Social Experiment: Killing Autocorrect

Let’s accept it, our chubby little human fingers were not evolutionarily engineered to tap out epic works of literature on our phones. That being said, autocorrect¹ is a gift that gets us closer to passable English. Autocorrect gets heralded as the savior of humanity² as it allows us all to pretend that we’re a bit smarter than we actually are.

After that endorsement, my social experiment seems rather stupid. I plan on³ doing away with my phone’s autocorrect function. Time frame: Indefinite.

Why am I doing this? Mostly to pick up chicks.⁴ Beyond that, Neil Postman’s Technopoly has scared me into thinking I won’t be able to live without this artificial construct of the modern cellular telephone, and I just can’t stand for that.

In preparation I downloaded a dictionary app, listened to Weird Al’s “Word Crimes” seventeen times,⁵ and attempted to have a seance with the spirit of Noah Webster.⁶ I’ve asked some of my most textually active friends⁷ to monitor my spelling and grammar, so we’ll see how things go.

DISCLAIMER: If this seems petty and first-world centric, that’s because it is. Then again, that’s kind of the point.

¹Or autocowreck, as is often the case.
²Or at least humanity’s ego.
³Actually it’s been 2 whole days and I’m going strong.
⁴Why does anyone engage in social experiments?
⁵Worth it.
⁶Dictionary guy. He didn’t show. Why am I not surprised?
⁷Good friends don’t question your textual orientation, even when you’re wrestling with your textuality. Just beware of TexTDs