According to an online survey 19% of cell phone users have dropped their phone into the toilet at least once. That isn’t a problem however for 1.5 billion people. Not just any 1.5 billion people though. This is the 1. 5 billion who have cell phones but not toilets.
According to a report from the United Nations this week, of the 7 billion people on Earth, 6 billion of them have cell phones while only 4.5 billion have access to toilets. Now does my title make sense to you? Picture the bespectacled Verizon guy running from bathroom to bathroom squatting briefly with his phone, “Can you smell me now?”
Apparently in this world there are people who have the money to purchase a cell phone and pay for a plan but they don’t have a toilet. Fortunately I am not one of them. If you’re reading this you probably aren’t either. Of course I suppose you could be reading this on your smart phone while squatting over a hole in the woods. That might be a good statistic to have. How many of the 1.5 billion who have phones but no toilets have smart phones with a data plan?
Is it just me or do you see a great marketing opportunity for some enterprising cell phone carrier? I’m an idea man Chuck. Remember how Cingular Wireless used to have that plan where if you didn’t use up all your plan minutes they would carry over and add to the next months minutes? What if the cell phone carriers in these Third World nations did the same thing except instead of adding your leftover data or minutes to the next month they could go towards the purchase of plumbing and a toilet? Maybe the customers could then subscribe to a waste management plan? Talk about your data dumping! Maybe those of us in more developed countries could choose to donate our leftover minutes and data by texting some number.
If you’d like to donate your extra gigabites to Texts for Toilets just text #ThePhilFactor and put in the word ‘toilet’. You can earn 500 Phil Factor points redeemable at The Phil Factor Gift store if in the comments section you can name the movie from which I borrowed the line “I’m an idea man Chuck.” Also please support Texts for Toilets by clicking the Facebook Like or Share button. Have a great weekend!
Reblogged this on The Phil Factor and commented:
I was traveling this week and didn’t have time for my usual weekend Phil Factor. This is a funny one from a couple years ago that not many people saw the first time.
Haha, funny!
A cell phone or a toilet
To deal with human waste
Think I’d sell my cell phone
And get a toilet post haste!!
Coincidences abound when we are frequent readers, and more when we read highbrow material, such as this. I read just this week about two humorists, one making condom jokes and another jokes about toilets and feces, in order to encourage use of condoms and toilets in third world countries where people often see no need for either. The funny-toilet guy said people think it is inconvenient to go inside a private space and close a door to do your business. That pooping in public is easier, and often a social activity: That folks stop and squat and chat together.
Pardon my ethnocentricity now while I go and barf.
That is a startling and strange statistic. But then again, a phone makes so many things happen nowadays. A toilet really only has one function, and isn’t necessary for life because a hole is perfectly serviceable. But a phone! I can call my mother and order food and watch a funny cat video all in minutes. The real question is, if I had to give up one or the other, my toilet or my phone, which would I choose?
That is a touch decision.
That is a tough question. Especially if you use your phone while you’re on the toilet. If you don’t have a toilet can you still use your phone? But if you don’t have a phone can you still use the toilet?
LOL!
This is getting existential. 🙂
I texted #ThePhilFactor now where’s my 500 Phil Factor points? I want to buy a life-sized cardboard cutout.
Your name is registered in the Phil factor store database. All you have to do is show up to pick up your cardboard cut out
I’ll be there in 5!
Excellent!
How about a mobile phone case with integrated toilet roll holder and a small detachable trowel for digging small holes? Hmmm – I feel a patent application coming on…
They’re not pimps; they’re love brokers. (side note: I am just now realizing I was way too young to be watching that movie, but my mother was of the “meh, she’ll see it all eventually” school of parenting and never bothered to screen anything or even watch with me.)
Ding ding ding! We have a winner! That was a great movie though, wasn’t it?
It really was, I just hadn’t thought of it in forever and now I’m having an inner-child crisis. Meh, I’ll get over it.
We drove through Kenya and it was amazing how many roadside stalls there were selling sim cards next to what looked like derelict shacks with goats and chickens running in and out…