This has been beat to death, but another perspective is that the blue bubble indicates a better level of service, and is thus preferred. More reliable, faster, better media sharing, etc. Green bubble means the opposite because sms is a vastly inferior user experience. The shunning of green bubble people is because if one person on a group chat is a green bubble person, that ruins the blue bubble experience for everyone else. It's not just arbitrary status signaling for me at least.

I typically use an Android phone. If I use any of the multitude of "over the internet" instant messaging platforms, we all get the full level of service.

But if someone messages me from iMessage, I can only reply via old school SMS/MMS because Apple won't allow any non-Apple users access to their IM platform. This is incredibly annoying and well established as an intentional selling point.

All I hear is "if you want me to really listen to you, then you need to buy a specific brand of device."

A "green bubble person" is just someone forced to use crappy fallback measures because your preferred messaging platform wants to be exclusive. I'd gladly install iMessage (as I've installed many other IM apps) if it was an option, if only so I could stop the endless complaints about "green bubble people" ruining everyone's day.

My experience as an iPhone user in the US is that it's like pulling teeth to convince older Android users to install a third party chat app. They refuse to participate in the solution; they don't even know there's a problem. Most Android users I know are old people. I'm basically on my knees begging them to pick an app, I'll install literally anything. They won't do it. It's not worth the hassle to even try convincing them. Green bubbles it is.

I have an Android phone and if you're desperate you can buy an old Mac Mini and set up an iMessage bridge over Matrix (https://github.com/mautrix/imessage) or BlueBubbles to work around this. I do not recommend it though as it locks you into a facet of the Apple ecosystem.

> More reliable, faster, better media sharing, etc

All my friends on Telegram have iPhones and Android. Oh, and Telegram is objectively a better experience from a UI and UX standpoint than iMessage. And it's more reliable and much faster when sending images or videos, and does not randomly convert my links into obnoxious previews. I don't mind spending ten seconds installing the app _and_ making an account (since that's literally how long it takes) to get that experience.

On the other hand, iMessage is a vastly inferior user experience to Messages, WhatsApp, or Discord. Which is why I leave it disabled, despite having an iPhone. I leave group chats and media sharing to the platforms that are built for it, and use texting for logistics while out and about.

IMO the best messaging app is Telegram. Tons of thoughtful features, constant maintenance, doesn't seem bloated, a desktop and tablet clients that work as well as the phone app, groups, notes, easy bots and stickers, etc. Compared to it, most messaging apps seem primitive and stale.

If only it was fully e2e encrypted, but maybe that's why it's so frictionless. OTOH, e2e encryption is weak when you have groups, as anyone can enter public groups, and a compromised participant in a private group can read everyone's messages.

I suppose if it's that much of a bother to a group of people they could club together and buy me a blue bubble approved device.

> 1. iMessage interacts with SMS just like normal

iMessage doesn't interact with SMS just like normal — the Messages app does. It just switches between SMS and iMessage based on the recipient.