Mobile phones

[Duncan]

So my phone has an inbuilt dictionary thing for the predictive text nonsense. I am being purposely vague about this whole thing because I still feel kind of weird owning a cellphone. But yeah, this predictive text thing. Probably everyone's phones have this now but my phone is a couple years old and isn't very good.

Also I didn't actually buy it, I got it for free two years ago when people broke into my house and stole about sixty percent of my possessions. One of the stolen items included my prior cellphone which didn't actually work and I hadn't bothered to fix. But the insurance guys sent me a brand new one anyway. Hooray for theft! Except my brother got his old, first-edition Gameboy stolen and got a fucking GBA SP as a replacement. So he did way better out of it.

Anyway, that is completely beside the point. The dictionary on my phone is not very good. Over the years I have had to add many words it does not recognise, including 'minutes', 'out', 'apparently', 'awake', 'bringing', 'impossible', 'taped' and my own goddamn name.

But today I was writing a text message about what I was going to do today. And the word it suggested - right away, from the first button I pressed - was 'rape'. What the hell? Who talks about rape over text messages? Did the person who built this dictionary actually think that it would be likely to come up in correspondance that consists primarily of 'ok thx cul8r'? I am astounded by this. I mean, it won't even let me enter 'shit' and 'fuck' into the dictionary. But apparently 'rape' is something people are going to discuss so often that typing it out so many times would become such a burden that a shortcut is necessary.

I continue to be disillusioned by mobile phones.

[MrHoatzin]

It makes it easier for you to send a "help rape!" message to your local 911 or whathaveyou.

[Roderick]

Before my friend Jasper is able to write my name, "Roderick", the telephone first suggests "Smeergal", which is Dutch for, well... some really icky bodyichor. Colour me insulted.