I sent a tweet to my Canadian friend Evan Neufeld complaining about how much his phone used to beep. One day I’d receive a burst of pixies and little choirs every six minutes.
One day Evan informed me he had bought a Peeple phone. Evan’s Peeple was Apple’s new “Silicon Valley toy for Generation Y”. This scheme deliberately exploits the loneliness and anxiety of young people and “gives users an experience akin to leaving one’s smartphone at home”.
Yet Evan had also, apparently, bought a set of Nokia phones. Here’s the process. He placed four non-button-swiping Casio earphones into a Casio duffle-bag, then handed the phone to his mother. Then he took the phone to the train station in Dublin.
A guard took the phone and rifled through it, I say “searched it”, as if there had been evidence of child abuse. But there wasn’t. He gave Evan a note which informed him that the iPhone had “bugged out”. Evan, who had only heard his mum telling him “Don’t put your phone in your mouth”, found the whole thing hilarious. He also found the iPhone’s apparent malfunction amusing because Casio features use an encryption method that “makes it possible to photograph a physical label while it’s still intact”.
My source is an excellent idea – a walled-in app that communicates with other users’ apps. Right now, I’m holding a string of ethernet cables and know that I’m getting a cut every time my phone fires up its lights. However, Twitter response to the scenario has been decidedly mixed. The dslawgamingclue user, indicated that this thread should be “posted to Reddit”. Further down Twitter’s status dashboard offered me some suggestions to Twitter-scans the SMS messages of certain followers. “Sounds simple,” stated WladTheTweet, citing this approach to pranking LinkedIn.
I also wager that the Register Troll’s web site may have accessed Evan’s full “Nokia-family” chronology. Most of the Twitter responses only referenced his app, with a handful attempting to wedge genuine emojis into the epic threads. “The internet’s a really good place to laugh about death threats,” tweeted LittleD. A few offered to assist in cyber-stalking. “Those are great. I use tool-tips like that to stalk Ben’s cat,” tweeted dwa. Yet others were more concerned. One asked: “You mentioned the ‘upskipein’ warning.” Another quoted a classic rapper: “‘Who fixed the button?’ he says. ‘That’s still working!’”
This is satire? Or just horrible fucking technology?
Email Margaret at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @MargaretKells