I’m sharing a bird with my friend. We haven’t named it yet. I said she could choose its name, and I’m waiting a few hours for it to deliver her response to my windowsill.
It’s a fake pigeon on Carrier Pidge, an iOS app that sends messages via virtual “feathered courier” at 110 miles per hour—the speed of the fastest recorded pigeon—based on users’ geographic distance. There’s no real bird, but there’s a real time delay. It’s taken me a few minutes to send a text to a friend in Brooklyn, two hours to Boston, a day and a half to London, and nearly three days to Mumbai. I can also follow each bird’s route on a map—and there’s a 0.2% chance it might get lost or die, in which case I would have to buy another made-up pigeon with real-world money. Carrier Pidge reports over 140,000 downloads. A similar app, Roost, reports over 650,000. All for the thrill of inconvenience.
Carrier Pidge claims to make digital communication less fast-paced and more personal. Without instant texts or read receipts, the app supposedly offers a comfortable experience. I find comfort in its aesthetic: a coffee-bean color scheme, a serif typeface, and no sponsored content. The design provides an escape from most apps’ black-and-white palettes, cutting-edge shades of blue, jarring accent colors, innovative “Instagzam” fonts, and torrential AI-generated ads. But beyond the visuals, Carrier Pidge is just another gimmick to keep me on my phone.
In my first Carrier Pidge message, I stressed about what to write. The pigeon can only hold one scroll at a time, and I wanted it to be worth the wait. I had fun playing into the bit: at the end of the message, I said, “we are currently experiencing torrential rain… the poor pigeon will have to fly-swim.” I dispatched the bird. The app told me how long the delivery would take, but I still checked the flight map almost every 20 minutes. I sat through the tension until its arrival; then my friend sent a response. “A pigeon is on its way,” a text bubble said. In the meantime, we chatted on Messages.
I received a scroll from another friend, only 18 miles away. He congratulated my brother on starting college, updated me on his new job, and acknowledged our imaginary friend. “I’m going to send this pigeon out now,” he said. “Hopefully the little guy makes it to you. What I like most about this app is that it adds just a little bit more anxiety to talking to other people. That is something that was surely missing from the experience.”
Carrier Pidge contradicts itself. The delay is meant to “give the conversation a little breathing room,” to take away the pressure of an immediate response and give us a moment to put down our phones. But instead of feeling pressure to respond instantly, I felt pressure to send a spectacular text; and instead of taking a break from my phone, I kept checking a play-pretend GPS tracker. Turns out, a digital communication app doesn’t reduce the symptoms of digital communication. A more straightforward and effective strategy would be to use a typical texting app and respond when I feel like it.
I doubt the hordes of people on Carrier Pidge are using it for stress-free texting or time off their phones. Some may have downloaded it for whimsy, but its cutest quirk is a boring map. Most people are using it for the other part of its promise: messages that feel more personal. We want to send something special to show extra love. We’re not yearning to get off our phones. We’re yearning for intimacy.
While working on my computer, my phone lit up with a notification: “A tired but faithful pigeon has arrived!” I received my first long-distance message after a four-hour wait. I jumped from my chair to open it, abandoning the task that had held me rapt before the disruption. I picked up my phone with delighted anticipation for the oh-so-special treat awaiting me at my imaginary windowsill. I opened the app, clicked my friend’s name, and found… a text. Words in a bubble on an iPhone screen. That’s what I expected—but it was disappointing, after several hours of suspense, to receive the same thing I receive all day on the Messages app.
Carrier Pidge is just texting. It claims to “bring the human part back to messaging,” but its distinctive features are all artificial. Fantastical birds, fictional trips, figurative scrolls, fabricated waits. Even the brown color scheme, like a sepia photo filter, is an illusory attempt to masquerade as an analog-adjacent experience. Ironically, the Carrier Pidge website lays out its premise alongside photos of mail—real mail, made of paper, the kind you can touch. I exchange real mail with a friend sometimes, and I don’t mind the wait. I grab a pen and a card, sit down at a desk, hand-write a message, search for her address, find a stamp, go to the post office, and drop the letter in a box. She receives it and responds. When I receive her note, days later, it feels special because we made a deliberate, inconvenient effort to connect. The wait is worth it, because the wait represents effort.
Carrier Pidge’s wait is meaningless. The delivery delay attempts to recreate the sentimentality of vintage communication—but old-fashioned messaging, whether by carrier pigeon or mailperson, doesn’t feel special because it takes time. It feels special because it takes effort. On Carrier Pidge, we jiggle our fingers around a screen for a few seconds. The app simulates a long journey, but it can’t simulate the energy, trouble, and care that make the journey worth it.
I’ve been waiting all day for a scroll from an overseas friend. She probably spent 26 seconds typing it, and it’s still 26 hours away, suspended in cyberspace. The make-believe map shows a bird emoticon hovering over the Atlantic. “Dodging a hawk! Close call…” the text bubble says, and now I’m nervous that a virtual bird will virtual-die and drown a virtual scroll in virtual water. My anxiety has no value: if her scroll arrives, it will be no different than a WhatsApp message. If it doesn’t arrive, it won’t matter. It’s just a quick text. It doesn’t mean much.
Smartphone apps, streaming services, and innovative appliances are successful because they require less effort than their analog alternatives. But asking someone out in person feels more affectionate than swiping right on a dating app; making someone a mixtape or burned CD feels more compassionate than arranging a playlist; and cooking someone a meal from scratch feels more warmhearted than air-frying frozen food. When I have to go out of my way to deal with my laptop, it usually means I need to upgrade to a new one. When I go out of my way to connect with a loved one, it usually means I’m strengthening the relationship. Technology strives for ease, but relationships thrive from work.
Carrier Pidge can’t make interactions feel more personal than those on other social apps, nor can it make messages feel more special, because it’s technology—and the purpose of technology opposes the fuel of human connection. Carrier Pidge lacks effort. That’s what we really want.