SAN RAFAEL, CA—Sighing and shaking her head as speech bubbles rapidly popped up on her messaging app, 32-year-old Clarissa Johnston told reporters Monday that a happy birthday text to her mother had spiraled into a whole conversation. “All I wanted was to tell her to have a great day, but now it’s snowballed out of control with all this ‘Hi, how are you?,’ and ‘What are you doing?’” said Johnson, adding that she never would have initiated if she’d known a simple text would have exploded into a five-message chain, several heart emojis, and a promise to catch up sometime soon over the phone. “Yeesh. Just a simple ‘thank you’ would have been perfect, but now this whole ‘being in communication with my family thing’ has taken on a life of its own. Looking back, I should have known this was a disaster waiting to happen based on how excited she was to hear from me on Christmas.” Johnston added that she wouldn’t make this mistake again, and promised that when it was her birthday, she would simply get in, get out, and not make talking with her mother a whole “thing.”