‘I can’t live with this pressure’: Dad’s response to family group texts goes viral

Group chats on our smartphones can be a fun way to keep in touch with family and friends. However, we’ve all been in one of those groups where the notifications sound off so often that it can be a little maddening. This is especially true if you have teens and young adults who communicate almost exclusively by text.

One father’s patience reached the breaking point last year and he told his family he couldn’t stand it anymore. Dr. Thomas D’Orazio, an eye surgeon in Pittsburgh, released his frustration in a declaration of group chat independence.

When his 23-year-old daughter Allison D’Orazio received her dad’s reply she thought it was hilarious. And, as many young adults do, she shared it on her social media accounts.

“My Dad seriously sent this to our family group chat. I’m crying,” she wrote on X, which she has set to private since posting it last year. But the image became a meme and was picked up by people all over the internet, and it’s making the rounds once again now.

“I can’t keep up with the pressure of always having to lol or like or heart everyone’s random thoughts, pics and amusements,” Dr. D’Orazio texted to his family. “For all future texts: I love them, laugh at them, or like them, unless it’s bad, then I dislike them. In perpetuity. I can’t live with this pressure. I’m out.”

The original tweet went viral with more than 400,000 likes and thousands of shares. And, although Allison’s clearly not interested in keeping it out there anymore, she talked openly about her Dad’s message and the craziness that came from his waving the white flag in the chat group.

She told NBC’s “Today” that she, her 19-year-old sister and her mom usually do most of the chatting on the group text. However, her dad hadn’t said anything about the constant chatting until that text.

“The three of us [she, her mom and her sister] are very extroverted and send random stuff all day long,” Allison told “Today.” “He’s so kind and and engaged with our lives — he’s like the perfect human being — and I think it was stressing him out that he can’t respond to all the messages.”

In the end, Allison said, her father couldn’t go through with the group chat exit.

“I knew he was just joking,” she told “Good Morning America.”

Still, this is a totally relatable turn of events!