There was a period in college when my friends thought I hated them.

Hate might be a strong word.

They thoughtI thoughtthey were annoying.

That couldn’t have been further from the truth.

My cellphone was to blame.

“Ok…”

“That’s fine…”

“Come on over…”

Offending friends.

I could send a pulse of social chaos with the press of a button.

At fault: theSamsungSlash, a slider phone made forVirgin Mobile’s prepaid range.

Most importantly, it held a charge, unlike my previous worn-out flip phone.

None of the reviews from the time, including ours, mentioned the dots.

Samsung didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

I decided to ask my friends from college if they remembered the infamous three dots.

Surely, they wouldn’t, I thought.

It’s been more than 10 years.

To my slow-churning horror, most of them remembered.

“It seemed like I was always bugging you,” my friend Emily remembers.

“It felt very out of character for you to be constantly speaking in innuendo.”

Even all these years later, it’s a bit cringey to hear.

I want to reach back into the past and tell my 20-year-old self to buy a damn iPhone.

In reality, technology has been adding layers to the way we communicate for a long time.

The Washington Post, in 2015, called it “an act of psychological warfare against your friends.”

When you message your friend “!!!!!!”

or decide between using “wut” and “what?”

Every punctuation mark, or lack thereof, matters.

As soon I realized what was happening, I tried to figure out how to fix the dots.

The internet turned up only a few forum posts from other people with the same issue.

“I’ll meet you outside –EC …”

That too, was head-scratching to my friends.

“Everything made more sense.”

And so began the explanations.

So I sign my texts so it doesn’t sound like I’m being passive-aggressive."

And then I prayed they would remember.

It’s been too long to know for sure.

And just like that, a year of strained relationships ended.

Whatever I texted was exactly what I meant.

I didn’t hate my friends anymore.

Admittedly, I still have low-lying paranoia about my texts, emails and Slack messages.

Do I sound sarcastic?

Mercifully, my phone won’t betray any additional meaning.

I’m OK.

OK…