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A true cynic knows that there is nothing better than reveling in someone else’s stupidity. Undoubtedly, there is no greater feeling than letting the rage course through my veins while browsing through vague, melodramatic and grammatically incorrect Facebook statuses.
When I come across a status that is particularly dumb, sometimes I’ll type it into Google with the hopes of it being a lyric from some awful song that will allow me to judge the offender even further. Admittedly, my excitement to see whether it’s a Fergie or Jason Derulo lyric can cause me to make a careless typo into the search engine, and that’s when it happens.
“Did you mean:…”
Google corrects me. When I said that a cynic adores basking in others’ stupidity, I thought it was clear that if I were to make a mistake, it should be forgotten immediately. Alas, along comes Google making me feel like an idiot.
Why is this website smarter than me, and more importantly, why is it so smug about it? Am I the only one who can faintly hear a scoff before its correction?
Maybe it’s just me, but I can hear Google saying, “Did you mean: ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’? In case you weren’t aware, you put ‘Wig Girls Don’t Cry.’ Idiot.”
I swear, that’s how Google intends it.
Google isn’t the only culprit. My phone has so little faith in my intelligence that it comes programmed to automatically correct me as I text. Gone are the days where I am trusted to send someone a coherent text message on my own. Auto-correct weasels its way into all of my messages and changes word after word until my message doesn’t even mean what I intended anymore.
(Courtesy of damnyouautocorrect.com)
Despite knowing that autocorrect is at fault for swapping “I have a really bad cough” to “I have a really bad cock,” its artificial intelligence makes me doubt my original motives. Am I sure that’s what I wanted to say? Does autocorrect know better than I do?
I open up a word document on my laptop to blog about these confusing feelings, but the page soon becomes marred by the dreaded red, squiggly line that indicates I have cyber-sinned once again.
With my self-esteem at an all-time-low, I examine my supposed folly only to find that the word document is accusing me of misspelling my own name. No matter how many times I backspace and re-type ‘Lizzy’, this forsaken machine proceeds to tell me that my identity—who I am at my core—is incorrect. I am no longer a mere simpleton; I have been reduced to a nobody.
I hop in my car so I can find someone to help me with this technology-induced existential crisis. I’m driving aimlessly when my GPS condescendingly tells me that I’ve gone the wrong way and to turn around. I can’t tell if the sigh I hear next escaped from my lips or from the automated voice that sounds so disappointed in my directional mistake—I’m assuming the latter.
I wind up at a Geek Squad, holding all of the technology I can, and proceed to barrage the workers with questions as to why my electronic devices’ intelligence are so superior to my own. I beg of them to make my computer just a touch dumber—my phone just a tad more dim-witted. The employees look at me like I’m crazy, but it’s kind of nice to be looked down upon by a living, breathing being as opposed to cold, dead metal.
If you’re also feeling victimized by your technological devices, my advice to you is to accept that the electronic world is only getting smarter, and you really have no power over the matter. To make yourself feel better, there’s always good ol’ human beings to make fun of. They seem to only be getting dumber, so it works out perfectly.
If you would like to further discuss this trending topic but are too afraid of being outsmarted by your email, you can find me at Best Buy purchasing a replacement laptop since I may or may not have hurled my previous one at a wall.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Lizzy Hernandez at Elizabeth.hernandez@colorado.edu.
