An Open Letter From Your Ignored Push Notification

Heyyyy you up?

No no no, hey look—it’s cool it’s cool.

It wasn’t urgent anyway—totally fine. I was just reminding you those shoes you wanted are finally 30% off. You've been eyeballing them for two months now. Super normal to take that long for a simple decision. But hey, no–it’s cool! You were definitely busy. I shouldn’t have bothered you while you were sitting there. In the bathroom. Not using the bathroom anymore.

It’s ok, I don’t really care. Actually, you’ll be happy to know I’ve found a support group. Me, spammy SMS, and tone-deaf email sit around in a circle and talk about how much we don’t need your attention. It’s super healthy actually.

This actually isn’t a great time for me either. Like I said, I’ve been staying pretty social. I get around. I hear things.

Calendar app told me you ignore her pretty often too. It’s just interesting that she’d say that.

It’s actually kinda funny when you think about it. You opted in to me when you downloaded my app but you almost never want to hear what I have to say. My therapist keeps throwing around phrases like “codependent relationship” and “gaslighting” and “mobile messaging malpractice”… so maybe we should just take some time apart. Alright yeah, that’s for the best. Goodbye, then.




Fun fact! You’ve abandoned nearly a dozen shopping carts last week alone. Way to go!

I don’t understand. I send you a perfectly reasonable alert at 4 AM, I take the time to promote a piece of content you’ve shown little to no interest in, and to top it all off I even sent 6 more notifications about the same thing a few hours later. I even threw in a bunch of emojis so you knew I was being “urgent but playful”… why won’t you engage with me?!

I wonder if I was as pretty and persistent as DoorDash, always on the home screen with a live update, if you would pay attention to me more. Anyways, I’m done. See ya later.




Did you know Mail app told me you once let him get to 300+ on his notification badge? That’s a crazy thing to do to someone but haHa to each their own I guess!

What do I have to do? Carefully time my alerts to fit naturally into your daily routine? Personalize each notification to make every interaction meaningful? Incentivize you with hyper-relevant promotions based on first-party behavioral data?

I guess I’ll never know.

Yours truly,

Pushy