Published in Beat Magazine, July 15, 2009

In ancient, long-lost, pre-Twitter times, I purchased my first mobile phone just as they were becoming generally affordable. As I stared at its single strip of LED screen, there was no way to know the journey we would all take into communication's future, or just how stupid it was going to get.

There are now a hundred ways to have points shaved off your IQ by SMS. It still floors me that an ad currently running offers a quiz worth thousands, with the opening question being “How many stars are on the Australian flag?”. The main screen features the number you can SMS to enter, what the text should be for each of the three available answers... and a picture of the Australian flag. Fully detailed. If you want to enter, be warned – clearly contestants will be plucked from that elite, much-envied societal group known as “people who can count”. If they want people to enter, they should make the question a little easier. Perhaps just have the single digit 3 on screen, followed by “What number is this? A:3. B: 1260485707061287645. C: Guardian Pharmacy, Melton”.

Ring tones, fart noises, compatibility scores, tarot, partner trackers, baby namers, tiny clips of almost-porn; subscribe to them all, and you too can have a mobile phone that behaves more like a sewerage outlet, beeping and vibrating every time one of these companies chooses to flush. One of the newer catergories is Magic Tricks. One ad shows the Happy Presenter's phone screen displaying four candles, and one blows out, to the amazement of onlookers. Another runs the same scenario, only with spoons bending. So if I follow this correctly, playing an animation now qualifies as performing a grand illusion? By that logic, if I play an episode of Family Guy on my iPod, I've just conjured a baby and a dog that not only can talk to each other, but can be snide at it. Behold my sorcery! David Copperfield's upcoming Australian shows may just be a screening of the new Harry Potter movie, while he waggles his fingers mysteriously at the screen.

And now that we've been dealing with this avalanche for a while, there's an extra layer of crap being added in the marketing. Of all the SMS shitpeddlars offering a compatibility check between you and your partner, one actually has the hide to say that, if you trust your love life and a large chunk of your phone bill to their particular agency, you'll be rewarded with a compatibility score “that counts”. “That counts”?!? Counts for what, precisely? Usable in a divorce hearing? A valid legal defence against a stalking charge? “No, Your Honour, I can't have been stalking her, my phone said she was my soulmate”, then the defendant waits as the judge texts STALKING – JASON to 13 JUSTICE to find out the verdict. Each time I see the ad claiming that their piece of random data generation “counts”, I get a mental image of a puppet vampire. “ONE dickhead, ah-ah-ahhhhh. TWO dickheads, ah-ah-ahhhhh.”

The joy of the human condition – every new medium is doomed to get clogged with grabs for cash, and always aimed low. I'm sure while the world's first cave painting was of a buffalo hunt, the second was a paid announcement for Og's Mammoth Tusks, and when we evolve into telepathic creatures, we'll have to pay extra to subscribe to a mind-network that doesn't include pop-ups for Lusty Lucy's Dirty Thoughts.

I think I'll go grab a book.