How I Wish to Receive Notifications - The New Yorker

Photograph from Alamy

If I am reaching the limit on my credit card, I would like to be notified by a series of increasingly frantic phone calls, not from my mother but from someone who sounds remarkably similar to her. If I exceed my limit, I would like to be sent a small, sad-eyed child, who will stare at me reproachfully until I get it together and make the minimum payment.

If my phone bill is due, I would like to be texted a picture of a cute puppy. No need to tell me that the puppy’s life depends on my paying this bill. I already know. Oh, God, do I know.

Please inform me that my flight will be departing on time by sending me the sound of an air horn and a GIF of an old man dancing with joy. Not the Six Flags guy (ugh). If my flight is delayed, please let me know by delivering a half-dozen doughnuts straight to the Lyft I’m in because I thought that I had to be at the airport at 8 A.M.—ahem, Delta. A mix of cream-filled and glazed, please, no jelly, and for heaven’s sake no chocolate glazed. Why are those such trash?

Speaking of Lyft, just have the driver honk his horn furiously when he’s outside, like the old car services used to do. I’m at the age where you start getting nostalgic about the weirdest things.

I would prefer to receive notifications from my child’s school in the form of a gnawing feeling that something is very, very wrong.

I don’t need to be notified that anything is happening on my Instagram account. That’s what the goddam app is for.

Please remind me that I have an upcoming dentist’s appointment in the way that God intended—in a garbled voice mail from the receptionist two hours before the appointment, which I had forgotten about completely, but now I guess I have to put on pants?

Note to iOS developers: Install a preference that allows news notifications to be prefaced with “I’m very sorry to tell you this, but . . . ”

Please remind me that my cable bill is due by having my husband wonder aloud, for the fiftieth time, if we shouldn’t just cut the cord already—I mean, look at all these streaming services we’re paying for.

I would like to be alerted to unusual activity on my credit card via ghosts that come to me in a dream, but also send a text.

I’m happy that, as my health-care provider, you offer so many ways to provide said health care by phone, but, instead of sending me cheery reminders to drink water and eat vegetables, please just spend more than five minutes talking to me when I come in with what looks to me like a very dodgy mole.

I know that my library book is overdue, and I knew that it would be the minute I checked it out. I am a garbage human, and you’re right to be mad. These increasingly angry letters—first from you, and then from a collection agency—are what I deserve. In fact, I probably deserve a visit from the Library Police, just like in that Stephen King story I read (ironically, in an overdue library book).

Yelp: Leave me the hell alone, Yelp.

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March 18, 2020 at 10:12PM
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How I Wish to Receive Notifications - The New Yorker
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