tech fails – untypicable.

The Existential Horror of Seeing Yourself in a Ring Doorbell Notification Still

James Henshaw — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000

There was a time when I thought walking to my own front door was a perfectly ordinary act. Innocuous. Graceful, even, if the wind was behind me and I’d remembered to zip my coat up. But that was before I installed a Ring doorbell—before my entire sense of movement, posture, and dignity was shattered by a grainy still image captured at the precise moment I looked like I was either drunkenly lunging for the letterbox or about to be raptured.

For the uninitiated, the Ring doorbell sends you notifications every time someone or something passes by. Very useful in principle. Except every one of these alerts comes with a frozen, pixelated snapshot from the video, as if it’s trying to ruin your self-esteem one frame at a time.

I’ve started to think the algorithm is sentient—not only choosing when to notify me, but carefully selecting the most unflattering still it can manage, pausing the footage at the exact millisecond when my face looks like I’ve just realised the crushing futility of existence mid-step.

How Does It Know?

It’s like being roasted by your own house.

I walk towards the door—normal posture, no crimes being committed. I’m holding a parcel. I’ve done nothing wrong. But by the time Ring has captured me, frozen me, and served me up as a push notification on my own phone, I look like:

I’ve just sneezed while being tasered.
I’m in the middle of a courtroom objection.
Or I’m delivering a Shakespearean soliloquy to the wheelie bin.

Once, it caught me with one leg mid-air and both arms half-raised, like a confused scarecrow attempting yoga. Another time, I opened the front gate and the still image made me look like I was attacking my own fence. I had to show it to someone to confirm I was, in fact, just trying to carry a Sainsbury’s bag. They were not convinced.

The Unflattering Science of the Mid-Motion Freeze

Here’s the thing: the Ring doorbell doesn’t show you a flattering video preview like you might get on FaceTime, where you can smile and wave and mentally prepare for the horror of your own face. No. Ring goes full paparazzi on you. It waits until you’re mid-blink, mid-turn, mid-nose-scratch, then clicks the shutter like a cruel caricature artist with a personal grudge.

And it’s not just me. Friends, neighbours, delivery drivers—no one is safe. I once got a notification for “Motion Detected” and the image was of the postman bent down, but the still made it look like he was kneeling solemnly in grief. Another showed a neighbour with their mouth open mid-yawn, hands half-raised like they were surrendering to a local cat.

What’s more—Ring keeps these images. As if we’ll want to lovingly revisit that time we looked like a haunted Victorian child startled by the modern world.

This Is My Legacy Now

The worst part? These stills are how my phone now sees me. My daily relationship with my own front door is a cycle of:

Doing something ordinary.
Being filmed like I’m on an awkward hidden-camera show.
Being notified of it via a thumbnail that makes me question whether I’ve ever stood like a human being.

It’s made me weirdly self-conscious. I now walk up to my own door as if I’m being judged on Strictly Come Doorbell. Slow, measured steps. No sudden movements. Smile, but not too much. Don’t blink. Don’t look at the camera. Keep your arms loose but not weirdly floppy.

Naturally, the result is that I look even more unhinged. The most recent still made me look like I was stalking my own letterbox, one eye open wider than the other like I’d just remembered I left the hob on.

Certainly! Here’s the additional section added to the article with James’ signature wit and exasperation:

The Evolution of Humiliation

Just when you thought the still image humiliation was the worst it could get, Ring upped the ante. Gone are the days of a single frozen frame of you mid-blink, mid-lurch, or mid-existential collapse—now we’re blessed with animated previews.

Yes. It moves now.

Now you can watch yourself walk, in glorious, stuttery, surveillance-chic motion. A two-second loop of shame featuring you awkwardly fumbling with your keys, sniffing audibly, tripping on the step, or doing that weird over-smiley wave you thought looked friendly but now comes across as mildly unhinged.

The GIF format adds a whole new layer of self-loathing:

The loop always starts at the most damning moment.
Your face never moves naturally—just a strange jerky bobblehead effect.
It plays on repeat, so you’re not just cringing at yourself once—you’re cringing 20 times in 30 seconds while you decide whether to delete it or show a mate for a laugh.

Ring hasn’t made this better. It’s simply made it animated. Like a cartoon version of yourself caught mid-existential crisis.

It’s as if Ring asked:
“How can we preserve the emotional discomfort of a still photo, but make it loop, so the shame never ends?”

Mission accomplished.

Conclusion: It’s Me, I’m the Intruder

The truly existential bit comes when Ring notifies me with a message like:
“Someone is at your door.”

And it’s me.

But the image is so unsettling that for a split second, I don’t recognise myself.
“Who’s that?” I think. “Why is that person sneaking up the drive like a cursed AI model trying to pass as human?”

Then I realise:
It’s me, walking like a normal person.

Or at least, it was.
Until Ring got involved.

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James Henshaw

James Henshaw is a brooding Geordie export who swapped the industrial grit of Newcastle for the peculiar calm of Lincolnshire—though he’s yet to fully trust the flatness. With a mind as sharp as a stiletto and a penchant for science-tinged musings, James blends the surreal with the everyday, crafting blogs that feel like the lovechild of a physics textbook and a fever dream.

