Burner is a company that allows people to create new phone numbers that they can use to send / receive calls and text messages, then destroy them at any time. You gotta believe the company’s founders were huge Breaking Bad fans. Anyway, Burner is now launching a new app called Ghostbot, which lets users live their life completely free of annoying text messages by having a bot autorespond on their behalf. Check out the intro video below.
Here’s an excerpt from an article on the app from The Verge:
“Voxable (leader in voice interface applications) and Burner view their creation as an option for women who often find that an unreciprocated text can lead to physical threats or a barrage of derogatory messages.”
The editors at The Verge tested out the app with the Ghostbot user acknowledging that she “didn’t get a notification that Paul [male coworker] had texted me, so in the real world, I would have been actively turning someone down without being aware it was happening in that moment.” She also went on to say “I’d also rather see a threatening or graphic text than live in ignorance about it”.
I’d have to agree. While your bot is obnoxiously thrashing some DEFCON 1 threat, you’re oblivious to a bad moon rising. It’s like a worse version of this Key & Peele sketch…
Burner’s CEO doesn’t expect Ghostbot to actually take off, but its creation is more of a commentary on how ridiculous courters and suitors are these days:
“Part of this [effort] is meant to provoke thinking about how people are going to interact in the future and how machines will play into that. Like, if you don’t treat me the right way you’re going to talk to my machine.”
For all those OGs out there, Ghostbot is like the modern day version of saying, “Talk to my friend, Tone” and hanging up on a mother-lover.
Here are some screenshots from a GhostBot convo and the app’s settings page…
I might hold the record for number of times ghosted. While getting ghosted is the worst, having some bot lob near-incomprehensible garbage my way would rile me up even more. My Irish temper would tag-team with my Italian temper to Hulk out on everything in five-foot radius.
I’ve never ghosted (okay, maybe once) and my high blood pressure still hasn’t forgiven me. I’M NOT PLAYING HARD TO GET, GRETCHEN!
Via The Verge