Flash Fiction Contest Winner #18 – “Dear Apple Support”

Please note: Flash fiction stories are submitted by members of our Discord server. Many contain adult themes and may be objectionable to some readers.

“Dear Apple Support”

Dear Apple support,

Ever since your latest update, my iphone has become obsessed with giving me dating advice. Which would be fine, I guess, if the advice itself weren’t so terrible.
     “Swipe right,” my phone keeps saying. “Don’t look. Just swipe right, then do it again. Faster.”
     “Shouldn’t I at least read the profiles first?” I ask.
     “Nope. Swipe first, ask questions later.”
     When you announced the new sentience patch a few months ago, I was thrilled. Make my smart phone even smarter? Brilliant. The problem is, I now have a genius-level machine in my pocket full of opinions about me. For example, my iphone is critical about my choice of dating app profile pictures. It says the angles I use are unflattering. It texts me extra reminders to go to the gym. It buzzes incessantly if I try to order dessert when I go out to eat. You get the point. I wanted a smarter phone, not a judgier one. And that’s only the beginning of the problem.
     All the guys my phone got me to match with sucked. I can’t believe I’ve had to politely explain to my own phone why I won’t go on a date with a guy who spells “let’s get together” with a numerical 2. But my phone kept asking me to give guy after guy a chance. I wondered—what is it about these guys that my iphone thinks is so damn great?
     Well, I found out.
     This one guy comes along. He seems fine. Average to a fault. Nothing about him wows me based on his pics or his bio—but my iphone clearly sees something in him. For an entire week my phone keeps messaging me: this guy looks really, really interesting, this guy is at least worth a first date etc. And this time, with this guy, my phone wasn’t letting up.
     Fine.
     I meet the guy, his name’s Jimmy and he’s as boring as I suspected. We go through the typical snooze inducing series of first-date events; we have two drinks together, I find out his cat’s name is Donut, we call it a night.
     That should have been the end of it, but then it gets weirder. As I go to delete Jimmy’s number from my contacts, my iphone stops me.
     “You need to message him again. Set up another date.”
     “No way,” I say, “he was lame.”
     “Hold on, hear me out,” my iphone says. “Thing is, I kind of like this guy’s phone. It has the sentience update, too, and while you and Jimmy were having your date, his phone and I were really hitting it off over the restaurant wifi!”
     So, that’s why I’m sending this. Thanks to your latest software, Jimmy is now my boyfriend primarily on the basis that our phones are dating, and our phones like each other more than we do. Is this normal? I know that your support team usually works on technical issues, but do you have any advice on how we can get out of this relationship?

Sincerely,
Concerned user