May 22, 2017 AUSTIN - Area resident Paige Hoffman was dismayed to discover on Monday morning that her smartphone, yet again, pigheadedly refused to abandon the connection with her apartment’s wireless router as she walked out to her car. The willful device, in complete denial that packet loss had surpassed the threshold of any modicum of usability, remained totally convinced that its 5GHz radio was still the appropriate tool for the job. To make matters worse, the device told a bald-faced lie to Hoffman by displaying a partially filled WiFi signal strength icon when the smartphone knew damn well the worsening signal attenuation it had observed over the last 30 seconds would not reverse course.

Hoffman was reportedly only trying to check the weather as she embarked for her morning commute, but her tenacious cellphone was ensconced in its determination to wildly fire off requests to the AccuWeather API that would immediately be absorbed by her building’s thick walls. Foiled by her phone’s dogged efforts to prevent a stable network connection at all cost, Hoffman entered her vehicle and began to drive away from her home, traveling a full eighth of a mile before the phone threw in the towel and switched to the cellular data network. Later, as Hoffman drove by a familiar coffee shop with free WiFI, the phone sniffed a familiar MAC address and immediately took action to divert all her phone’s network activity - all of which would be promptly bounced thanks to the network requiring her to first accept the Terms of Service.

This article was originally published on AlwaysTrending, a fantastic (but archived) satire site by Matt Frisbie. Copied here with permission of the author.