Last night, around 4 a.m., a freight train carrying screaming sirens and old dial-up modem sounds crashed through my room. It was a government-issued FLASH FLOOD WARNING, sent express delivery from the darkest depths of Hell directly to my cellphone. Was it even raining when I received the urgent message? Who knows. Will I be cranky and tired all day? Emergency Alert: Yes.

I turned my emergency alerts off. If you have ever been alerted in the middle of the night to the possibility of rain in another town, you probably want to too. Here’s how to do it on an iPhone:

1. Go to your iPhone settings and scroll down to “Notifications”

2. Once you’re in your notifications settings, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the list.

3. Turn that shit off by swiping the toggle from green to gray.

4. Accept the fact that you might one day get stuck in traffic behind a kidnapper while remaining oblivious of their crime, or become caught in a flash flood unaware. Realize your ancestors made it through life just fine without obnoxious, unwanted iPhone alerts, which is how you’re here today. Scrunch around in your bed, maybe go back to sleep.

Only your landlord can mess with you now.


Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.