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Autocorrect has been behind more than its share of misunderstandings, but today it stirred up a whole heap of trouble, even by its sketchy standards. Some poor college student’s phone corrected “gonna go” to “gunman” and got a school put into lockdown by the police.
At West Hall High and Hiddle schools in Gainesville, GA, the student in question—one who attends anothe school—texted “Gonna go to West Hall this afternoon” to a student attending West Hall. Thing is, autocorrect pooped out “Gunman go to West Hall this afternoon.” Much different. The student alerted the authorities, who reacted with a full lockdown for the schools—probably due to the recent Ohio school shootings.
Now, you can definitely make the case for some context to go into reading random text messages that appear to alert you to imminent violence. And it’s probably the right case. And there’s also the sad reality that violence is such a real concern that silly texts like this have to be taken seriously. But isn’t it more fun to giggle about autocorrect’s perpetual ineptitude throwing an entire school system into disarray? I say yes. Lol autocorrect. [Gainesville Times via Twitter]
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Important points missing from the above but in the source. The text was sent to the wrong number from a new phone, so the recipient would not have recognised the senders number. It also means that there is a phone make out there that makes this autocorrection as part of it’s standard dictionary rather then from any “learning process”. A quick check this morning confirms it’s not an android phone.
A wild counter-troll appears!
But because of the purported “openness” of android the user in question could have downloaded another keyboard which maliciously autocorrects harmless words into terrifying outcomes!
“I am glad I had fun at the party”
did you mean
“I am glad I had a gun at the party” ?
This sounds like a fun idea
Let’s get together and produce this app.
How can you “check” it was not an andriod phone? Proof??
I can check by entering “Gonna go to West Hall this afternoon” into my text app, I would have thought that was obvious. While i didn’t check every single keyboard available for android I assumed that since it was a new phone he would be on stock.
Fair enough
Do you avoid the cracks on pavements?
This has little to do with auto-correct and everything to do with the sender not checking his message before he sends it! It’s just common sense…
I check all my messages before I send them and I still get autocorrected mistakes sent. Sometimes autocorrect doesn’t change stuff until you click send