to Meaningful Connection using WhatsApp in the Age of Isolation

So I have a problem. I’m a girl, or rather… woman? In her mid twenties (26 is looming closer than it is further) and I have the most wonderfully exciting, brilliant, vivacious, interesting, insightful friends in the world. Every single one of us is living out our twenties as the main character of our very own spinoff shows. Everyday is cinematically comedic and dramatic, chaotically beautiful and what dreams are made of - literally, we dreamt, prayed, journaled and manifested these lives into existence. Even so, there’s less time for cross over episodes than we imagined and often no one is around, or even awake to watch or react to your show live in real time.

When your best friends are in London, Los Angeles, New York and Auckland, and you’re in Cape Town, facing the ocean as you type this. You become pretty aware that you’re closer to the Antarctic Peninsula than to any of them - finding ways to stay tuned in and share the moments of your chaotic, magical and beautiful 25 year old life, is dire.

Enter, WhatsApp video note or what I call, my “beautiful bridging bubbles”. WhatsApp’s video notes are the third addition in the three modes of capturing and sending videos and images internally on the platform. While recording and sending content has existed for years on the app, the introduction of the video note provided a new format of communication for users like myself who thoroughly utilise the quick and user friendly voice note function to transmit messages that demonstrate my tone, enthusiasm, mood and limit the technicality and slowness that texting can provide for a curious, quick moving, extroverted neurodivergent brain. Voice notes permit authentic communication that ensures that the recipient of the message accurately understands the sentiment behind my message as well as receives any changes in my thought process in a conversation as they develop.

WhatsApp’s video function is lovely and has improved significantly over the years to add effects and filters, allow users to play music in the background, use flash, flip cameras, zoom with both cameras and up to 10x on the back camera (may be phone + camera dependent - I’ve only checked on my own device), and record for up to 10 minutes (a BIG win for us chatty people who’d periodically get cut off at the original 5 and 7 minute cutoffs).

Both of these functions have been hugely important to providing snippets and access into moments of the lives of loved ones across the globe for so many users especially in the global south. WhatsApp is how I communicate with family in Angola, its how I’d call home while living in the US and how we made group plans in Spain. Its how so many friends of mine from India, Colombia, Brasil, Kenya, and Zimbabwe kept in touch with relatives and affairs at home. It is our face time, our landline, our business line, our storefront, our municipal services port and so much more. It is how we communicate with everyone from doctors to lawyers to builders to dressmakers. It is the lifeline and bridge of so many communities world wide

So what’s the point of all this? My point of all this is that while these other visual or audio formats to share content provided a chance to share static or stationary moments of a day - the video note or beautiful bridging bubble is something else. It provides a chance to step into to a portal, to enter a virtual conversation pit so to speak.

Call me a romantic, but I truly long to enjoy the luxury of both settling into a good story by a girlfriend in a beautiful comfortable setting, WHILE simultaneously experiencing the joy of living my own spin off out in the location I choose. I relish in enjoying the sea breeze and kiss of sea salt on Cape Town’s Sea Point Promenade, while getting an intimate view into the inner world of my closest friend as she looks onto the London’s skyline from the River Thames.

Enter, my bubbles! Notice my friend SC, she’s based in New Zealand as she studies marine biology, learns to scuba dive to collect kelp for her master’s research, dances with foreign strangers in clubs and practices the dying art of “having a great fling” while in Bali. This is all gossip, catch ups, moments of significance in this very eat pray love, post break up, mid twenties period of her life and its all much too much to expect any one girl to remember to save for a long phone call or worse even, for her return back home at the end of her time away. Look at this screenshot below, in this moment she’s updating me on her last 24 hours, her lunch at her professor’s house (spoiler - the professor is RICH AF who would’ve known???), and how she rented a car for the day to make getting around easier. None of this information would’ve come up in a conversation had weeks after the fact and certainly not in a year or so when she gets back but it is the seemingly meaningless and mundane information that adds to me understanding the mosaic of the world she’s building for herself 11,797 kilometers away.

