With just four more days until Somebody dies, I thought I would share a personal movie — one of my own Somebody deliveries. I was just wandering around a palazzo when Somebody asked if I’d delivery a message to Lena Dunham, from…Lena Dunham.

From Amy in Ohio:

Hello Miranda,

I wanted to share a somebody story that I think you’ll really enjoy. Like, so good I was compelled to write you an email over my morning eggs and coffee. I’ve used Somebody 1.0 before, delivering a message to a friend who was in the room with me, nothing crazy. But I loved the concept. 

I am living in Paris, France right now, and composed a Somebody message for my friend back in Oakland, California (friend, like, ex-boyfriend but that has just way too much weight to it, ya know?). While I’ve been living in France for the past year, he’s been taking care of my cat, or if I’m not careful, very slowly catnapping her. My cat, Muffins, is just pretty much the coolest ever. She goes by Muff for short. 

So, a few days ago I composed a message, reading: “Hey Max, it’s Lauren. Tell muff I said what’s up” (fist bump). Pretty great message, I thought. I tried to get it to him for a few days, requesting multiple people to send him the message, but to no avail. Finally, early this French morning, I opened up the app while still in bed and saw that Becky was 300ft away from Max 2 hours ago. Great, Becky, I chose you. 

I fall back asleep between alarm snoozes and wake up to an alert on my phone that, in fact, Becky is going to deliver my message. Being around 11 pm in California, I assumed they were out at a bar or Max was at work at his restaurant and Becky was maybe a patron or a co-worker. But the reality of the delivery was far better than I could imagine. 

Becky and two of her friends were downtown Oakland, probably having a drink. Max was about a mile away from downtown inside his house in West Oakland, cleaning his room. His front door was open, screen door shut, when he heard some people yelling his name from outside. He goes out on his porch to find Becky and her two friends in the street. He responds, they approach, and then deliver the message. “Hey Max, it’s Lauren. Tell muff I said what’s up” (fist bump). Mind(s) explode. Max is blown away, I can only assume that a minute or so of “no way!"'s and giggles are shared. They continue to chat and explain themselves. He introduces them to Muffins (which was the icing on the cake if you ask me) and tells how the message sender (me) lives all the way in France. They find that hilarious. 

They shared a cigarette and a drink on the porch and according to Max “The people were way cool” and "We just hung out for a while” and “Were total buds now” and “That was way fun.” I asked if they exchanged contact info and he said no, but maybe he should’ve asked. Let it be an experience, I said. Which, by golly, it was a great one. And I wasn’t even there. 

Thank you from Max, Becky, Muffins and myself.

The very best,

I just want to begin by saying this app is so lovely. I am so happy I discovered it through the podcast, "Reply All." So, I chose a message and went on the hunt to search for this man.

I arrived at the intersection of suposedly where he was. I went into a nearby Starbucks and scanned the cafe but judging by his unclear photo, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to find him. I asked a stranger if it was him and was gently rejected.

So I went outside and waited at the intersection.

After a few minutes I bumped into a friend and explained my mission and the app. We both looked around before we bumped into my friend’s friend… who I then filled in as well.

Finally, after 20 minutes I departed from my friends and crossed the street to see a man waiting by the curb. I had no clue if it was him but decided to give it a shot.

As I approached, a lady went in to give him a hug and said his name out loud while doing so. That confirmed it was him.

So I sheepishly rehearsed my lines to him and the joy and disbelief in his face was so rewarding.”

Today I FINALLY got the opportunity to deliver somebody's somebody to somebody ;D

Amanda moved away, and missed her best friend Lucille. So, I delivered a dramatic retelling of these feelings.  Because I know those feelz. I even gave her a hug, as Amanda had requested... but when I listened to her CD that she gave me, and in one song she says she hates people touching her so now I feel bad... sorry, girl! And I forgot to take a selfie with Lucille, but here is one with her CD!

Ashleyanne‘s Somebody Story – success at KALW in San Francisco

I just had my first successful Somebody interaction today, and it was very perfect and got me super stoked. I was going to this zine release event that had been recommended to me on Facebook, by Facebook, on ASU's campus. Six of my friends had claimed they were going (via FB), and they were all people that I hadn't seen for well over a year. Each of them, coincidentally, were people that I felt like I had unresolved vibes to clear up with. So I wanted to go and make a little forced serendipity. It was a public event, but I felt  shameful and weird about showing up at it since I didn't really have any connection to the campus or the zine itself. 

