what this is

once a week your phone rings. it's a corny joke read in a voice cloned from a 30-second sample of someone you miss.

the call lasts under ninety seconds. it rings, the voice speaks, the joke lands or doesn't, the call ends. some calls end with a small sign-off — "alright, love you, talk to you soon" — that doesn't break character.

the reference is the 1970s and 1980s dial-a-joke service. a slightly tinny voice, a one-liner, a beat, the punchline, click. we've changed two things. the call is outbound rather than inbound, and the voice is a person who used to call you.

whose voice

a living person who agrees to it. a deceased relative whose voice you have a recording of. yourself at seventeen, from a camcorder tape. a fictional character of your own making. not a celebrity. not a public figure. ever.

how the joke is chosen

the joke is the same for every person calling on that day. it is written in advance, reviewed by a person who likes dad jokes, and rendered in your voice the night before. the joke never knows anything about your life. the voice is the personalization. the joke is just the joke.

how much

eleven dollars a month for one voice, one weekly call.

five dollars a month for a memorial line, capped at sixty dollars lifetime. after that the calls are free, forever.

the lower price is for grief. it isn't a sale. if you are using it for that reason it should not be a market product.

what we don't do

the voice never says anything personal about your life. the voice never delivers messages from you to anyone. there is no chat. there is no app. there is nothing to engage with. the call ends. the next one is in a week.

a grieving customer should be able to describe this to a skeptical friend in one sentence and have the friend say "huh, that's kind of nice." if the friend says "huh, that's creepy," we've drifted. our job is to keep that sentence true.