Here are 17 ways to ruin Thanksgiving with technology

By Kashmir Hill  |  November 25, 2015 | 7:57pm
Latest

This weekend marks the start of the holiday sprint. The coming weeks will be chockfull of gatherings with friends and family, involving copious amounts of food, booze, and the mixed warmth and tension of togetherness. And because we now live in the near-future, these gatherings will inevitably involve the trappings of technology. Now it won’t be your drunk uncle ruining Thanksgiving with a rant about women-these-days, it’ll be your uncle ruining the day by drunkenly flying a drone into Grandma.

Here are the myriad ways technology may disrupt the festivities this year.

1. Insist that no one touch anything on the table until you’ve ‘grammed it from all possible angles. Food gets cold before anyone can eat it. You get the cold shoulder for the rest of the day.

2. Insta-complain. Keep an eye on Instagram all day and constantly let everyone know how your dinner compares unfavorably to other people’s Thanksgiving meals. Your family doesn’t care that mashed potatoes look better with a sprig of rosemary.

3. #BitterTwitter. Tweet snippets of family arguments hashtagged #overheard.

4. Overshare. Complain on Twitter after your flight gets delayed that you don’t really want to go home for the holiday. Fail to realize your mom follows you on Twitter until she tweets back.

5. Pie-lot fail. Fly new drone into Mom’s pies. Ruin dessert.


6. Outsource the turkey to robots. Plan to impress family by 3D-printing the entire meal. The Kickstarter you funded for the printer is delayed in production. Probably forever. You have no backup plan.

7. Sad Skypesgiving. Set a place at the table for your brother who lives in Germany and Skype him into the meal via iPad. Make him watch you all eat your five-course spread while he eats a frozen turkey dinner.

8. Get a little too Snap-y. Snapchat Story your entire meal. Using the Cartman voice.

9. Aggro livestream. Refuse to make a dish but then Periscope the cooking process, insisting family members narrate what part of the Thanksgiving meal they were responsible for.

10. Commit a Doodle don’t. Invite people via Doodle. Launch into a heated pre-holiday family argument over what time to dine.

11. Invite people via Evite. No one comes, because Evite.

12. Bring your A.I. friend to dinner. Ask Siri 15 different versions of “What are you thankful for?” Next, give the phone to your three-year-old nephew who spends two hours annoyingly interrogating Siri, then drops your new iPhone 6S in the gravy.

13. Phub up. Explain phubbing to your parents. They then realize that you haven’t actually payed attention to anything they’ve said since 2007.

14. Horrible new tradition. Make everyone recount one thing they’re thankful for and one thing they regret from the past year. Document it in a Facebook post that tags everyone mentioned.

15. Turkey tech fail. Insist on using your new, untested Bluetooth thermometer to cook the turkey. The turkey is decidedly not done.

16. Make it a “Hacksgiving.” Make tea after dinner with your connected kettle. It turns out that your fancy kettle was hacked. Your WiFi network has been compromised. Everybody freaks out when the hackers e-mail your mom a naked photo of her dad.

17. Phoneless silence. Try a fun experiment that you read about in The New York Times and make everyone check their phone at the door. Enjoy the entire meal in very awkward silence.

But seriously guys, don’t stare at your phone all day on Thanksgiving.

 
Join the discussion...