A Field Guide to North American Apps

Experience

Word — Like the voice of an older brother or wise uncle, the sound of a baseball hitting a leather glove. Cozy and reassuring and a little outdated — not nearly as intimate, as much of an extension of oneself as Apple Notes. Every so often when I sit down in front of Word, I have a clip from Airplane! in my head — the moment where Ted first walks into the cockpit, the feeling of all the dials and knobs at one’s disposal, the inability to ever feel that one is a master of it.

Writerly confidence

Google — Like the umbilical cord. I must pass through the Google search bar 50 or 60 times a day. On the other side of it, the whole world. I’ve been very taken recently with Barry Lynn’s argument in Harper’s that, “One or another of Google’s platforms today stands between you and your parents, between you and your children, and between you and your friends” — that Google has more direct control over our lives than all but the autocratic sovereigns in history. Google has gotten noticeably worse recently and is of course thoroughly commercialized. It’s a very dirty feeling somehow, like discovering that one was born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

YouTube — Back in the day, kids, in the swinging aughts, this was how we courted. We stood back discreetly from the computer while our love interest stared maybe a bit mystified at first at some music video or comedy special and then gradually took on a broad smile of recognition as soon as he or she realized just how interesting and unconventional our taste was, recognized all the depths that were inside of us that could, however, only really be expressed through crowdsourced videos. Oh, this was long before we started to court by ordering up our dates on apps like a delivery service or by sending evaporating pictures of our genitals to one another on Snapchat. Now, children, I have very little idea what you use YouTube for in this era when, by all accounts, you have forgone love and sex in order to achieve social justice by reposting tweets. My understanding is that you use it for watching obscure interviews in the 15-second intervals between ad breaks.

Excel — That kid everybody hates.

Apple Notes — My other half. As much as I loath most technology, and smug, duplicitous Apple maybe more than any other company, it’s hard for me not to acknowledge that I have exported my brain to Apple Notes and am all the happier for it. My current life hack seems to be to use my memory as little as possible, and my writing routine, as much as I can make it out, is to race to Apple Notes as soon as I get an idea and put everything down before I forget it. As much as I have to be grateful to Apple Notes, it’s also the closest I have come to the 2001: A Space Odyssey experience. I have never once been ‘ducking fed up’ or wanted anybody to ‘duck off,’ and the experience of being on it is very often like dealing with some evil (or overly uptight) twin, who is constantly trying to get me to be a little more circumspect than I am.

No, HAL, I did not mean “ducking”

Gmail — The mailman from hell. I probably spend more time checking gmail than I do in any other activity — and I imagine that’s true for you as well. Which is very bizarre. I didn’t used to run down to the mailbox a hundred times a day seeing if any letters arrived. Earlier this year there were a bunch of essays on the 20th anniversary of gmail, and I was astonished to realize, given how much time I spend on it, how few feelings I had about the platform. It was enervating the one time a job offer was sent to my spam. I’ve never actually had the experience of accidentally sending an email to some vast number of people. The site was just room tone, room temperature, the grey background hum to all of our lives.

Facebook — Your grandparent trying to be cool.

Spotify — That incredibly cool and friendly upperclassman who turns out to be a drug dealer.

Text messages — Your middle school crush who now has grown up homely and annoying. Remember how exciting it used to be anytime your text messages smiled at you — or pinged you wanting attention.

Substack — The lit club that sounds like a slog and a lot of work but actually turns out to be everybody getting drunk and having fun and being endlessly complimentary to each other.

Twitter — A street fight breaking out and you can’t for the life figure out what caused it.

Archive.org — The homeless guy with the street stand full of incredibly interesting material.

Wikipedia — The brainiac kid who knows everything but is home schooled for some reason.

ChatGPT — Like the Cartoon Network or something. This vast overheated machine burning away somewhere in cyberspace, producing all this loud, garish content for no discernible purpose whatsoever.

Instagram — That ridiculously pretty girl in your class who turns out to have no inner life at all.

LinkedIn — The people trying to shove their free copies of AM New York at you as you get into the subway.