I arrive there and to my horror I'm kinda early and there's just a small table set up. It feels like the interaction of picking up the zine and eating a complimentary cracker might only take up like, 30 seconds of time, leaving me with a lot of awkward moments to fill before I actually manage to bump into one of these people I'm secretly planning on bumping into. Of course, AT THAT EXACT MOMENT OF CONCERN, Somebody asks if I can deliver a message. I end up walking a short distance to a guy who has a small booth set up where he's providing on-campus stress relief for finals. This includes a small pinata he has set up that you can stress-wack and the ability to write yourself a letter to be mailed next week reminding you of what this week felt like. There were also party hats. I delivered the message and decided to mail my future self a letter. When it came time to pick a stamp, he asked me which one I wanted and I jokingly said I should douse on it. He was like "Woah you douse?" and I was like "Yeah" and told him the story of when I was 5 and asked the pendulum a super-scary question about my adult life and how the result (not what I had hoped for) had left me with legitimate anxiety that still lingers sometimes. He got all excited and said "I DID THE SAME THING! I KNOW EXACTLY." And I felt way less alone. I felt way more comfortable that this stranger had the same childhood new-agey pendulum experience, and resulting anxiety. And it used up a ton of time and when I came back to the zine party all the people I wanted to see were there. 

Your app worked.

Thank you!!!

I am enjoying Happy Hour margaritas with co-workers on Friday and start opening random apps on my phone in between conversations.   That little red open mouth catches my eye.  I recall having downloaded this app one morning from an email link.  Although I like Miranda July's work and have looked into this app for about a week or so, I have yet to feel inspired enough to go 2 or so miles nearby to deliver a message.

The app, however, notifies me that a floating message is ready for sending less than half a mile away!  In my happy state, I excuse myself to the bathroom and set out on foot to wherever this Amy is.  Zeroing in on the recipient seems easy enough; I am reminded of Uber, only this time I am the moving arrow.  I descend upon the destination dot and am faced with three buildings in which Amy could be waiting for me: a guns and ammo store, a Pizza Hut, and an urgent care facility.

From her picture, Amy is a cute Asian girl, so I immediately rule out the firearms and weaponry, and then I feel a bit prejudiced, but this is digression.  I look at the Pizza Hut, which is a pickup only joint and is empty, so I confidently step into the urgent care, scuttle over to the front desk, and ask:

"Does someone named Amy work here?"

The desk people meet with puzzled stares and a definite "NOPE."  I am ready to go look at some guns.  Then something halfway expected happens.

"I'm Amy." She's one of the people sitting in the waiting room.  "Are you with the app?" She has a soft cast on and two crutches beside her.  I deliver the message, she smiles and laughs, we take a selfie, and now I have a cool story to tell at Happy Hour about being Somebody.

--

Sincerely,

In August 2014 artist Miranda July unveiled ‘Somebody’, a new form of instant messaging. Instead of the sender’s message instantly reaching the device of its recipient, it is sent to a Somebody app user nearby, who then delivers the message in person, complete with stage directions so they know how to deliver it. July pitched the concept to fashion house Miu Miu after they invited her to create a short film, with the idea that the film would be created only if the app would be too. After working closely with designers Stinkdigital, the fully functioning app was unveiled at Venice Film Festival alongside the premiere of the Somebody short film. July does not see the app as a replacement for modern forms of communication, but as ‘a far-reaching public art project, inciting performance and conversation’[i]. In this essay I examine how Somebody embodies the characteristics of the One to One performance genre, whilst also pushing the medium into new territory through its embracing and exploring of technology.

i got my very first alert from someone asking me to deliver a message to marco yesterday. i was in my car about to drive out to an afternoon with my friend visiting from out of town, but i looked at the map and saw that where marco was was exactly on the way where we would be driving. i got really excited like i suddenly had a special mission, some more urgency to my life. it feels more exciting doing a task for someone else than doing it for yourself, the stakes were higher. it also felt a little like a treasure hunt finding him - was the maps part of the app accurate? would he really look like his photo? what sort of person would he be? how many people would i have to interrupt before i found him? is that him? wait, no, is that him?

