“Ring, Ring!”
Oh, look. It’s your butt calling.
You’re a finalist for a great job that requires reserve and diplomacy. You find out your phone called the HR director nineteen times in the past 24 hours. Or rather, your butt did, because every time the phone rustled in your back pocket your sphincter went on a drunk dialing binge. And probably farted a few times so it sounded like your ass was making obscene phone calls.
You’re at a dinner party with someone you’ve been dating. He’s clearly in love; you’re killing time. The host buys a block of silence when she says, “Hey, your date changed his status from ‘single’ to ‘in a relationship;’ how come you haven’t?”
You wake up one morning, after being knee-walking drunk the night before, to find out you sent that shy hottie–the one you had half a chance with if you’d have played it cool– a text that said, “I wanna pound the dust out of your rug.”
It’s gotten to the point that I can’t buy new technology or sign up for a new social media service without asking myself, “In what satanic way will this thing humiliate me?”
Take my new iPhone. It has a nasty habit of not hanging up when you push the “End Call” button. So you’re talking to a friend who insists on telling you, in excruciating detail, how much he enjoyed the ski trip you couldn’t go on because the recession turned your 401k into a 101k. You take it all in with grace. You hit the “End Call” button; turn to your roommate and say, “Mouth St. Helen just erupted.”
You look down, see the phone’s still connected and hear what amounts to the human version of ice tinkling in the silence of a faux pas.
Clearly, MIT needs to come up with anti-humiliation technology. And quick, before I lose more friends, jobs, and people I use as arm-candy until I find love. Here’s what I suggest:
• The Text Breathalyzer Test. Automatically shuts down texting when you blow more than .08. Advanced feature screens out contacts your phone thinks you’re going to make an ass out of yourself with.
• Out of Pocket Dialing. Phone automatically shuts off when it senses it’s in your pocket. Or near your ass.
• Shape-shifting Relationship Status Facebook feature. It sets to “In a relationship” for some friends, “Single” to others.
Of course, maybe we don’t need technology to overcome technology’s humiliations. Maybe we should just stop drinking. Or get Apple and Anheuser-Busch to partner up and make a commercial that says, “Text Responsibly.”
Or take turns being the “Designated Texter” for the night.
At the very least, every phone should come engraved with a version of that message on my prescription meds. Something like, “WARNING: MAY CAUSE HUMILIATION. Alcohol could intensify this effect—use caution when operating new technology or dangerous machinery.”
Starting a blog? Trying to grow one? Atlanta Magazine Blogger Hollis Gillespie and Huffington Post Blogger Mike Alvear show you how in their “Blog Your Way Out of the Recession” seminar. April 19, 2009. Click here for more info