Book of Daze: Apologize for Autocorrect Bloopers Day

Apologize for Autocorrect Bloopers Day is observed annually on the third Tuesday in March. Ironic, isn’t it, that our phones have so many days to accumulate bloopers on our behalf, and we get only one day for apologizing?

The phone promised to make communication easier. It delivered on that promise by making humiliation instantaneous. Thus, the need for Apologize for Autocorrect Bloopers Day, which commemorates the millions of messages that left our fingertips with one meaning and arrived at their destination with quite another. Your phone changed “meeting” to “mating” in a text to a stunning new hire. “Let’s schedule a mating at 3 PM,” and now HR wants a word?

When you took a moment at work to text the single mom you just started dating, and you closed–or you thought you closed–by saying “I miss you kiss →your phone thought it was funny to change kiss to kids. “I miss your kids.” Expect a visit from child protective services any moment.

Autocorrect technology was supposed to predict what you meant. Instead, it predicted what would cause maximum damage to your professional reputation. The asterisk is their trusted sidekick in this endeavor. You text a vain colleague to compliment him on his shirt. Instead he gets the snarky → “Nice sh*t you’re wearing.”.

The worst offenders are the near-misses. “I will be there in a sex” reads worse than it sounds when you explain—for the fourth time—that you meant “sec.” Your dinner invitation to “come over for a nice meal” became “come over for a nice deal” and now your friend thinks you are running a pyramid scheme out of your dining room.

Autocorrect thrives on context blindness. It changed “condolences on your loss” to “condolences on your boss” and created a workplace conspiracy theory that lasted three months. The patron saint of this day is anyone who has ever sent “I am so ducking sorry” followed immediately by “I meant ducking sorry” followed by rage-typing every profanity their phone had been protecting them from.

Celebrate the day by reviewing your sent messages folder and confronting the carnage: prescription → prostitution. “The doctor refilled my prostitution today”; diagnosis → diagonal. “Still waiting on the diagonal”; and church → couch. “I will see you in couch tomorrow.”

Apologize again to anyone still speaking to you. Thank the technology that made your humiliation permanent and searchable. Your phone was only trying to help. That is what makes it unforgivable.

For additional Book of Daze entries celebrating other days that ought not to exist either.

⚠️ Satire rules here. If you are looking for facts, bring your own. If you are looking for spiritual, economic, or moral counseling, try prayer. Just do not bring any lawyers around this entertainment-only venue.