i parked the car in the parking lot of oinksters restaurant. my friend refused to get out of the car with me, she’s german and i don’t think i adequately explained how the app worked to her. there is also a huge part of my humor that she just doesn’t get. i couldn’t persuade her. i felt a little like an immature teen doing something uncultured, she’d much rather me take her to the hammer museum, but here we were at oinksters with me telling her i had to go give a message to a stranger.

i felt embarrassed standing in the middle of the outside tables looking at everyone, thinking they could see my nervous heartbeat. i found him in two seconds. “are you marco?” he’s sitting with a nice looking friend. it’s raining. “yes.” “great, then can i sit under your umbrella with you?” i didn’t want to get too wet. i sat and told him i had a message for him. i forgot to even mention anything about the app, i just assumed he had known i was coming? i couldn’t remember at that point how it all worked. the message his friend had written was sweet. private but not too private. she was asking him if they could be friends again, it seemed there had been some breach. she also had said that he was her only contact on the app so far and so she decided it was fate telling her to reach out to him to mend their friendship. i can’t be sure but i think the message was touching to marco, i think it meant something real for him. at the end the message sender asked me to hug him, so i did.

it was still raining and now i was standing. suddenly i felt like i was encroaching on his emotional space. like i should quickly go so he could process whatever emotion was released from the message with his real friend who was sitting with him. that or maybe the message sender had cheated on marco with this friend sitting here and marco was totally embarrassed to show him that he still had any feelings for this cretin message sender. either way, it was raining and i had a german friend waiting in the car. i took a photo of us but i’ve never looked uglier so i’m not attaching it here.

Dear Miranda,

Yesterday I had my first Somebody experience and decided that the genre of the app is either "horror" or "urban gothic."

Here's a pic of me and "Julian," who yelled my name down on the sidewalk outside my Brooklyn apartment until I gave in, put on pants and shoes, and went down to receive a message from my friend Melissa in Chicago. Julian followed the rules very precisely and did not break the Somebody-fourth-wall at all!

My friend Lauren and I have a podcast called The Real Housewives of Bohemia, and I talked about my Somebody experience last night in the latest episode (#23 - The Drinking Game).

I love imagining that all these little performances are swelling up into one big Somebody dance all over the country. I'm writing a dissertation on women poets right now, and the app reminds me of how Diane di Prima talks about bohemian urban adventuring in the 1950s in

Recollections of My Life as a Woman

:

We would find each other in various ways, have various adventures without preplanning, without telephones. We called this Swinging. In our own private lingo, Swinging was being at the right place at the right time to run into the right people for the right adventure, or when all the people you were wishing could see it wound up at the Garbo flick at MOMA together. […] There was an element of being psychic in swinging, but we never made too much of that part of it.

Somebody is kinda like the 2015 version of Swinging, except there are phones and people are scared of each other. But still -- the thrill of urban adventure!

Thank you for inventing the app (and then reinventing it)!

yrs,Becca

Hey there,

So late last August my partner of 10 years and husband of 3 unexpectedly walked out on me with no warning or lead-up conversations. My life fell apart in all the ways you'd expect it to. I had no idea who I was or even what things I liked doing or eating or talking about anymore. But in one of my first attempts to try to be social in a group at a ladies' happy hour thing on the Lower East Side, feeling awkward and unsure of how to be myself quite yet, my friend from Nashville successfully Somebody'ed me. I got the notification about it, said I was wearing all white, not realizing that the entire group I was with was wearing all white since we were dressed in theme, and a guy came in looking for a woman in white and found 10 of us all together. He found me and told me that everything was going to be okay. It was a perfect message for me and perfectly timed. Somebody really bridged the gap between long-distance friends when I was going through a time when I needed all the friend support I could get.

Somebody is back!

We think you’ll find it’s super easy to use. Not as easy as texting, calling or emailing — but the obvious choice for those who want to breathe hard and feel really alive. Also, we made it for Android, too, this time. Now everybody can be Somebody.

www.somebodyapp.com

For the next few months we’ll keep it under the radar while you give us feedback about how it’s working for you. Send your stories and Somebody selfies to [email protected] and we’ll post them here.