Over at Damn You, Auto Correct, Jillian Madison has been collecting hilarious text message exchanges for almost a year now. The site focuses on messages where the auto-correct function found on many cell phones has performed poorly. They’ve collected their top 15 of all time, and it’s well worth a quick read.
Are these text messages real? It may not actually matter, because they’re hilarious even if they’ve been fabricated. You’ve likely experienced these sorts of bizarre “corrections” yourself, as they happen all the time. The result is usually a very different message, one whose meaning has been quite bastardized. The phenomenon is frequent enough that it deserves its own term: autocorrupt.
It can be used as a verb, as in:
Sorry, “That looks good“, not “That looks figs”! My phone autocorrupted me.
It’s even better as a noun:
Stupid autocorrupt! I meant to type ‘Awwww!’, not ‘Sewer!’. Sorry about that – your baby is really cute, I promise.
Best of all, it makes a snazzy and explanatory email signature:
Autocorrupt – pass it on.