Everyone knows the feeling of being stuck in an awkward conversation with someone terrible at a party. But what if there was a way out? What if all you needed to do was subtly tap on the back of your phone, and pick up a fake call?
"Sorry, I need to take this," you could say with a slight grin, as you walk away from a stranger you can avoid for the rest of the night. Game. Set. Match.
This introvert's fever dream is Tickle, an app that unfortunately does not exist, but is the basis of a spoof video uploaded this month to YouTube.
"Using your phones accelerometer, Tickle can detect subtle gestures from the user," supposed creator Alex Cornell tells us. "All you have to do is touch or move your phone in an awkward manner, like so, and the tickle app will generate a phantom phone call that will allow you to politely excuse yourself from any given situation."
After Tickle picked up some initial media coverage, Cornell admitted to TechCrunch he and friend Phil Mills just like putting together very well-produced videos for laughs. (He's made others if you're interested.)
The painful part is that Tickle -- which again, is fake -- could exist. An accelerometer is just a little piece of silicon that moves back and forth in your phone in order to detect movement. While it might not be able to pick up on a motion as subtle as scratching or petting, that microscopic silicon should be able to read even a slight wiggling and tell an app to make a call.
Silicon Valley, get on this.