Area Man's Group Chat Marks Fourth Year Of Total Silence, All 9 Members Insist It's Still Active

DAYTON, OH — Local IT help desk technician Kyle Bremmer, 34, confirmed Tuesday that "The Boys 4 Life," a group text he helped found in 2011 with eight college roommates, has now gone 47 consecutive months without a single new message, a streak he continues to describe, without apparent irony, as "very much an ongoing thing."

The chat's last message, sent by member Todd Yoshida in June 2022, was the single word "lol," in response to a photo of a golden retriever wearing sunglasses. No one has typed since. All nine members, including Bremmer, still keep the thread pinned under "Favorites" in their messaging app, a designation Bremmer says he checks "probably weekly, just to make sure it's still there."

"It's not dead. It's resting," Bremmer said, opening the thread to show that the golden retriever photo remains, as of press time, unanswered. "We don't need to talk every day to know the bond is real. We just also don't talk on any of the other days."

Yoshida, reached for comment, said he has typed and deleted six separate messages to the group since 2023, including a birth announcement, a divorce announcement, and, on one occasion, the phrase "yo remember this chat." He sent none of them. "I didn't want to be the one who broke the streak," he said. "The silence has weight now. Typing something would feel disrespectful to it."

A 2025 University of Delaware study tracked 1,200 dormant friend-group chats and found the average thread goes twenty-two months without activity before its members begin describing it, unprompted, as "still active." Lead researcher Dr. Priya Anand called the phenomenon digital limb syndrome, in which a chat keeps a permanent slot in someone's contact list, and apparently their sense of self, long after it stops doing anything a chat is supposed to do. "These men are not in touch with each other," Anand said. "They are in orbit around each other."

Bremmer's wife, who asked to be identified only as "genuinely concerned," said she has watched him open the thread, stare at it, and close it again "at least four times this month" without typing a word. "He calls it low-maintenance," she said. "That's also what he says about the gutters."

Three of the nine members have since had children who do not know the group chat exists. Two have gotten divorced without mentioning it there. One changed jobs, cities, and phone numbers, and is still listed under a name he stopped using in 2019.

At press time, Bremmer had opened the thread one more time, typed "we should all get together soon lol," deleted it, and turned his phone face down on the counter.