Pete Holmes Is Not Reading Your Email

皮特·霍姆斯（Pete Holmes）不回你的邮件

Pete Holmes has achieved a jealousy-inducing feat: He spends very little time on his iPhone. To pull it off, Holmes keeps his phone in grayscale and has the screen-time widget displayed prominently on his home screen. He has a deep hatred for the tedium of responding to messages (“somehow all of life feels like we work in an office”), but the star of HBO’s Crashing and the special “Silly Silly Fun Boy” is not a luddite by any measure. In fact, he’s an AI optimist. Holmes also has a deep appreciation for FaceTime and thinks of his computer as “a girlfriend you know is going to move back to Barcelona.”

皮特·霍姆斯达成了一项令人嫉妒的成就：他在 iPhone 上花费的时间极少。为了做到这一点，霍姆斯将手机设置为灰度模式，并将“屏幕使用时间”小组件显眼地放在主屏幕上。他非常厌恶回复消息的繁琐（“不知何故，生活中的一切都让人感觉像是在办公室工作”），但这位 HBO 剧集《崩溃》（Crashing）和特别节目《Silly Silly Fun Boy》的明星绝非卢德分子（反对技术者）。事实上，他是一位人工智能乐观主义者。霍姆斯也非常喜欢 FaceTime，并把他的电脑比作“一个你知道迟早会搬回巴塞罗那的女朋友”。

Holmes spoke to WIRED about his first foray into comedy, FaceTiming his mom’s forehead, and why he thinks we’re all going to “slowly walk away” from our phones.

霍姆斯向《连线》（WIRED）杂志讲述了他初涉喜剧的经历、与母亲进行 FaceTime 时对着她额头的趣事，以及为什么他认为我们终将“慢慢远离”手机。

Phone model: iPhone Air

手机型号：iPhone Air

It’s the iPhone Air from 2025. I love this phone so much. The first thing I love about it is that it did not do well. No one bought it. And when I saw it, I couldn’t wait to get it. People often think it’s an Android. People often don’t know what it is. I love all of this. I like having a phone nobody else has.

这是 2025 年款的 iPhone Air。我太爱这款手机了。我喜欢它的第一点是它卖得不好。没人买它。当我看到它时，我迫不及待地想买。人们经常以为它是安卓手机。人们通常不知道它是什么。我喜欢这一切。我喜欢拥有一部别人都没有的手机。

Everybody has the same fucking ugly spider eyeball phone. Everybody’s just getting the Max, the 2,800-hour battery life. Get all that shit out of here. The iPhone Air is the first iPhone I’ve seen in a very long time that looks like Steve Jobs had a say. Everything else is just Apple playing catch-up with Android, Apple mimicking something they saw Google do or whoever, and giving us a bunch of stuff we don’t need. And the flex is that it has a short battery life. You see my phone and you go, “Pete must not be on his phone much.”

每个人都拿着同样该死的、丑陋的“蜘蛛眼”手机。每个人都在买 Max 版本，追求那 2800 小时的电池续航。把那些破玩意儿都拿走吧。iPhone Air 是我很久以来见过的第一款看起来像是史蒂夫·乔布斯参与设计的 iPhone。其他所有产品都只是苹果在追赶安卓，模仿谷歌或其他公司所做的事情，然后塞给我们一堆我们根本不需要的功能。而这款手机的“炫耀点”在于它的电池续航很短。你看到我的手机，就会想：“皮特肯定不怎么玩手机。”

There was a time when Apple was trying to make the 11-inch laptop. They were trying to make the future. They were trying to have things look clean. And now it’s just, “Here’s everything.” You look like you work in Silicon Valley. You look like you’re a programmer. I want to look like I’m in Blade Runner.

曾几何时，苹果试图制造 11 英寸的笔记本电脑。他们试图创造未来。他们试图让产品看起来简洁。而现在，他们只是说：“给你所有东西。”你看起来就像在硅谷工作。你看起来就像个程序员。而我想看起来像是在《银翼杀手》里。

Average daily screen time: 1 hr, 15 min

平均每日屏幕使用时间：1 小时 15 分钟

It’s a dream of dreams to finally have someone ask me in a public way, “What’s your screen time?” I’ve been living for this day.

终于有人在公开场合问我“你的屏幕使用时间是多少？”这简直是梦想成真。我一直都在等待这一天。

So today, it’s 2 o’clock, and I’m at 27 minutes. And every day I aim for sub one hour and—I’m so aware of what a flex this is—I just got my screen report. An hour and 15 minutes was my average for the week. And here’s the punch line: That’s still too much. I still feel stressed out by my phone. I’m still looking at it more than I would like to. And it still gets its claws in me at some points. It goes higher if I watch a movie on it or something, if I’ve been flying.

今天下午两点，我的使用时间是 27 分钟。我每天的目标都是控制在一小时以内——我很清楚这有多值得炫耀——我刚看了我的屏幕报告。本周平均每天 1 小时 15 分钟。重点来了：这还是太多了。我仍然会因为手机感到压力。我盯着它的时间比我想要的要多。它有时仍然会像爪子一样抓住我。如果我在上面看电影或者飞行时使用，时间就会变长。

I keep the widget for screen time on my home screen, which is a good hack. If you’re trying to lose weight, you have to weigh yourself. And if you’re trying to get your screen time down, put the widget on your phone.

我把屏幕使用时间的小组件放在主屏幕上，这是一个很好的技巧。如果你想减肥，你就得称体重。如果你想减少屏幕使用时间，就把这个小组件放在手机上。

There’s no social media on my phone. It’s not natural to be in line at airport security and finding out everything from every corner of the globe and your own personal life just constantly. I found that if you step away, people get the message pretty quickly. You have to tell people. A lot of my texts start with, “Sorry, I’m not a big text person.”

