Every girl needs a trap phone

tips

IRL  • 

Every girl needs a trap phone

Even if you’re not actually, y’know, trapping

I have this friend. For the sake of our story, let's call her…Janet Vasquez. I'm not changing her name to protect the innocent because she thrives on attention (one of the many reasons we're friends) and because she's definitely not innocent.

Me and Dammit Janet at a bar circa 2011, moments before she ran away and hid under a car

Janet is a brilliant, accomplished young professional who, by day, wheels and deals and makes that money. And by night, she morphs into an incredibly fun yet evil demon known as Dammit Janet. DJ likes to have a good time, throw back a few drinks…and completely obliterate her phone. She's a tiny girl so I truly don't know how she manages to smash them up like Gallagher and watermelon.

Every Sunday through college and beyond, I wake up to a text from her boyfriend, a mutual friend, or an Instagram DM: "Loool it's Janet I broke my phone, text me here." And every Monday, I send her my number for the new phone she gets. How much have Janet and Papa Vasquez put into the ghost of Steve Jobs' pockets over the years, replacing phones broken because they've been hurled into the street after the bartender told her to stop stealing olives from behind the bar??? And then she discovered a solution: trap phones.

This is 2012 and you can't see it, but Janet is holding an ancient Android

Ostensibly, they're for trapping…but they can be so much more

So as evidenced by the name, a trap phone is for trapping — buying and selling drugs. They're disposable, untraceable, and you preload them with texts or minutes in advance. They're also known as burner phones or go phones (who remembers Cricket Wireless from high school? Cricket Girls knew how to fight, tbh). Trap phones are brilliant for a night out. You know how you always end up texting the one person you don't want to text, or ask your friend to save their number so you can delete it out of your phone that evening? If you bring your trap phone out, you preload it with only the numbers you'll need that evening: the crew you're going with, your emergency contact, maybe your actual dealer, and that's it.

It also completely eliminates the threat of you sending questionable emails to coworkers, tweeting incomprehensibly, or accidentally posting a picture of your boobs to your Snapchat Story, which I definitely have never done. We don't need technology on a night out! We have liquor!

The only 2018 picture of us because this bitch KEEPS LOSING HER PHONE

It's really the only thing that makes sense

The best part of bringing your trap phone is it encourages you to be even more reckless because you don't have to be responsible for it. Want to leave it in a cab? Throw it at someone who remarked you were in the bathroom for a suspicious amount of time? Use it as a bottle opener? Who cares! It cost you $20 at a bodega! And not to get all "we live in a society" on y'all, but don't you think it'd be kind of nice to go out and not worry about making sure our thousands on online friends know exactly how much fun we're having? Fine, I'll say it! WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY! If you need me this Friday, hit me on the burner. I'll be around.