Trump will be able to mass-text all Americans and what have we done to deserve this?

Help.
 By 
Colin Daileda
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

You know how every so often you find yourself awake at some strange hour and suddenly your phone buzzes and you're excited, because, hey, maybe that person you went on a first date with last night just had to text you, and then you grab your phone and of course it's your mom and you're like, dammit, mom, why are you even awake right now?

Imagine that feeling. Internalize the disappointment for me. Now imagine it's Donald Trump who has texted you at 3 a.m., and then send a quick text to your mom apologizing for your disappointment in her strange-hour texts, because, dear God, you did not realize it could be so much worse.

This is a thing that can happen, folks -- an apocalyptic notion brought to the world by New York Magazine. When Donald Trump marches into the White House, he will have access to unblockable Wireless Emergency Alerts that he can send to all of us.

The Response Network (WARN) Act, passed in 2006, is what allows those amber alerts to occasionally blow up your phone and all the phones around you. They're designed to disseminate amber alerts, to alert residents of a certain area about a life-threatening situation, or, fun fact (yay!) alerts issued by the president of the United States.

Let me tamp down your (read: my) anxiety by saying that Trump can't send these texts like he sends his tweets. He'd have to learn how to use the alert system, something he has not shown the attention span to do. And even if he did, he'd have to clear his messages with the people who run FEMA's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, which disseminates the texts.

But, like, what if he changes the legal definition of "emergency" to "something I am thinking about" and then he just hooks up this alert system to his phone or something insane and hopefully not possible and then all of a sudden we're all up in the wee hours of the morning staring bleary-eyed at a 70-year-old former reality TV star's rant about, I dunno, how he thinks CNN is a steaming pile of cow dung, or how he is definitely going to save all of our jobs, or maybe how White House food is great and all but it just doesn't live up to Trump Tower taco bowls.

Help.

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Colin Daileda

Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.

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