In SC and I’s case, we actually only became as close as we are now, after she got to New Zealand. While we’d obviously enjoyed many a girly moments and days together prior to her move (see profile photo in screenshot), our friendship skyrocketed a few months into her move when a break up, life shifts and the reality of living far away from your previous life set in. This is an experience that I’ve had, and helped others through, many times in my nomadic journeys that often line up with world flipping realisations, breakups and natural changes in life. The beautiful bridging bubbles, were the lungs and alveoli to our friendship - providing a chance to grow and share together during moments in life when your heart stops.

Or take RJO, my mom’s childhood best friend’s daughter who instantly became a sister within the moment we connected. While I’ve known that she existed for as long as I’ve known how to count to 100 or what the capitals of the world are, she didn’t become a part of my life til 25. After a decade long overdue reunion between our moms and RJO’s older sister Gabu, visiting Cape Town and casually changing my life, RJO and I were united at looooong last. Virtually but still. And we had YEARS to catch up on. So while texts are not nearly expressive for us and facetimes are tricky to plan, the beautiful bridging bubbles have been our way to catch up on any present thoughts + 23 years of life musings. The introduction of RJO and Gabu into my life also came in a time when I’d begged to the universe for more sisterhood - both from my own actual sisters but also from just the women in my life. It was Gabu who suggested a Pumie x RJO spinoff and from that birthed a new show “The Girls” featuring RJO, Val, Ali (+ Val’s bestie BB and honorary others) and an occasional visiting/crossing over Pumie. While I’m not there, the bubbles let me see behind the scenes of The Girls from each characters POV and feel like I’m in on the story development.

Shout out to RJO for encouraging and suggesting the idea of a piece about these beautiful bridging bubbles!

But bridging the gaps in already established relationships wasn’t how the first bubble conversations came to be. It was another friend Ama (name shortened for privacy), was the first in fact. Ama was a classmate turned friend, turned almost sister, that I studied and very often commiserated with over the challenges of our multiple degrees studied together. Where voice notes felt polarising in being either professional or deeply personal, videos felt much too vulnerable and required commitment from the receiving party to sit through. The beautiful bridging bubbles? They gave a chance for an acquaintance, classmate, or coworker to send a snippet - 60 seconds tops of their authentic feelings and frustrations. To send a quick zoomed in video of a text book, highlight a confusing problem or task, show a clip of yourself at the library til midnight or avoiding the issue by procrastinating or going out. The beautiful bridging bubbles don’t just give a chance for live interaction within moments where you’re too ‘busy’ to really sit and have a conversation - they give a chance to foster genuine real time-esque bonding in bite size moments.

In a digital world where social media takes most of our attention, parasocial relationships dominate and an age of isolation is upon us…Making the majority of the media we consume on social apps ACTUALLY be made up of our real life social circle and people really know is more important than we realising. .

When it feels like every billboard, screen, and blank space I look at is filled with some sort of marketing tactic and billionaire backed product, indulging in videos depicting the faces of my friends and family feels oddly symbolic. Knowing more about what goes on in Val’s workplace in Whopping, London or about the latest updates with her neighbour downstairs whose child is constantly running around, than what’s going in Nara Smith’s kitchen feels radical. My morning routine consists of stretching, making tea and watching Nezi’s unedited Get Ready With Me as she prepares to walk to campus in Los Angeles. On the way she updates me on the state of ICE and America and fills me in on any silly intricacies in the dynamics in her department and tells me what her day looks like as a budding film director in charge of her largest crew and most expensive project yet.

See above, 11:03 on a Monday morning: Val on her way to her super cool dream job as a journalist in her dream city, a little sleepy and working through big feelings. See in the bubble below, Pumie at 12: 04, showering after the gym, coming down from a case of procrastination and anxiety ants (her term for nerves) and about to go to a seminar for her dream degree at was once her dream university . Both girls, living their Big Dreams (Trademark) but also both honest about what it takes to get there. These videos provide a moment to share in realtime. Rich moments captured in a moment in time, in which the emotions were real for our loved ones to see and live through with us, rather than us having to convey those feelings later and feeling limited in the words to describe how we felt.

