Using your phone at home is easy. At least if you have all five fingers. I’ve become quite adept at clicking with the tip of my nose, but that’s a topic I’d rather address another time. To use your phone safely at home, all you have to do is try not to drop it in the toilet, avoid putting anything in the oven while lying in bed scrolling through Instagram stories, and always keep it away from windows if you live on a high floor. Here’s a self-help tip: your insurance might cover a smashed phone, but the dentures of passersby, inexplicably, aren’t covered.
However, the real problem with phone use arises in the summer, when we spend hours using them under a blinding sun, on the beach, or even on a sailboat, while trying to keep the boom from snapping your head off. Using your phone these days requires prudence, patience, and a lot of concentration, and that’s practically impossible thanks to the developers’ relentless efforts to drive users crazy. I’m convinced that nearly 90 percent of anxiety problems in the developed world are directly caused by those damned pop-up windows, which become incredibly unbearable in the summer.
Yesterday, I tried to make a bank transfer from the beach, like some kind of Elon Musk, just going for it. When I opened the app, my bank asked for a code I could barely remember, but before I could even enter the first digit, a pop-up appeared, forcing me to tap “update app” just to open the program. I reckon I update this damn app about 16 million times a day.
I updated and re-entered the code, and it worked — thank God — so my bank account opened, and when I was about to click on the damn “make a transaction” box, another pop-up appeared offering me a mortgage with great advantages, so I accidentally clicked “apply,” when what I meant to say was “shove it where the sun don’t shine.” When I tried to undo the application, the whole application crashed.
I repeated the process, this time I managed to click the “x” to close the mortgage ad, but before I could click “make a transaction” again, another pop-up appeared saying “Remember that we will never ask for your passwords over the phone,” with two buttons to choose from: “I understand” and “I don’t understand, I’m an idiot.” I didn’t have time to stop my finger and clicked “I didn’t understand,” so a 10-minute video tutorial opened, impossible to close. I left my phone playing the video, went for a swim (considered hanging myself from a palm tree), and when I came back, the girl was still talking to me on the screen as if I were a complete idiot: “Remember never to give your password to a stranger who approaches you on the street shouting, ‘Give me your password, it’s an emergency!’ They probably just want to steal your data…” What a perceptive girl!
I repeated the routine for the third time, and I was finally able to tap on “make a transaction,” but then another pop-up appeared: “To make a transaction, you must be sure you want to make a transaction.” Although I was starting to have doubts, I tapped “next,” and after a good while loading (I guessed it, but I didn’t see it, because by then the sun was at a right angle and all I could see on my screen was the reflection of my own frustrated face, somewhere between the Tasmanian Devil and Wile E. Coyote after falling off a cliff), I was able to select the “bank transfer” option. I pressed the button, and as I started filling in the initial details of the transaction, another pop-up attacked me, this time telling me I had to generate an alternative access code. This was a circular pop-up; if you clicked “OK,” you were forced to create an access code, a process that required you to access data in the app that was inaccessible because the pop-up itself was covering it. And if you chose “cancel,” the message was even more disheartening: “The transaction has been canceled. Thank you for using this app.”
After several attempts without seeing a single thing on the screen and overcoming two blocks (“We have detected repeated activity consistent with a cyberattack and are proceeding to block access for 5 minutes”), and with my hand shaking (I’m still not entirely sure I didn’t accidentally transfer several million dollars to a bunch of random account numbers), I decided to give up, surrender. I don’t care if I have to carry the money myself, on my knees, with the bills in my mouth, and with shackles on my ears.
I was finally exiting the app when another pop-up interrupted me: “Could you rate our app from 0 to 5?” With all the hatred in the world, I hit the number “0,” a huge mistake: “Please describe in as much detail as possible what led you to rate your experience with us negatively.” All I could manage was to type “your damn popups are haunting me” and submit. A little while later, the only response I received was a friendly automated message, an email: “We are reviewing your inquiry and will respond within 3-4 days.” Meanwhile, we encourage you to participate in our customer satisfaction survey.” Customer satisfaction? Really?
But look, if you think the craze for pop-ups with tiny close buttons impossible to see outdoors is limited to my bank, you’re wrong. My Bluetooth scale’s app requires me to watch three video game ads, each over 15 seconds long, every time I want to weigh myself. After 15 seconds, you can close the ad, but if you don’t hit the tiny words “skip ad” exactly, you’ll be buying the game through an in-app purchase. And if you go back, you’ll see a chubby, cartoonish king again, besieged by distressing, murderous bricks, trying to figure out how to survive the castle’s deadly constriction. In the game, you’re the king. I haven’t had the patience to get through all that and actually weigh myself for months now, which is probably why I’m thinner than ever, at least compared to the king in the video game.
Finally, thanks to my usual summertime clumsiness with my fingers, I’m also hounded by pop-ups from my e-book app, notifications from every transportation company on Earth (my favorite is, “Did you know we’re zero-emissions?” and, to my surprise, there’s only one button that says “Accept.” There isn’t one that says “I don’t give a damn.”). And, of course, I’m constantly bombarded with pop-ups advertising the featured deals from one of those cheap, low-quality online marketplaces. They always begin with a message as believable and reassuring as: “Congratulations, Itxu! You’ve just won $600 in prizes! Would you like to crack the Lucky Egg and win another $600?” And I must admit that, right next to the “Accept and Crack” button, I always find myself wishing there were another one that said, “No, you’re the ones cracking my balls.”
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