Equally at home dissecting the absurdities of modern life as he is explaining quantum theory with alarming metaphors, James writes with the wit of someone who knows too much and the irreverence of someone who doesn’t care. His posts are infused with a dark humour that dares you to laugh at the strange, the inexplicable, and the occasionally terrifying truths of the universe—whether it’s the unnerving accuracy of Alexa or the existential menace of wasps.

A figure of mystery with a slightly unsettling edge, James is the sort of bloke who’d explain the meaning of life over a pint, but only after a dramatic pause long enough to make you question your own existence. His wit cuts deep, his insights are sharp, and his ability to make the surreal feel strangely plausible keeps readers coming back for more.

Why Is the Printer Always the Most Useless Piece of Technology?

James Henshaw — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000

There are few universal truths in life, but one of them is this: printers are the absolute worst. In a world where we have smartphones with AI assistants, self-driving cars, and fridges that can order milk, we still cannot invent a printer that just works when you need it to.

This isn’t a new problem. Printers have been the bane of human existence since their invention, and despite decades of technological advancement, they remain as temperamental as ever—finicky, prone to failure, and deeply, deeply personal in their hatred for you.

Why? Why is this the one piece of technology that refuses to evolve? Let’s break down exactly why printers are the worst invention of all time.

Step One: The Printer Refuses to Connect

The first hurdle is actually getting the printer to acknowledge your existence.

You have your document ready. You click print. The printer does… nothing. The little icon on your screen flashes mockingly, informing you that the printer is “offline.”

You check the printer. It is very much online. You restart it. Nothing. You restart your computer. Still nothing. You disconnect and reconnect the Wi-Fi, as if somehow the entire internet is to blame.

At this point, two things may happen:

It will start working for no apparent reason.
It will refuse out of pure spite.

There is no in-between.

Step Two: The Great Paper Jam That Shouldn’t Exist

Congratulations, you’ve convinced the printer to do its job. But just as it begins to whir into action, it immediately stops.

A message flashes up: “Paper Jam.”

You open the tray. There is no jammed paper.

You open every compartment like a bomb disposal expert, certain that there’s nothing obstructing the mechanism. But the printer is unmoved. The error persists.

After five minutes of increasingly frustrated panel-checking, you close everything up without actually doing anything differently, press print again—and suddenly it works.

Why? We will never know.

Step Three: The Ink Cartridge Scam

Everything seems fine. The printer is connected, there is no paper jam, and your document is about to print. But wait—a new pop-up appears.

“Ink Low.”

Now, here’s where the printer really shows its true evil. The ink is not actually low. There is clearly ink left. If you remove the cartridge, shake it, and put it back in, it will print just fine.

But no. The printer wants more ink.

At this point, you have two choices:

Ignore the warning and hope it keeps working.
Buy a replacement ink cartridge, which, for some reason, costs more than the printer itself.

You pick option two, because the printer will not let you win. You insert the brand-new, printer-approved ink cartridge, and suddenly another error appears.

“Cartridge Not Recognized.”

You scream into the void.

Step Four: The Printer Prints Everything Except What You Need

Let’s assume you have somehow bypassed all the previous obstacles. The printer finally accepts its duty, hums to life, and begins its work.

Only to print your document in a strange, faded shade of grey, despite the fact that you never selected greyscale.

Or, for no discernible reason, it spits out a completely blank page.

Or, in a new and exciting twist, it prints one line of text, pauses for 30 seconds, prints another line, and repeats this process until you’ve aged significantly.

The document you urgently needed is now a useless pile of smudged, half-printed nonsense.

Step Five: The Printer Decides It’s Out of Paper When It’s Not

The printer is full of paper. It is literally overflowing with paper. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t think it has any paper.

At this point, you briefly consider throwing it out of the nearest window.

Instead, you remove the paper—which was absolutely fine—and put it back in. Miraculously, the printer now acknowledges the paper’s existence, as if nothing happened.

It prints.

You stare at it.

The war is over… for now.

The Final Betrayal: When You No Longer Need the Printer, It Works Perfectly

Hours later, when you no longer need anything printed, you test the printer again just out of curiosity.

It prints flawlessly.

Not a single issue.

No connectivity problems, no paper jams, no ink warnings. It prints as if it was never broken.

This is when you realise the painful truth: The printer was never malfunctioning. It was testing you.

Printers don’t break. They choose violence.

Why Are Printers Still This Bad?

Technology has advanced beyond all recognition in the last two decades. We have smartphones with AI assistants, self-driving cars, and fridges that order milk when you run low.

And yet, printers remain stuck in the early 2000s, refusing to evolve.

Why? Because printer manufacturers don’t want them to improve. They make far too much money selling ink cartridges, meaning they have no financial incentive to fix the nightmare that is modern printing.

Instead, they let us suffer.

Final Thoughts: Printers Are the Worst, and We Are Trapped

No one truly owns a printer. We are simply temporary caretakers of a malfunctioning, rage-inducing relic of the past.

The printer is not our friend. It is a necessary evil, a device that only works when it senses we don’t need it to.

And yet, we continue to buy them, fight them, and let them win.

Because no matter how much we hate them, the day will come when we desperately need to print one single document.

And thus, the cycle continues.