Ah, the digital age. So much technological progress has occurred in the last 3 decades that has made life so much easier…so easy, in fact, that even our derrieres can perform many tasks with simplicity. Shall we count the things we can do with our glutes today — besides sit on them — that were not possible as recently as 30 years ago?
1. Butt-dial: Call your ex (or anyone else, really).
The butt-dial definitely adds a new dimension of meaning to the term, “booty call,” doesn’t it? Put that smartphone in the back pocket, sit down, and voila: you’re calling someone you don’t mean to call and letting them listen in on a conversation you might not mean for them to hear. I once had a friend tell me that she learned about her boyfriend cheating on her as the result of a butt-dial — a cautionary tale to the cheaters out there, that’s for sure.
2. Butt-surf: Turn on/off or change channels on the TV.
I know the first remote control came out in 1956, but my parents certainly didn’t have one when I was young. I still remember being about 10 years old or so when my mother hollered at me from her bedroom while I was playing in the basement. I ran up two flights of stairs to see what she wanted, only to have her ask me to turn off the television that was only 10 feet away from her. These days, you can just shift your position ever so slightly on the couch (while sitting on the remote control) and have the same impact. My butt’s favorite thing to do — apparently — is to change the language from English to Spanish while my daughter is watching Sofia the First.
3. Butt-trade: Sell $800 million worth of bonds.
I used to trade foreign currency derivatives in New York City, and there was a tale circulating among us on Wall Street about a trader who went to visit another trader working on the bond desk at Salomon Brothers. Trader A inadvertently sat down on Trader B’s keyboard while saying “hi,” executing an order to liquidate his bond portfolio — about $800 million worth of bonds. Oops! As they say in the trading lingo, “You’re done.” I’m sure someone’s goose was cooked over that fiasco (and I’m sure it was somewhat based in truth — even if it wasn’t Salomon Brothers and even if the value of bonds sold ballooned over time with the telling of the tale).
4. Butt-shop: Buy crap on Amazon.com.
This 1-click ordering thing is super convenient — I should know, because I use it all the time. But I can also easily see butt-buying things by sitting on your keyboard just so, or by butt-rubbing against just the right part of the screen on your smartphone. Luckily, Amazon realizes how easy it is to buy something by accident, and they let you cancel any unintentional 1-click orders (especially for Kindle) without much hassle.
5. Butt-share: Send out a nonsensical tweet or update on social media.
With all the great integration of social media apps on smartphones these days, I can easily see how one can “butt-tweet.” We at Adeptia may have perpetrated a butt-tweet ourselves at 7:04 a.m.
Okay, so it couldn’t have been a “butt-tweet” from us or else it would have read “jkuiymm” or something like that, but it did get me thinking. It could be pretty darn easy to sit on your keyboard while your cursor is in the “What’s happening” part of your Twitter home page and tweet out something totally nonsensical, couldn’t it? (We are still investigating what happened on our end as I type, but we promise to refrain from more butt-tweeting in the future).
6. Butt-mail: Piss off your boss and colleagues.
People have always been passive-aggressive, but throw email into the equation and the perfect channel is born. What better medium is there for asking inflammatory questions in a seemingly innocent way? This is how you get Email Wars in Corporate America. Well, picture this: you’re at the airport checking your smartphone when you get an email cc’ing your boss — and everyone else — subtly positioning you as incompetent. With two fingers, you peck out a blistering tirade in response. Before you press send, you have the presence of mind to get up and walk around for a few minutes to make sure you REALLY want to send something THAT strongly worded. You put the phone in your purse, lean on it wrong, and boom! Your email is sent. Talk about looking like a butthead.
7. Butt-integrate: Perform B2B data integration.
Okay, just kidding. My company has developed a self-service integration platform that makes it dirt-simple for business users to perform their own B2B integrations, but I haven’t heard our CTO say to me yet that we can offer it with 1-click. But when he does, I will go to market with the campaign headline, “Integration so easy, your butt can do it.” Maybe we’ll even coin some new terms: “butt-integration,” “butt-easy,” and “butt-fast.”
Have I missed anything? Has anyone out there butt-performed any other tasks with their talented behinds that they’d like to contribute to the list?