A SLICE OF LIFE

Lori Borgman finds the funny in everyday life, writing from the heartland of the US. Now, if she could just find her car keys…

Our columnist Lori Borgman wonders why movies don’t replicate real life particualrly when it comes to logging into computers.

Nobody solves crimes or saves the world on television and in the movies today without the aid of computers and cell phones. I always strain to see what brand devices they use, because they sure work better than ours. Protagonists and antagonists constantly log onto websites with highly sensitive information, and never have a problem with logins or passwords. Just once I’d like to see someone under pressure slap his forehead and scream, “I can’t remember the password!” Meanwhile, the giant meteor about to destroy the world, speeds closer to the earth’s orbit.

Our would-be hero frantically rifles through desk drawers, flips through index cards, and rips throughs scribbles on random scraps of paper searching for the password. The clock is ticking, disaster is looming, and he has to reset his password.

Of course, you don’t just reset your password, first you answer security questions:

Your father’s mother’s great-grandfather’s middle name.

Colour of the floormats of your first car.

City where your yoga instructor was born. Better yet, I’d like to see someone struggle through one of those Captcha puzzles before they can get to the desperately needed data.

There would be a small crowd around a laptop and someone anxiously shouts, “I don’t know; does this one look like a “v” or a “u” to you? Is this a “7 or a lower case “z”?

Worse yet – the ones with pictures.

“Quick! Somebody look at this – it says check every square with a traffic sign. Did I get them all?”

Meanwhile, the meteor is so close it can be seen through a window in the background.

Characters in action flicks never get warnings about using all their data and can always find a Wi-Fi network. They never get calls from their mothers during tense standoffs reminding them it’s been three weeks since they last stopped by, nor do their phones ding alerting them that a prescription is ready for pick up.

The real puzzle is how they can always find the pictures they need on their phones. They never scroll and scroll and wonder if they filed it in an album; they always go straight to the photo of the critical piece of evidence.

We watched a movie where the texts people were sending one another were shown on the screen. It was so fake, it was laughable. Nobody made a single typo or had to override autocorrect six times.

A friend was having trouble with her high-end phone, so she replaced it with a simplified, easy-to-use phone.

She wrote her first text, a screen appeared asking her if she was ready to send and she tapped “yes.”

As the text flew into cyberspace, she saw that it didn’t go to her daughter, whom she wanted to inform about clearing up a misunderstanding, but to an Urgent Care Medical Clinic.

The text said, “I just extricated my foot from my mouth.”

I asked if Urgent Care dispatched an ambulance. She said, no, but several days later they did text asking if she was OK.

Characters in action flicks never get warnings about using all their data and can always find a Wi-Fi network.