There Are Better Ways To Connect With Your Community

This experience was annoying albeit extremely funny as I’m the most stubborn person you could meet, and this couldn’t have happened to a better candidate!

I get a notification on my phone one day.

Notification: “Google TV has connected to your phone.”

I don’t own a TV — Google or otherwise.

I go looking through my settings and search online to work out that the TV adds all nearby Android devices automatically. I live in a block of flats, so my phone has connected to a neighbour’s TV. I have to remove my device via the TV. It doesn’t work the opposite way around, so I can’t remove my phone from my end. Fun, eh? 

It’s not that much of a problem except that now, not only am I forced into my phone being a remote control for a neighbour’s TV, but it also notifies me every time the channel is switched or the volume is changed. That gets annoying fast. 

I go around to all the doors but am met with the same response: “F*** off, mate,” and a door slammed in my face.

This is where the fun begins.

I access the remote function on my phone and press “Mute TV.” Then, I get a notification.

Notification: “User has unmuted TV.”

I mute it again.

Notification: “User has unmuted TV.”

I mute it yet again.

Notification: “User has unmuted TV.”

This goes on for a little while until I get bored.

The next day, I wake up early to a weird noise. My phone is letting me know that my neighbour is watching a movie. Err, thanks, phone. 

I access the remote on my phone, turn the TV off, and go back to bed.

ALERT! ALERT!

Notification: “User has turned on TV.”

Oh, great. Here we go.

I spend nearly eight hours turning this person’s TV on and off in a game of “Who will get bored first?”

I hear a lot of shouting and smashing coming from upstairs to the right, so it sounds like it’s the neighbor who challenged me to a fight at the door if I knocked on his door again. 

We get up to seven hours and forty minutes, and I get a new notification.

Notification: “Device removed from TV.” 

If only people were more decent to each other and tech companies didn’t design bad software.