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Reed Mattison keeps all his text notifications on for the Jackson Hole Community group chat. He’s not sure why.
During most waking hours, and sometimes outside them, his phone blows up with a stream of texts. Though not all of them are active, the chat has over 3,800 users, about a third of Jackson’s population.
“What if I miss something?” Mattison said.
First hosted on the GroupMe app a decade ago, the channel was once a place for professional babysitters looking for work. It’s since become a wider receptacle for community events, missing pets, housing searches, recommendations for car mechanics and so much more.
Hence Mattison’s incessant flow of texts.
“I’m a psychopath in that regard,” Mattison said. “My phone is just ‘ding’ ‘ding’ ‘ding’ ‘ding.’ Pavlov would have loved me.”
The 27-year-old photographer and arts teacher has lived in Jackson for almost four years. He’s been in the group chat just as long. Now, as an administrator, it’s his job to stay afloat with its latest developments.
Mattison recently became one of the group chat overseers, although, for the most part, he was already checking nearly every message. That was a personal choice.
The group chat has had its fair share of drama and disputes, a weight that typically falls on the administrators to handle.
Payton Speer, 33, had been in those shoes for a large part of the last two years and member of the group chat since its early days. She recently decided she had enough with being in the leadership role.
After a barrage of several dozen negative messages hit her inbox during Vice President J.D. Vance’s visit to Jackson earlier this summer, Speer put the group chat on pause.
Messages complaining about the vice president’s motorcade traffic devolved into a prolonged back-and-forth dispute between a few members, mostly about whether Vance deserved respect or if politics even belonged in the group chat.
“I’m appalled by the direct messages I have received today and am not going to continue to run this group with all of the hatred this community has found,” Speer wrote in the chat before pausing it for about a week.
Under Speer, the chat wasn’t a place for politics, though Mattison said he feels differently and was among those debating Vance’s visit and its fallout.
Political chatter, he believes, is healthy for an informed community so long as the intention behind it remains one of understanding rather than persuasion.
Right after Speer paused the chat, around 50 people reached out to share stories about what the group has meant to them. Another 30 reached out offering to take it over.
“That just gave me chills,” she said. “That’s the whole point of it, those things you don’t see.”
Speer witnessed the group chat’s transition from a professional babysitting forum in 2015, when references were required. Today it’s seen as among the most inclusive community outlets. Most of Jackson’s peer towns have Facebook pages, if not many, but a group chat like the one Speer facilitated is more unique.
Speer also chose another Jacksonite, John Beye, 36, to help take oversight of the group chat. Like Mattison, the non-profit fundraiser has seen a lot of good come out of the group chat and doesn’t want to see it disappear.
“I think that there’s maybe a creative way that it can be managed that doesn’t destroy the folks that are trying to keep things cordial and kind and compassionate in a community that’s there to help people make the most of living in Jackson, which is a notoriously difficult place to make it work,” Beye said.
Both Mattison and Beye hope the platform will continue to serve as a place for odd jobs, small town chatter and the occasional reprimand to a ticket-seller. There’s a different chat for that.
They don’t expect much to change and hope the good aspects of the chat will remain intact.
Mattison has long stayed afloat with local gossip and kept tabs on the more eccentric asks. As for the latter, he’s already seen the group chat connect two strangers over a request for roadtrip company to Mexico and, another time, someone picked up the favor to drive a dog to Maine.
For the most part, Mattison prefers to take people up on shorter rides, usually to the airport.
“That’s been a fun way to connect because you’ll pick up some stranger that needs to go to or fro, and you realize, ‘Oh, that’s my roommate’s therapist’ or some person that you’ve always heard about but never actually met in person,” Mattison said.
Mattison said the chat can make it easy to view everyone as “just names on a screen.” Taking a bite on a favor, and seeing what happens, is one way Mattison said members can resist becoming just keyboard warriors.
“To actually take somebody up on their ask for help is a very very good way to meet people and strengthen our community,” Mattison said.
Updated: This story has been corrected to state that Payton Speer has been involved in the GroupMe chat since it was started in 2015 and in the role of moderator for much of the last two years. She has not been in a leadership role for the whole decade, as previously reported.
