YMMV / Apple Texts

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Just because you don't care for someone, doesn't mean you should mistreat them; if not out of decency, then for fear of revenge or burning bridges.
  • While happy marriages obviously don't make for entertaining videos, the sheer number of times marriages have gone wrong in the stories due to personal, financial or legal issues could be seen as a case for why traditional marriage is a obsolete institution, or at least not for everyone who wants a relationship.
• Cliché Storm:
  • Stock Phrases such as "Huh?", "What?", "You can't be serious!", "You're lying!", "We're strangers!", "You're nothing to me!", etc. are frequently used in the Apple Texts videos.
  • Cheating, gold-diggers, inheritance issues, stalkers; there's a reason many commentators compare the videos to Soap Operas, though they mostly say so with the caviat that it doesn't diminish their enjoyment of them.
• Foregone Conclusion: The majority of videos that involve a married couple end with a couple getting divorced.
• Friendly Fandoms: There seem to be a significant overlap between fans of Reddit story video channels and fans of videos by Apple Texts and other text story video channels.
• Karmic Overkill: Rare, but can sometimes happen, especially when Fridge Horror gets involved.
  • In order to pay back their debts, a lot of the antagonists end up in what is basically indentured servitude, which is unsettling enough, but some female antagonists are even forced into what's heavily implied to be the sex trade.
  • The antagonist of one story was a selfish, inconsiderate jerk, but never violent or a criminal, but he ends up married against his will to a woman implied to be some kind of gangster after a vain attempt to marry his ex for her money. The epilogue simply states that the two are having a kid despite the serious debt the man is in, meaning there's going to be a child involved in what will likely be an abusive and dangerous relationship.
  • Some of these stories end with the antagonist in an abusive relationship, whether it be with their parents or partner which many YouTube commentators agree that no amount of backstabbing, bullying, or cheating can ever justify. In one infamous video, a woman falls in love with her old high school crush at a reunion. She immediately tells her husband and asks for a divorce which he grants. It turns out to be a trap and the woman was forced into slavery by her crush and his wife. When she reaches out to her ex for help, he laughs in her face. The woman is eventually freed, but many commentators felt that she did not deserve her fate, especially since that unlike other antagonists (and even though she was very rude and dismissive towards her husband) she still asked for a divorce upfront instead of having an affair. Commentators were also disgusted by the protagonist for refusing to help his ex-wife, and the creators of the video for equating human trafficking and slavery with karmic justice.
  • In one story, a woman disowns and abandons her daughter to be exploited by her father and the modelling industry. Yes, the girl said some incredibly mean and hurtful things when her mother tried to warn her about the dangers of the industry and protect her, but her mother's completely giving up on her when she's only thirteen. A lot of commentors thought that was a horrible thing for the 'protagonist' to do and that she was as bad as her husband.
• Narm:
  • When Cross-Dressing Voices are used, such as when a female voice artist does a male character, the character's dramatic dynamic is made less than convincing. The same goes for any 'little kid or teenager' when they're obviously being played by an adult.
  • Occasionally as a result of Soundtrack Dissonance depending on the video.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The viewers for this video didn't sympathize much with Lisa; while she suffers the stock calamity of being tripped and having wine poured on her at the wedding of her brother and best friend by Phoebe (the stock woman obsessed with being the bride's best friend), she decides to leave without telling the happy couple what's going on. Several people commented that she came across as extremely petulant by ditching the wedding even when Annie, the bride, was begging her to stay and offering a replacement dress, creating extra stress for two people she supposedly loves and hurting them by not attending, as well as generating inevitable gossip about why she was missing from such an important event, just for a 'gotcha!' moment and to score points off Phoebe. Annie at one point rants at Phoebe about how she ruined her wedding, but a large part of that was Lisa's fault since she was the one who refused to attend despite there being an easy and perfect solution to her ruined outfit.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Western listeners are often baffled at how the 'friends' of greedy housewives previously put up with their constant leeching and expectation to have their meals, holidays, etc. paid for; but in China, where the stories originate, footing the bill at restaurants is regarded as a generous act and shows how you value your relationship with the other person. So it's not so much that the antagonist is being greedy (at first) but that they consistently refuse to be generous in return and clearly don't respect or value the people they claim to be friends with.
  • Western listeners are also often baffled by how long it takes for the protagonist to finally stand up to their abuser. The is due to the newness of the concept that one can and should stand up to abuse after a long-standing "pacifist" ideal. Expect the word "doormat" to show up a lot in the comment section of such videos.

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