Gen-Z wants to text at the speed of pigeon
In a time of constant notifications, “Some things are better when they’re worse,” one Carrier Pidge user told the New York Times.
• less than 3 min read
You know screen fatigue is at an all-time high when people yearn for ancient communication methods: Usership is booming for two new slow-tech apps that deliver messages via virtual carrier pigeons, several outlets recently reported.
Welcome back, letter-writing:
- One of the apps, Carrier Pidge, features digital pigeons that travel up to 110 mph, with a 0.2% chance of dying or getting lost. For example, it took Carrier Pidge’s developer nearly nine hours to send his first message from New York to a friend in Chicago.
- The other app, Roost, offers 1,000 “animals,” including a snail that sends your “u up?” text at 1 mph.
This month, Roost reported reaching 650,000 downloads, and Carrier Pidge said it surpassed 75,000+ users. Both were launched in April. The concept isn’t totally novel: Gizmodo writer Mike Pearl noted that a pen pal app called Slowly—which counts 10+ million users globally—has been on the slow-messaging beat since 2017…albeit without Roost and Carrier Pidge’s nods to Tamagotchi nostalgia.
Zoom out: In a time of constant notifications, “Some things are better when they’re worse,” one Carrier Pidge user told the New York Times. That also explains why younger generations are buying dumb phones and social-media-blocking hardware like Brick. As one sociologist declared in January, this is the year of “friction-maxxing.”—ML
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