I Am Not Dead
My phone keeps announcing my death. My hearing aids cost more than a car. I'm handling it.
The word “deaf” is one letter away from “dead” and my phone’s autocorrect has a very strong opinion about which one I mean.
I have announced my own death by text more times than I can count. I have sent updates on my progress as a recently deceased person. I have texted friends. I have texted colleagues. I have texted my mother. The phone always wins. The phone always picks dead.
I now proofread every single outgoing message like I am reviewing a legal document because somewhere between my thumbs and the send button, my phone is filing paperwork I did not authorize.
I want to be clear that I wrote the word “deaf” three times in the paragraph above and had to correct it twice.
This would be funny if it were the only way technology was specifically failing me.
It is nowhere near the only way.
The Deaf community has a name for auto-captions.
We call them craptions.
This is not a word I invented. It is a category. An established taxonomy. A genre. You can identify craptions immediately because they have the specific quality of a message that passed through several games of telephone and came out the other side fluent in a language that is almost English.
“Nice to meet you” becomes “ice to feet shoe.”
“I appreciate your patience” becomes “I’ll precipitation your patients.”
