If you’ve watched much of the TV show “The Office”, you’ve likely heard of WUPHF. It was a company started by Ryan, where the app would send your outgoing messages everywhere all at once. I’m not talking about double-posting to Facebook and Instagram at once, but sending a direct message to a single person across literally every channel they use.
Here’s a quick clip that explains it:
The brilliance of including that in the show is that WUPHF almost seemed feasible, and kind of looked like where we were heading with social media. I’m so glad things never developed that way, because even small glimpses at WUPHF in the real world are just awful.
For example, most medical appointments now end up with me getting at least three reminders — a phone call, a text message, and an email. I get it, they’re trying to reduce no-shows, but it’s at my expense. It’s like they’re saying “Because some people won’t show up when they say they will, we’re going to bug you a lot even though you’ve never missed an appointment.“
Or a few days ago, I got a text from a business coach that I follow online. I already get his emails and follow him on social media a bit, but the text was completely automated:
“Hello from xxx, I would like to send you text messages from this number, would that be ok?
Reply YES to receive texts, and STOP to deny this request. MSG and data rates may apply.”
That was a very easy “STOP”, and now I have less respect for him. I indeed text with our current coach, but for someone I barely know to try to open up yet another channel (and do it automated) is simply not acceptable.
Back to WUPFH, can you imagine if something like that really existed? Someone could send me a single message and have it light up every device I own? That would just be so so bad…
For The Office, it was a creative and funny business for Ryan to start. In the real world, I hope nothing even close to it ever comes around.
