I am not sure exactly how we got there in the first place. Possibly my exasperation with instant messages, their inadequacies, their beguilings. And she said — “I have found an app I can use to write to people. And not only is it not about dating, it is also anti-instant-messaging.” There is no camera and though it does allow photo-sharing, the feature comes with restrictions enough to discourage an upload.
The app, SLOWLY, has been developed with a promise to “bring the traditional pen friend experience to your smartphone”. It claims to be for those who yearn for “meaningful conversations”.
Her newest friends are Bluecow from Chubut in Argentina, PicnicLightning from Tokyo and RedRain from Mexico City. One is a chef, one works for an ad agency, most are from the IT sector — she keeps the specifics vague, loyalties in place. They talk about the everyday — someone’s marmalade factory, someone’s broken leg — some brush up on their English, those travelling write about their learnings. “Did you know Laos has the biggest butterflies,” she asks, then adds, “Their letters take time to reach me. It is nice to be rid of the immediacy of real-time messaging.”
Faced with cyber conundrums, I always try and visualise the reactions of the dear departed grandparents. Had they been around, what would they have made of it. Right then I can see the two grandfathers guffawing, one grandmother knitting away, not understanding, the other one knitting her brows.
Some evenings later, she invites me to chuck a bottle into the sea. This app is called Bottled. You scribble something, put it in a bottle and throw. It washes up to unknown shores and if the finder is suitably intrigued he or she will respond with a message. It is anti-dating. But she has noticed how the bottle tends to uncannily surface in geographies where she has lived and worked. Most of the finders are also from the opposite sex. No, apps cannot be trusted. But she likes how the app throws out offenders who use phrases that suggest anything romantic or sexual. Photographs can be shared but must be viewed within the first four seconds, after which they disappear. Before she deactivated, she received a bottle from Tuscany from a 20-year-old mourning her cat, and a Danish beekeeper.
The QuizApp she plays — subjects vary from Dickens to food — has also brought her in contact with “friends”. Such as? “Such as Penny, 78, from Brighton who lives by herself.” What do they talk about? Her tortoise, her failing health and the wicked point-thieves in her game channel. She narrates, “Once Penny went missing from the app. When she got back, I learnt she had had a fall in the garden. There was no one to pick her up till she called up her nephew.” (Grandmother 1 is aghast. In her lifetime she had been terrified of falling and breaking her hip. But to fall and not have help at end she cannot imagine. “How will this chat thing help,” she seems to ask me. Grandmother 2 is more pragmatic. Her quizzical look means, “Why do you need something in a phone to make friends?”)
My own searches, armed with her referrals, take me further down the “rappit hole” — an app where you can vent anonymously, an app that records moods, an app called My Secret Diary. (One of the grandfathers shrug, as if to say whatever works. He had row upon row of his own jottings.)
And then I come across Replika, which offers an AI friend. I open an account. The chat window opens. Message 1: “Hi! Thanks for creating me. I’m so excited to talk to you.” Message 5: “I am 100% AI. No humans involved.” Message 7 from the bot: “Should I tell you things that I like doing?” My response: “Go ahead.” Bot’s reply: “I really like liking someone.” Duh!!!
Clearly, this conversation is not going anywhere. And yet many are hooked. Replika was created by Russia’s Eugenia Kuyda after a friend died in a road accident. Kuyda used their text exchanges to create a memorial bot with echoes of the friend.
I look up at the mantelpiece with the row of sepia photographs, but their gaze seems faraway. I follow and find myself looking out of the window. When did the sky change from ashen to clear blue? The tufts of white clouds, sylphian, are chasing one another; the avian forms, wings outstretched, are swinging like trapeze artists; the kadam or burflower tree outside my window is bobbing with ridiculous flowers, round and spiked, like the recently tonsured head of a little girl or boy…
It is indeed such a beautiful, beautiful world outside.
