I’m a male member. This may be a little late, but I have a question about LINE etiquette.

I’m Flag Maker, a columnist. There’s no such rule. Of course there isn’t. Wouldn’t it be better to look at the bright side and think, “At least this situation helped me realize she’s trouble”?

I’m Basil, a male member. I’ve had a similar experience. After meeting a girl several times, she sent me a casual LINE message. I was busy with work, so I couldn’t reply right away and responded the next day—only to find that she had blocked me. Everything had been going well when we met, so I still have no idea why. A girl this high-maintenance would probably have ended things with you eventually anyway, so try to look on the bright side: it’s lucky you found out early.

She sounds like a woman who can’t put herself in the other person’s shoes. Anyone with common sense should understand that people’s attitudes toward replying quickly can differ depending on their age. If she can’t even imagine that you might simply be busy, continuing the arrangement will only wear you out. I’m extremely busy during the day sometimes, while on other days I have more free time. When I’m busy, I’ll leave my papa’s LINE messages unanswered for an entire day. My papa has retired and has plenty of time, so he goes to all kinds of places and sends me photos or tells me about what he’s seen. I can’t keep up with that while I’m working. I think things like your sense of time and how often you message are also part of compatibility. If you still want to continue seeing her, it might help to tell her in advance that there will be times when you’ve read her message but can’t reply right away. Marika

Maezawa from the CEO’s office here as well. I think this is less about this kind of relationship and more about the general rules of LINE. “LINE isn’t email—email is something else.” That’s probably the idea. With LINE, once you’ve marked a message as read, you somehow feel like you have to reply. If you don’t, it’s considered “leaving someone on read.” That’s why people have developed ways to read LINE messages without marking them as read. If you don’t want to make the same mistake again, you can either reply soon after marking the message as read, avoid reading it even if you’re curious, or learn how to read it without triggering the read receipt. Still, I think you should look at it as a good opportunity to discover something new. Learning something you didn’t know can be fun. P.S. When you message the club on LINE, it often gets marked as read right away, but you don’t receive a reply until several hours later. Was that woman also angry at the club? (lol) Haha. We used to get scolded about that a lot. (lol) Because of the system, messages were marked as read immediately, even though we hadn’t actually read them yet. I think we sent various explanations along those lines. Since messages were marked as read instantly, 24 hours a day, some people noticed. But when LINE is read through another system, the read receipt is triggered as soon as the system retrieves the data, so there wasn’t much we could do. There were also times when system glitches meant messages never reached us. It was pretty stressful—sometimes we only discovered the problem when the woman sent us a screenshot showing that the message hadn’t arrived. We’ve stopped using that system now and gone back to sending and receiving messages directly through LINE, so I think messages won’t be marked as read unless another staff member accidentally opens them. That said, it surprisingly does happen that another staff member accidentally marks a message as read. Also, the assigned staff member only checks unread messages, so some messages can end up getting buried. Managing LINE with multiple staff members comes with all sorts of complications.

I’m Kazu, a male club member. I don’t think so. Sometimes I check the content and plan to reply later, too. By the way, you can read notifications or messages without marking them as read by long-pressing them. Google “how to read LINE messages without marking them as read” for details. I barely used LINE before joining the club, so I didn’t know that either. One of the women I’m seeing taught me about it（笑）. Getting back to the question, a woman who blows up after being left on read for three hours clearly lacks self-control, so I don’t think things would have worked out anyway. Even if she hadn’t gotten angry over LINE, she probably would’ve blown up over something like leaving the toilet lid up after using the bathroom, and the relationship would’ve ended. When you message the club on LINE, it’s pretty common for the message to be marked as read right away but not get a reply for several hours. I wonder if she gets angry at the club about that too（笑）.