what could have been...

Though the project has been indefinitely put on hold, the Weeping iPhone would have been a notification system consisting of 30-second animations triggered by extreme scores from the Perfect Human Application.

Characterized by their disruptive nature, these notifications would interrupt the user’s ability to use the phone. For example, if a user’s Perfect Human Score dropped below the 10th percentile, the phone would assume its user was feeling imperfect, unloved, and worthless: like a loser. It would automatically play a 30-second video in which a woman’s voice would tauntingly chant: Loser, loooooser, who do you think you are? You are nothing but one big fat loser. Meanwhile a collection of Apple “x-in-a-bubble” icons would accumulate in mounting piles at the bottom of the screen. 

If low scores persisted over several days, the phone would take on the burden of expressing the depression caused by imperfection. No longer able to function normally, the phone would play the sound of a human sob in tandem with fluctuations in it's brightness—sending out an SOS to its nearby owner.

If triggered, these videos would have to play through to finish, imposing, to the embarrassment if its owner, on the surrounding environment the emotional distress coming out of this machine. On the surface, the Weeping iPhone would have transformed the phone into a vulnerable object, prompting the owner to attend to it, and, in return, his or her “perfection.” The Weeping iPhone’s short videos ridicule the fervency with which we attend to our cell phones, and the reliance that ensues.