Appocalypse Now

Earl Fowler

Old people have always been champion grousers and complainers, of course.

Socrates fretted that literacy would be the death of memory. Edwardians grumbled about noisy, fume-spewing motor carriages replacing horses even as the first telephones in homes were impinging upon their privacy. Our parents droned on about our long hair, loud rock’n’roll (“electronic noise”) and the dirty hippies of the counterculture.

So the wise thing to do as a contemporary oldster would be to remain philosophical about the way things are going, nod serenely and say it was ever thus. But as my exasperated dad used to say to my mom when my brother would return from the barber still looking like Jesus, hell’s bells, Muriel!

So far as I’m concerned, Peter Finch had the right idea in Network:

So I want you to get up. Now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it and stick your head out and yell: “I’m as mad as hell. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”

For I say unto you, friends, the Appocalypse is well and truly upon us.

It used to be so simple. If you needed something, you just did it. What a concept. Out of milk? Walk to the convenience store. Want to call someone? Pick up a phone and dial. Need to know what time it is? Decipher the big hand and the little hand at the same time! We were a sophisticated bunch.

But now? Now they want me to download an app to do just about anything. Everything. I don’t even own a cellphone, but I already need an app to park downtown, go to a movie and do my business at a public lavatory. Not necessarily in that order.

It started innocently enough. 

My daughter handed me a shiny, touchscreen rectangle and said:

“Here, Dad. Just download the Uber app and you’ll be able to get a ride anywhere.”

A ride! I was a regular CC Rider before you were born, young lady. Buses, taxis, trucks, planes, trains and automobiles. What happened to just calling a cab?

I’m not a complete idiot. I’ve managed to keep a houseplant alive for 14 years. I can still follow the instructions on a package of Ramen noodles.

But when I tried to download the Uber app on my wife’s phone, it kept asking me to log in or set up an account. What account? I just want a frigging ride, not a lifetime business arrangement or another convenient way for my bank account to be hacked.

The last time I had an account, it was at the local pharmacy.

And all that involved was a little punch card that said: “Buy 10 Viagra overdoses, get one free.” Now that’s an account.

But no.

“Download the app,” they said.  “Log in,” they said. 

And suddenly, I’m staring at a screen with more buttons than the cockpit of a complimentary flying Trojan horse from Qatar.

Am I booking a flight to Paris? Will I need a passport to do up my seatbelt?

We TV watchers are of course continuously bombarded by humorous commercials showing hungry, happy people ordering food through apps. Who doesn’t love green eggs and Hamm?

But this is food, people.  Before the world had completely lost its moral compass, you went to the kitchen if you were hungry. 

You took out a can of beans, slapped on a slice of bread.

You made do. Maybe you added a pickle. Spam, spam, spam, spam ...

That was takeout. And if you needed something really fancy for a birthday or an anniversary, you went to a restaurant.

But now you’re telling me I have to get my pizza delivered via an app? And this Uber business has drivers who will bring it to my door?

“I don’t need a driver,” I told my grandson. “I’ve been driving since Hogan’s Heroes was putting out fresh weekly episodes. And I have never cracked up a car like you just did, Signore Andretti.”

But no, once again no.

If I want a pizza now, I have to summon it through an app.

And the weirdest part? The app wants me to rate the driver afterward.

Rating. The only thing I rate these days is my blood pressure. (However, I do recall my friends and I cleverly circumventing the X-rating for Babarella back in 1968, a memory I’m particularly fonda.)

As you will have gathered, I strive to be a reasonable fellow. 

So I strove and strove and strove to download the recommended pizza app. After 30 frustrating minues of Googling and swearing, I was summarily asked to choose toppings.

Excuse me?

In our halcyon youth, the only toppings you had to choose from were extra cheese or extra extra cheese. Maybe pineapple or anchovies if you went to a particulary sophisticated pizzeria.

Now they want me to choose from among chichi toppings like chorizo truffle oil, roast pumpkin seed, persimmon pencil shavings and Venezuelan beaver cheese. Do you have any ketchup?

Am I ordering a pizza or joining the Rosicrucians? And why does pizza have to be touted as “artisan” now? Did it go to art school? I’ll just crack open this package of Ramen instead.

Which brings us to the app hustle that exercises me the most.

“Download a fitness app, Papa,” the grandkids implore. “It’ll help you stay active.”

By cracky, you young whippersnappers, I’ve been active my whole life. Walked a mile to school and back in the snow. Uphill and against the wind both ways. I don’t need a Big Brotherly reminder that I should be stretching or taking 10,000 steps before breakfast.

That exercise ring is closed, thank you very much. Has been since the winter of ’96. Feel free to track my steps right back to the couch. Via a possible detour to the beer fridge.

But even there, in my happy place, it turns out I need an app to tell me that I’m not dead. Yet.

My daughter wants me to download something that will monitor my heart rate, track my sleep and tell me when to take my vitamins.

Back when dinosaurs walked the still-cooling Earth, you knew you were still alive by the sound of your own breathing. And theirs.

Now, I have an app tracking my sleep cycle to identify snorts, snores, gasps, horks and possible wet dreams (which at my age can’t even be rated as moist). And sure, my blood pressure is through the roof, but only because the bloody app keeps telling me to go to the doctor. As if that were even a possibility these days.

With the continuing meltdown of the Canadian medical system, I’m supposed to trust a glowing rectangle to keep me upright. Sure.

But the last time I checked, my health was doing super-duper as I tested the limits of its endurance with the Ryan Reynolds scrambled eggs breakfast box at Tims (hold the organic lava) and a brisk walk to the picket line outside the post office.

Even as I spew this poisonous venom, the health app is on my case to drink more water. Water? I drank plenty of the stuff just trying to figure out how to open the electronic nag. One splash water, two ounces bourbon, one old-fashioned shot glass. The pause that refreshes. We need more Calgon!

You know what else I don’t need an app for? The weather. You know why? 

Because there’s thing called looking outside. It’s free. And it works.

The other day, I was walking through the grocery store and saw a lady checking her weather app on her phone. The sky? Overcast. The app? Cloudy with a chance of rain. The fact that she put more faith in a tech gizmo than her own eyes ... well, that’s what sent me to the pharmacy for my blood pressure pills. Good thing I still have an account.

Not that I’m dismissing this whole app download shakedown outright.

I could see a practical use for the technology if someone would develop one that could find my glasses, locate bike lock keys lost in 1987 and turn the channel back to The Rockford Files or Barney Miller. Why isn’t there an app for that? The down-low is that I’d be so down with the download.

But for now? I’ll stick to what I know, thanks. If I need a ride, I’ll ask neighbour Bob. If we need food, we’ll go to Safeway. And if I need to know the weather, I’m apt to look out the window.

As my parents used to grouse, I was born with a lousy apptitude.