Type "double texting" into any search bar and you'll find the same verdict repeated across a thousand Reddit threads. Never do it. One message, then silence, and if they don't reply, they weren't interested, and sending a second text marks you as desperate. It might be the most enforced rule in the entire church of dating advice. People post screenshots asking if they've committed the sin. Commenters arrive to confirm the damage. Somewhere a moderator nods.
The rule survives because it's built on something true. If someone hasn't answered your first message, sending "hello?" an hour later, then "guess you're busy lol," then "??" is a pattern, and the pattern says the silence is unbearable to you and the other person is now responsible for managing your anxiety. Reddit is right that chasing repels. Nobody has ever read four unanswered messages in a row and thought, this person seems secure.
But somewhere along the way, a rule about not chasing hardened into a rule about never sending two messages in a row for any reason, and that version is dumb. Watch how differently these two situations read. One: you texted "hey, how's your week going," got nothing, and six hours later sent "haha you're probably busy, no worries!" That second text is a bid for reassurance, and Reddit correctly convicts it. Two: you texted about weekend plans, got nothing, and the next evening sent "just saw the restaurant we talked about has a patio now, we should go." That's not chasing. That's a person with a life sharing a thought. The first text begs. The second one gives.
The difference was never the number of messages. It's whether the follow up asks for something or offers something. A second text that carries new content, a real thought, an actual plan, a thing that made you think of them, reads as confidence. A second text whose only content is "please respond to the first text" reads as the opposite, and it would read that way even if it were technically your first message of the day.
Here's what the never-double-text people don't say out loud: people forget to reply. Constantly. They read your message on the subway, meant to answer, got a call, and it sank beneath fourteen other threads. If your policy is one message and then eternal silence, you'll lose real connections to nothing more dramatic than someone else's bad memory. The rule protects your pride at the cost of the relationship, and Reddit, as a rule, prices pride too high. The hive mind is very good at protecting you from looking foolish and very bad at helping anything grow, because growth requires occasionally looking a little foolish.
So the actual rule, the one worth keeping: double text whenever you have something real to say, and never double text to extract a reply. If the honest content of your second message is "notice me," don't send it. If it's an actual thought, send it and go back to your evening.
The distinction lives in the wording, which is where drafts earn their keep. Reread your second text before it goes. If it's dressed up as casual but exists to fish for a response, you'll be able to tell, and so will they. If you can't tell, we wrote about texting back without sounding desperate, which is the same muscle.
Send the second text or don't. Just be honest with yourself about which kind it is.