It's called Roost and it presents itself as an "anti-instant" messaging service to rediscover the pleasure (and frustration) of waiting.
Are we perhaps facing the first example of an anti-instant messaging app? Wouldn’t it be quicker to send a dear, old letter at this point? Or to contact a trainer of carrier pigeons and ask them to send a message? Do carrier pigeon trainers still exist? But let’s not digress, let’s return to theanti-instant messaging app: it was invented by Logan Mendelsohn and is called Roost. The app’s functionality is based on two principles: the geographical distance between the sender and the recipient of the message, and the speed it would take a trained bird to cover that distance. Once the app is downloaded and installed, you entrust your message to a “digital bird,” which takes flight and begins its journey. The sender can follow the flight of the trusty bird on a globe, checking at any moment how far along the journey it is.
If the recipient lives nearby, the little bird will take only a few minutes to reach its destination. Conversely, if the message needs to reach someone who lives in a city, province, country, or continent away, the journey will take days and days, depending also on the species of bird selected. Because this is also a rather relevant variable: in Roost, one also has to improvise as breeders and trainers. You need to build your own “fleet” of carrier birds, decide if you prefer, for example, a pigeon or a cardinal, keep them in shape by completing short mini-games that help make the birds better mail carriers. The app has given rise to a trend, with users starting to write messages consistent with this peculiar form of communication, that is, using a pompous language, a sort of caricature of Elizabethan English, abandoning, at least for the moment, abbreviations and emojis.
The phenomenon has gone viral thanks to users who have started sharing, especially on Threads, screenshots of the messages they have sent through Roost. In one of the most popular posts, a user begins with a solemn «Hear ye, hear ye / I write to proclaim mine overwhelming joy at our approaching pilgrimage» («Hear ye, hear ye / I write to proclaim my overwhelming joy at our approaching pilgrimage»), organizing a trip for the weekend and explaining that, in case of rain, he and his companions will retreat indoors like weary travelers to «engage in fierce battles of cards and dramatic accusations of cheating» («engage in fierce battles of cards and dramatic accusations of cheating»).
