The Good, The Bad, And The Shutdown: New Apps For Feelings (And Lack Thereof)

Feeling down on yourself in this cruel world, and need a bright note to cheer up your day?  Or do you prefer balling up your hatred and slinging it recklessly at another?  Thanks to miraculous modern technology, there are apps to abet both...

"Yo Mama's so dumb, even her smartphone counts on its fingers!"
-"That's not very nice, Greg.  Do you need a Positive Compliment?"
(Image courtesy shutterstock.com.)
 

First up, the happy stuff.  Because you might not have friends, family, a lover, or even a dog to make you feel like you're a valuable person whose life is worth living, now you can at least fake it thanks to the Positive Compliments app.  Containing "hundreds of compliments and positive quotes", this little electronic ray of sunshine is available for iPhone and iPad.  For only 99 cents, you can have the validation that neither whiskey nor your estranged fellow humans can offer!

I ate only one donut instead of three today, does that count?
(Image courtesy appchartcompass.com.)

Of course, this is not the sort of thing that everybody wants to hear.  Pithy, patronizing bits of text might not inspire you at all.  Perhaps you need something a little more forceful, or feel that your depressed friend may require as much.  Enter Burnweasel.  This handy app offers four categories of vitriol:  Favorites, Insults, Yo Mama Jokes, and Comebacks.  Best of all, you can share this jacked-up version of joyfulness for free - the app, made for Android, iPhone and iPad, is available at no cost.  They also have a Twitter, for all your social media harassment needs.

No word on whether you're allowed to burn Burnweasel for stupid insults.
(Image courtesy imgur.com.)

Maybe this is getting weird.  Maybe you shouldn't be depending on your phone to be such a major influence of emotional engagement.  Perhaps it'd be best if you just shut the thing off and talked to some humans for a change, or read a book, or did literally anything other than obsessively tap a tiny screen.  That's where the Lock Me Out app steps up.  According to theutopiantech.com, this Android-based app will generate a random PIN number to keep you from all that inappropriate touching (of your phone, at least.)  The free version of the app will keep you away from your phone for up to ten minutes (which will feel like a fresh chunk of eternity, without your precious phone.)

Because it seems that ever turning anything off is no longer what's going on.

"Come on, just one more cat GIF before the lockout, pleeeeeeease..."
(Image courtesy linkupmarketing.com.)