Autocorrect gets woman a blind girl on birthday cake
Technically Incorrect: She wanted a blond girl on top of her daughter's cake. Marie Seggie sent a text to say so. Sometimes, though, autocorrect thinks it knows better.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
I sometimes feel that the people who design cell phones should be sent to an (auto)correctional facility.
I'm typing away and suddenly realize that I've suggested something I wouldn't dream of suggesting. And I don't even notice until I get an enervated textual slap across the chops.
I am clearly not alone. For here is the tale of a woman who texted her a request for a birthday cake.
Marie Seggie of Coatbridge, Scotland, wanted to do something nice for her daughter Laura's 21st birthday. She told the baker, a friend of hers, that she wanted a cake. Then she realized she hadn't entirely mentioned what kind of cake.
So, as the Scottish Daily Record records it, she sent the text without checking it thoroughly. She didn't realize that she hadn't exactly asked for a blond girl like her daughter to be seated on top of the cake.
She'd asked for a blind girl.
We know this because 17-year-old Emily Seggie, who can hardly have kept a straight face, posted an image of the cake on Twitter.
Emily told the Daily Record: "It was one of my mum's friends that made the cake for Laura. At the last minute, mum texted her and asked her to put a wee blonde figure on top."
Wee, for those who may not know, is Scottish for small. For those who may also not know, weeing yourself doesn't mean making yourself smaller. It means peeing in your pants. I suspect there may have been one or two people weeing themselves at the sight of the cake.
The culprit was, of course, technology not humanity.
As Emily Seggie explained: "We were a bit confused why there was a blind girl on top, but then mum told us the mistake she had made with autocorrect."
Being a touch suspicious of such tales, I do wonder why the friend who baked the cake didn't ask Marie Seggie why on earth she'd want a blind girl on top of a 21-year-old's cake.
Instead, here was this dark-haired girl (yes, not even blond) complete with a white cane.
People, though, are dictated to by technology. They take it at its word. Even though it was created by some very strange sorts seated in ill-lit rooms and nourished by ill-making foodstuffs.
Still, Emily Seggie told BuzzFeed News that they left the blind girl on top of the cake because they thought it was funny.
"Hope no one is rear-ended," she added.
Wait, no. She added: "Hope no one is offended."