Earlier this year, Eric Antono was in a coffee shop with his family when he felt a fiery desire to reach his phone. He tapped his pockets of relief – a cool, thin slab was still there. He made fun of his family that like a drug addict, he would one day need a solution for Datux’s medical medical grade from his phone. Opioid addicts had methadone. IPhone addicts… Matha will needPhones.
“It was a joke, but I got two laughs with two of my young men, which is gold,” says Antono. “I was like, ‘I’m going to commit a little.’
Google and the former Facebook marketing executive Antono has been pledging bits for half a decade, called “brain toys”. Its online shop offers projects such as “listening switch” to indicate that when someone is paying attention, and a vaniel for silent meditation, a 20 -minute recording silence on each side (do not require a record player).
So within a few days of his fresh jokes, he added to the list of chatgates to make fun of a gadget image in the form of a phone, without any contents: a Parbesi rectangle that can be seen or through. This original generative outline revealed a more feeling: 6 -inch slabs of clear acrylic with round corner, such as iPhone, and green edges that are similar to glasses. Antono placed an order for sample, and launched the Indigo Campaign for Methaphone: “Leave your phone without desire or return.”
The first methphone was sold at $ 25 by a crowded funding campaign.
Courtesy Eric Antono
The smartphone dilemma is that we all want to use our phones less, but many of us really do. Apple and Google offered some life protection providers in 2018, in the form of screen time boundaries such as self -regulation tools, but most of them went out of the window during the pandemic years when screens became window in the outside world. Now, a person is hoping to re -claim his attention is stuck between two unwanted choices: lower the least “dumb phone”, or hand over the infinite content dopamine drip feed. In any way, the phone wins.
In response, a cottage industry has emerged to offer detachment tools. There are apps with symbolic names, such as freedom and focus, which prevent disturbing material. Startup addicts such as brick and UNPLUQ offer physical NFC “keys” to lock and unlock. – And some premiums, the rising line -up of “dumb phone” at post -Maiden prices.
You can buy stickers that look like app icons.
Courtesy Eric Antono
Unlike these solutions, methphone does nothing. This is a statement: CECI N’ESEST PAS Un Phone. But in a technical culture, the project is widely resonated, such as the Ozampic in the screen obesity epidemic.
In May, when the first batch of Matfone arrived, Antono sent them to a dozen friends to react. One of the recipients was Catherine Goytz, who quickly posted a video about her 400,000 followers on TaTok about Metfone. In the video, Gotz San Francisco stands in line at a shop in Boba, which is like everyone like it – but instead of scrolling his phone, she’s scrolling… a clear acrylic slab. Comments went on wild with speculation. Was this Nokia prototype? A Black mirror Trailer? Within five days, the video had more than 53 million opinions.
After Guate’s video, Antono says Mitfone “was widely sold.” – The phones are not more than just the portals for other people, they are another dimensional portal. “So the counter balance needs to be more important than justice, ‘Oh, I need to not use my phone on the table.’