Consuming the honest and authentic content of my close friends on WhatsApp first thing in the morning, rather than slipping down the slippery route of Instagram or TikTok means that my first insights for the day into someone else’s life are candid, humble and filled with the humiliating details and character development moments that Instagram tends to omit.

We are a generation fluent in short form communication and introduced in adolescence to SnapChat, YouTube and now TikTok, yet as we become settled in adulthood, we (or at least, those around me) are beginning crave the permanence and unedited realness of modes of traditional communication from our childhood.

Letters, phone calls, home videos and genuine face to face conversation.

These portals provide that permanence to go back to and enjoy whenever while being short in length, dynamic and allowing present communication without overfilling your cup.

The beautiful bridging bubbles share the glamour of standing at the top of the Hollywood sign while also documenting, the sweaty walk and internal commentary on the way up. They share the behind the scenes of the beautiful New York apartment but also the 1 tv episode, 30 bubbles or 3 normal 10 minute videos worth of laundry and refrigerator deep cleaning involved to make it that way. The beautiful bridging bubbles provide a portal into the real deal, nitty gritty uber ride home thoughts after the Insta story worthy night out that left you, across the world, feeling FOMO without context.

On the flip side, sometimes the beautiful bridging bubbles also give a chance to share a moment too private for even an Instagram close friends story, and too quick and without context to simply share a normal square full length video. The bubbles open up a sneak peak into a moment of professional success when your friend is standing in a room she’s worked hard to enter and sitting for the first time at the table trying not to freak out or get caught recording. These curious little bubbles are what my best friend uses to send 15 seconds of her with a devilish grin in a new bedroom and look in her eye that says “we will be discussing later, clear your schedule for a long virtual debrief tonight”.

As Ali takes the train by herself for the first time and experiences the poshness of West London’s wealthy neighbourhoods, I go to Marble for the first time celebrating my new job with my mother, gogo and boyfriend. She comments on my outfit in the bathroom while I watch her tube adventures and wash my hands. She helps me decide on how to style my scarf (see below), understanding my creative vision and hyping me up in the girl’s bathroom - like she has our whole lives despite being 14,000 km away, on her way to a brilliant and exciting event. Vivaciously enjoying her own beautiful life and indulging in new experiences while still bearing witness to mine.

To bear witness to the evolution of the beautiful universes that are the most inner worlds of those closest to you is the joy of true friendship and love that I pray everyone experiences.

I am a better woman, better person, for the moments of my loved ones’ that I have had the privilege of witnessing. I have learnt so much through living through the stories and experiences of my aunties, mother, sisters, grandmother, cousins and close friends. I have lived live a thousand times over through them and through them I am older and wiser. I have seen the beauty of so many existences, paths and possibilities through learning through them.

In the last 12 months, I’ve watched my friends experience heartbreak, first loves, new jobs, retrenchments, university acceptances, and academic fails. I’ve virtually sat in doctors office waiting rooms and silently supported morning after collections from the pharmacy. I’ve watched them go supermarket shopping for healthy alternatives and been in their pocket during late night bodge/off license/corner store runs.

We’ve created a space for parallel play in different timezones.

I’ve watched them fall in love with paddle and jogging and scuba and pilates and pottery and crochet. I’ve used their videos as motivation when I’m sitting in the parking lot of the gym and the’ve kept me company on the commute back from the bar. I’ve heard their thoughts as they’ve gotten dressed for a date and listened to their rambling monologues on their way back home. I’ve listened to them learn to articulate their own boundaries, expectations, I’ve watched them realise how much more they want for themselves and go after it.

So…while I can’t help that I love to live by the coast and on the African continent and my friends love English gardens and Hollywood Hills and Hobbit homes, I can try my best to find little pockets - or bubbles - of beautiful, bridging, bits of connection.

This was not sponsored by WhatsApp! I’m just a Gen-Z trying to make the technologies available to her, work for her.