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4 Days Of Waking Up To The Hot Guy Alarm Clock

It’s the holiday season, which is a time for sharing, and that is why I’ve decided to open up about my experience using the Hot Guy Alarm Clock app. Guys, this is both the best thing that has ever happened to me, and the worst. Let me explain.

When I first heard about the app, I thought it would be a pretty straightforward alarm — sure, the background was pink and the “Hot Guys” were drawn both sparkling and with cartoonishly rounded rear ends (as my 6-year-old cousin exclaimed when she pulled the app up on my iPad this weekend, “WHY ARE THEIR BUTTS SO BIG?”), but I figured the actual audio wouldn’t amount to much more than some background music and a man’s voice saying “Wake up, gorgeous” or something similar. *Cue sinister-sounding music* Boy, was I wrong.

The first “experience” I chose, in order to test the alarm, was “Tropical Paradise.” The audio recording was at least thirty seconds long, with a vaguely Australian man’s voice setting the scene (apparently I fell asleep on the beach, and he brought me breakfast — “I made you a smoothie in a coconut garnished with pearls and orchids. You probably shouldn’t eat the pearls. The orchids are fine, though”). Don’t get me wrong, it was the greatest thing that had been put in my ears all week, but it also made me a little depressed, as I realized how unlikely it was that I would ever wake up on the beach/have a smoothie brought to me/see a pod of dolphins spelling out my name. I was glad that this was the test alarm; I couldn’t handle that kind of melancholia first thing in the morning.

For the actual first alarm I set, I chose the “Enchanted Castle” setting. Oh, it was stressful. My first reaction upon waking up was “OH MY GOD, WHO IS TALKING TO ME?” and my second was “I’M LATE FOR THE SPRING FESTIVAL. THE PIXIE QUEEN IS THROWING IT AND I’M SUPPOSED TO BE THERE.” The problem with the “Enchanted Castle” alarm is twofold — first, he outlines an entire itinerary for me that I am apparently already late for, no matter how early I set my alarm. Second, this guy has been suiting up and suppressing dissidents (or was it ogres?) in the far corners of the kingdom in my name since at least dawn. Way to make me feel lazy first thing in the morning, enchanted castle boyfriend.

Here’s where things started to get weird: the next alarm was called “Cabin In The Woods” (…like the horror movie) and the avatar was a man in a plaid shirt and jeans with a (dead?) bear slung over his back. “He” “told” “me,” over the soothing sounds of a morning rainstorm, that he had been out chopping firewood for several hours. There’s that productivity guilt trip, again. It took him longer than usual, he explained, because he had to wrestle a bear — apparently a regular occurrence over the last couple of weeks. At this point I became preoccupied with the knowledge that, in this particular scenario, I had apparently been held at this cabin for several weeks. Why? Who was this guy? Why was he giving me a fox stole and then reassuring me it wasn’t dead, “just holding still out of fear and respect”?

(I should mention that after a few days of waking up to the Hot Guy Alarm clock I was having persistent and recurring nightmares, I think as some kind of side effect of having someone delivering a 30 second monologue into my ears every morning before I had the chance to fully wake up. Nonetheless, I was addicted, and found myself shelling out 99 cents for the “Vampire Castle” alarm. The first three were free.)

It was at this point that I had to draw the line, because the “Vampire Castle” alarm was the scariest one yet. There was a clap of thunder, and then a Transylvanian-accented man told me he hoped the storm didn’t disturb my slumber, at which point I heard the cries of the damned, which he tried to tell me were just the local peasants rioting at the gates. I could hear the script for a forthcoming nightmare being written as the alarm played, and so I came to my senses and stopped buying new alarms. I have limits.

I know it was the right decision, but I’m still pretty devastated that I won’t be able to experience the “Cave Behind A Waterfall,” “Pirate King,” “Secretly A Superhero Boyfriend,” “Clumsy Boyfriend,” “Fancy Metropolitan Penthouse,” “Chateau In France (But You’re Spies), and “Unnamed Mystery Dude” alarms. It’s really trying to have these experiences ruined by my own inability to process most of these scenarios as anything but elaborate kidnapping fantasies.

…Um, but don’t let me stop you from giving it a try, because you haven’t lived until you’ve frantically looked around for an intruder in your bedroom/the snooze button while lyre music plays and a man’s voice asks “Would you prefer if I dedicate this battle to you while I’m charging, or should I wait until I’ve won?”

TAGS: hot guy alarm clock | nightmares | Silliness | weird product experiences

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