我的手机上没有社交媒体。在机场安检排队时，不断地获知全球各个角落发生的一切以及你自己的私生活，这很不自然。我发现只要你退出来，人们很快就会明白你的意思。你必须告诉别人。我的很多短信开头都是：“抱歉，我不怎么发短信。”

And my phone is in black and white. That’s a nice little hack. Your phone is like a slot machine, so the more you can limit its color and sound, the less it can lull you in.

我的手机是黑白的。这是一个不错的小技巧。手机就像一台老虎机，所以你越能限制它的颜色和声音，它就越难诱惑你。

Unread texts: 80

未读短信：80 条

I have 80 unread texts. The thing I do most often when I read a text is mark it as unread. That was the greatest achievement in tech in the past 10 years.

我有 80 条未读短信。我读短信时最常做的事就是把它标记为未读。这是过去 10 年科技界最伟大的成就。

If my wife texts me, it’s different, but a lot of times I feel like people are just bugging you. I’m like, “Do I work for you? When did we start?” Somehow all of life feels like we work in an office. Even your friendships are like, “I got to get back to Jennifer.” I think a change might be coming. I think AI is going to lead to so much disinformation in your inbox, even in your texts, that we’re all just going to slowly walk away. We’re just going to be, like, Amish. We’re going to be hanging out in person and talking again. We’re going to be meeting up and having coffees way more.

如果是我妻子发短信给我，那另当别论，但很多时候我觉得人们只是在烦你。我会想：“我为你工作吗？我们什么时候开始这种关系的？”不知何故，生活中的一切都让人感觉像是在办公室工作。甚至连友谊都变成了“我得回詹妮弗的消息”。我认为改变可能即将到来。我认为人工智能会导致你的收件箱甚至短信中充斥着大量虚假信息，以至于我们最终都会慢慢远离。我们会变得像阿米什人（Amish，主张简朴生活）一样。我们会再次面对面交流。我们会更多地见面喝咖啡。

Unread emails: 55,426

未读邮件：55,426 封

Is that possible?

这可能吗？

If you reply to an email more than three times, you have to start a fresh thread. I’m not going to dig through. I’m getting better at just being like, “You don’t have to do that.” I don’t think it’s a show business thing—I just think I’m 47 years old.

如果你回复一封邮件超过三次，就得开启一个新的对话线程。我才不会去翻找。我越来越擅长直接说：“你没必要那样做。”我不认为这是演艺圈的特有现象——我只是觉得我 47 岁了。

So much of modern life is manufactured urgency. We perpetuate that by taking it seriously. So we’re passing this hot potato back and forth. If anybody could just snap you out of it, you’d be like, “That email didn’t need to exist. We didn’t need to do that. We didn’t need that meeting.” We’re rising and grinding ourselves to death, because nobody knows what the alternative is. I’m out here with 55,000 saying it’s possible. You can make a living, you can have a life, and leave 55,000 emails unread with a big fuck off.

现代生活中有太多人为制造的紧迫感。我们通过认真对待这些紧迫感来延续它。所以我们像传递烫手山芋一样把这些压力抛来抛去。如果有人能让你清醒过来，你会发现：“那封邮件根本没必要存在。我们没必要做那件事。我们没必要开那个会。”我们正在没日没夜地把自己累死，因为没人知道还有别的选择。我在这里留着 55,000 封未读邮件，就是为了证明这是可能的。你可以维持生计，可以拥有生活，并对那 55,000 封邮件说声“去你的”。

Music app: Spotify and Apple Music

音乐应用：Spotify 和 Apple Music

We do have Spotify, but my wife will often kick me off of it. I’ll be in the car and then all of a sudden Beyoncé starts playing and I’m trying to listen to dad rock like The National. I don’t think my wife knows we have Apple Music. I like knowing that my little secret is Apple Music.

我们确实有 Spotify，但我妻子经常把我踢下线。我开车时，突然就开始播放碧昂丝（Beyoncé）的歌，而我本来想听像 The National 乐队那样的“老爸摇滚”。我觉得我妻子不知道我们还有 Apple Music。我喜欢这种感觉，Apple Music 是我的小秘密。

Computer model: 2022 MacBook Air

电脑型号：2022 款 MacBook Air

It’s a MacBook Air from 2022 with the M2 chip. I had a slightly thin kind of fun one that snapped in my backpack. So I just bought this pretty thoughtlessly, which is kind of a shame. This was my “I just need a laptop” laptop.

这是 2022 款搭载 M2 芯片的 MacBook Air。我之前有一台稍微薄一点、挺有趣的电脑，结果在背包里被压断了。所以我买这台时没怎么多想，这挺可惜的。这就是我那台“我只是需要一台笔记本电脑”的电脑。

There have been other laptops I’ve had far more feelings about. There was a MacBook Air 11-inch that I still think about. It was the smallest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And then there was a MacBook that was 17 inches. It was huge. I still think about those computers like they are old friends.

我曾拥有过其他更有感情的笔记本电脑。有一台 11 英寸的 MacBook Air，我至今还会想起它。那是我这辈子见过最小的东西。还有一台 17 英寸的 MacBook。它太大了。我依然像怀念老朋友一样怀念那些电脑。

I do feel like there’s planned obsolescence too. No matter how many times I clean my Mac and try to keep things minimal, it’s going to start fucking up pretty soon. And that stops me from having a relation…

我确实觉得存在“计划性报废”。无论我清理多少次 Mac，无论我如何努力保持简洁，它很快就会开始出毛病。这让我无法与它建立起……