Is AUTHOR wrong in the post ? POST : I use a messaging app called Marco Polo for 90% of my communication these days. Think "video walkie-talkie" if you've never heard of it; you record a video message and they receive it, can be as short or long as you want, you can watch live or later, but you can't talk over each other.

Anyway, my buddy has this annoying habit of sending these messages while he's eating. So he's talking whilst chewing and smacking his lips and pausing to swallow and take another bite, etc. He *never* does this in-person, but for some reason he does it a lot via Marco Polo.

I think I'm a good communicator, so we've talked about it. I've let him know that it irks me. He's heard me, but he keeps doing it. I've gone from politely explaining that it's a personal pet peeve of mine and asking him to stop as a favour/compromise for a friend - to straight up yelling at him to stop being gross.

I finally snapped the other day when we were in a group chat with him and my wife and he was doing it again. So when I finished his message, I responded by stating that I refuse to acknowledge or respond to anything he says while he's eating. I'd *previously* sent a much harsher message but I deleted it, and I'm pretty sure he didn't see it - but my wife did and she thought it was way overboard, and thought my altered version wasn't much better. Which led to this post.

I get that it's a personal pet peeve of mine. I get that it's my problem and not his. It does not hinder my ability to understand what he's saying, and I rarely see the food in his mouth. But the *sounds* - my goodness the sounds are the stuff of gory horror movies to me. This app amplifies/equalises sounds like crazy, which is usually a very good thing. But I'm this specific situation, it makes me not want to talk to him on the app anymore because I don't know when I'll be affronted by his habit.

**For context**; this us a very close friend who is now my co-worker. We're like brothers at this point - for better *and* worse. I have very few friends I'm this close to that I *also* "fight" with. I'm brutally honest with him when I feel it's necessary, because I know I don't have to play it safe seeing as our bond is strong enough. He's not as brutally honest with me because I'm a perfect human being who can do no wrong (/s), but he *does* take a lot of liberties with our relationship for the same reason I'm honest with him. As such, I feel like I've been coming down on him for various things over the last year that make me feel like a nagging parent, but at the same time I feel like he *needs* to hear that he's breaking a bunch of (what I consider to be) common decency/etiquette rules. I can give plenty of examples but this is awa already way too long.