“Don’t walk with your phone! …Oh, your phone is…Walking anyway…Um…Carry on.”

Due to the convenience of modern smartphones, it’s getting increasingly hard to spend time away from them – even when you have to get up and go somewhere else. This has given rise to an unfortunate social problem known in Japan as “aruki-sumaho”, a snappy way to say “walking while using your smartphone”.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how moving while your eyes (and sometimes even ears) are occupied with a little screen might…Well, result in injury or worse. Today, 6-Second Shop (also known as Rokubyo Shoten) brings us a product that solves none of the problems created by phone-walkers, but does interpret the terminology in a new and creative way.

▼ “We made a real “aruki-sumaho” #6SecondShop”

You see, while everyone understands that aruki-sumaho means walking while on your phone, the term is actually a shortening of aruki-nagara-sumaho-o-sousa-suru-koto (operating your smartphone while walking). Taken literally, you can just as easily parse aruki-sumaho as “walking smartphone”.

And that’s exactly what 6-Second Shop, already famous for their runic circle phone charger, has brought into being.

The short video clip shows the phone lumbering on two plastic, humanoid legs, until it grows tired of hauling its weighty body around and crumbles to its knees – just in time to topple over a remote control lying in its path. A neat robotic device, or testament to mankind’s hubris? You be the judge.

Twitter users were quite happy to judge this strange, shambling smartphone, as it turned out. Comparisons to other terrifying flesh mannequins were drawn:

▼ “Reminds me of this.”

https://twitter.com/__hrk_kyk/status/1070710676576858112

▼ “All I see is the Bobble-Head Nurse from Silent Hill.”

While others just drew their weapons to fight this long-legged abomination, as video games have taught them to.

https://twitter.com/KX_net/status/1071015847911612417

As 6-Second Shop is owned by concept art and animation company Chocolate Inc., it’s unlikely this waddling phone will be making its awkward way to store shelves any time soon. And it’s probably just as well: with all the risks posed to human beings violating the aruki-sumaho rule, things would only get worse if the phones could walk on their own too.

Source, images: Twitter/@6sec_shop