Mobile phones, algorithms and screechers.

Photo by Tracy Le Blanc on Pexels.com

I shout at my phone,

It’s consistently “No !!”

It eats chunks of text, I know not where they go,

I prefer writing on paper, the process is slow,

But it’s not like I’m in any great hurry.

My phone uses algorithms to edit my text,

It supposedly knows what I want to write next,

It’s dogmatic insistence leaves me thoroughly vexed,

Thrice, I’ve to change my words back.

I know what I mean, what I wanted to say,

My spelling’s correct, I’m clever that way,

Stop inserting ‘date’ when the text should read ‘day’

My phone’s starting to grate on my nerves.

It’s evolving and learning,

Morphing into a creature,

That channels the spirit of my dead English teacher,

Although vibrating was never his redeeming feature,

It was firing board dusters and turning into a *screecher.

To my phone my annoyance, holds no real sway, (If I’m not having a rant, I have little to say)

So perhaps it might just be better this way, its auto correct lives to see one more day.

I’d just like it to chill its algorithms.

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*a screecher pontificates and roars irrationally whilst stood at the front of a class of students, usually wearing a maroon or purple 70s style suit, firing off board dusters in clouds of chalk.

These days they might text or email you a humiliating critique and throw an interactive white board at you. In the absence of the dated board duster.

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Grace Nomel