Book of Daze: Original Whiners’ Meetup App Gets an Upgrade

Apple and Google are locked in a hair-pulling, eye-gouging, walker-swinging contest to see who can get to market first with a meaningful upgrade to the Original Whiners’ Meetup (OWM) app—a platform originally patterned after location-based social apps, only this one helps chronically cranky elder males locate other chronically cranky elder males within shouting distance.

“If a distinguished gentleman of a certain vintage wants to rant about the decline of civilization or the nation’s latest commander-in-clown,” said a Silicon Valley source, “but his spouse has invoked the household Noise Abatement Treaty, he can use the OWM app to find another seasoned grumbler to meet at McDonald’s and mutually complain into their Value Meals.”

Despite the app’s viral success after its 2015 debut, neither Apple nor Google showed much urgency about updating it.

“To be honest,” said the source, “we were so confident the political landscape would stay predictable that we spent our R&D budget on a bunch of niche locator apps—like the one that finds your missing reading glasses, even when they’re already on your head.”

But urgency has returned. Both companies are now racing to add social-media-style bells and whistles to the OWM 2.0 experience—minus the fact-checking pop-ups, the unsolicited moralizing, and the pop-culture quizzes no one over fifty pretends to understand. End-to-end encryption sturdy enough to withstand prodding from the FBI, CIA, MPAA, RIAA, and any cable news channel having a slow news day will ship standard.

As before, the app will come in two flavors: a free version with ads aimed at the mature-adult demographic, and a $2.99 version with no ads and slightly larger buttons. (You must be at least sixty to purchase either version; proof of age may include birth certificate, AARP card, or the ability to complain about modern television for more than eight consecutive minutes.)

Apple’s OWM 2.0 will offer an on-demand list of restaurants that provide senior specials, Early-Bird incentives, and entrees that can be chewed confidently by anyone with a dental situation.

Google, meanwhile, is developing a game suite tailored to its audience, including Words with Patriots, Guess Whose Lawn You’re On, Hangperson, and Trigger Temperament Test, which reportedly adjusts its difficulty level based on how loudly the user sighs at the login screen.

Whatever differences emerge between the Apple and Google versions, both companies vow that OWM 2.0 will remain intuitive for users of all technological abilities—including those who believe the TV remote is plotting against them.

For additional Book of Daze entries celebrating other days that ought not to exist either.