Crackberry Speak

Since my family really got “wired,” I’ve owned second-string cell phones, the ones that come free with the plan. After a long string of dependable, if not sometimes idiosyncratic, Kyocera models, Mom took pity and urged me to pick out “whatever cell phone I wanted.”

Like that certain cheerleader–a little melancholy to the smile, a little thickness to the build, a little sarcasm in the swish of the pom-pom–the LG Chocolate wasn’t the best, per say, but the most appealing. It slid open. It was white. It was smooth, and when I touched it, it responded with a spry, eager click. It took pictures. And in less than a year, I’d owned two, both dying from ailments so catastrophic and terminal that they could only be replaced.

After the latest aneurysm, I spoke the word “BlackBerry.” It was a dependable technology. It had earned its stripes in the DC-Metro area, and with a few generations’ distance from whatever hiccups plagued the first, I felt comfortable calling it a safe bet. Who knows? In a years I could have a middling job as a pup reporter with some middle-rung paper. It might come in handy.

Happy Birthday: The BlackBerry Pearl 8130, the newest, sharpest and sleekest of the Pearl “Smartphone” series. On paper, it shines: It can juggle up to 15 email accounts, access the internet, execute SMS, MMS and BlackBerry messages, take two-megapixel pictures, provide directions; along with the other standard amenities. Navigation is handled by a trackball.

In practice, it lives up to its pedigree. The idea behind the “Smartphone,” I think, is to combine the versatility and power of a PDA with the compactness and access ability of a cell phone. Example: yesterday, while waiting for a friend to squeeze through a battery of red halter-tops, I read Nicolai Ouroussoff’s architectural review of the new New York Times building. On my phone. Am I embarrassing myself, or is this still cool?

The BlackBerry is another issue entirely. Debuting humbly in 1999 as a pager, the device evolved along with the modern cell phone, always staying a few integers ahead of the curve–and ahead of most wallets. When the familiar color-screen QWERTY 7200 series hit the market at a relatively affordable price, young Potomacians and the Bridge-and-Tunnel crowd pounced. By 2004, the number of BlackBerry users had reached two million, having doubled within ten months.

Enter CrackBerry. A unique form of Stimulus Addiciton emerged as the cheery Smartphone vibrated every time an email, text message or call was recieved. Users started feeling phantom vibrations, reaching for emails where there were none. Inane, wandering letters from friends, timestamped somewhere between 8 and 9 a.m.–the commuter surge–came post scripted with “Sent from my Verizon Wireless Blackberry.”

Gaurenteed, you’ll never find a more vanilla, inoffensive spread of language than in a BlackBerry message. While AutoText allows lightning-fast dispatches, predicting words based on context and probability, it also discourages words it doesn’t know. Typing your way to most compound words is like hacking through half a mile of Vietnamese jungle with a dull machete. God forbid you want to spell something so exotic as “fuckhead,” or “shitbird.” Most proper names, too–though, oddly enough, most Jewish surnames slide out easily, as if they were invited. Thus, even the most spirited complaint is sanitized. Example:

“Some birdbrain burned the coffee this morning. Fucking retard.”

Turns into:

“Some idiot burned the coffee this morning. What a retard.”

Suitable for the dinnertable, but I didn’t mean idiot; I meant birdbrain. Styrofoam speech is the price of convenience, and when it’s a labor of frantic backspacing to shape le mot juste, most will choose the supermarket-brand word. Welcome to the commuter’s lexicon, the lazy locution. Smile like you don’t mean it–unless you’re ready to spell it out.