Pulling a sickie? Here’s how NOT to get caught through your phone

There are so many times in life where it’s preferable to keep your social life on the DL.

Like if you’ve bailed on a birthday party to hang out with your bae, or skipped the family reunion to attend that banging house party that EVERYONE is going to. Or, of course, to just pull a good-old-fashioned sickie.

Luckily the following tips are applicable for pretty much any kind of activity where you’re gonna need an excuse. Because there’s nothing worse than the faux pas of having someone comment on a picture saying, “Errrr I thought you had flu?” or, even worse, just “Nice.”

Oh DANG the subtext. It’s all in the punctuation.

Spooky passive aggression aside, here are some of the ways you can frolic in total ambiguity.

Pexels via Pixabay

Stop people from tracking you on your phone

It goes without saying that you should NOT share your location with colleagues, cousins or anyone else who could snitch on you, whether accidentally or on purpose.

What’s easy to forget though are tracking apps like Find My Friends. It’s oh-so-simple to just click ‘Yes’ when someone asks to track you, and then forget and completely land yourself in the 💩 when your Mum realises that you’re not at home studying like you said, but that your li’l location bubble is merrily pulsating somewhere in the middle of a park.

Switch these off, even if it’s just temporarily.

Don’t become a victim of other people showing off

A lot of the time, your betrayal will be revealed because someone else has unknowingly uploaded a photo of you, without your permission, and displayed it to the world.

However, there are some sneaky, cheeky ways you can avoid this kind of thing. Facebook is probably the most risky of your social platforms because generally, unless you’ve been a stickler for your privacy settings, people don’t have to be friends with you in order to see your stuff.

The safest option is to turn on Facebook tagging approval. Then at least you can control who mentions you in a status, or who uploads photos of your rendezvous.

If you have to upload stuff, use Instagram

Unlike other social platforms, Instagram has a nifty li’l feature that allows you to hide your story from specific people. So, you can go wild with documenting your unofficial indulgences, without exposing yourself to problematic work friends, family members or anyone judgey TBH.

Go ghost on Snapchat

The new Snap Map is a very cool feature that allows you to see where the big Snapchat stories are breaking all over the world, and view anything that’s public and popular. The downside is that it’s pretty invasive, in that people can track your exact location, thanks to a li’l Bitmoji avatar, pinned to the map. As you can imagine, this is less than ideal if you’re trying to be sneaky. We recommend selecting the ‘ghost mode’ option, which takes you off grid.

So there we have it, some surefire ways to get away with any kind of clandestine cotching. Just remember, you didn’t hear it from us 😘

Main pic: Unsplash via Bruno Gomiero