Chelsea Handler, no stranger to awkward social situations, has launched a new app that gives you a believable excuse for getting out of any unpleasant obligation. Called Chelsea Handler: Gotta Go, the app sends a fake text message or phone call that lets the user leave an uncomfortable social situation.
To use, you simply download the app, compose texts containing the excuse of your choice, and program it to arrive at a certain time. The app can also call the user with an excuse (say, a baby crying in the background), which will result in a pre-recorded message from Handler telling you how to behave.
“Gotta Go is a way to generate excuses and set them as alarms. It’s the perfect solution for bad dates, awkward convos with your in laws, boring meetings and whatever else you might want to hit the eject button on,” reads the app’s description. “Creating an excuse is easy! Choose an emoji and craft a story by adding messages and calls. Add the special contact number to your address book and set the alarm. Your excuse will be delivered to you as actual text messages and phone calls from your newly created contact, all the proof you need to smoothly exit an awkward situation.”
Handler’s recently released Netflix documentary series, Chelsea Does, shows the behind-the-scenes efforts to create the app. In the second installment of her series, Chelsea Does Silicon Valley, Handler goes to the tech capital of the country and pitches her app idea to the Yeti founders, who then create a preliminary version of her app that is presidented to venture capital firm Foundation Capital.
“We wanted to build something that she could relate to, so we needed to find a problem that was a very Chelsea Handler problem,” Tony Scherba, president and founding partner of Yeti, told Fortune.
Currently, the app is only available for iOS devices, but Scherba says an Android version could be coming soon depending on user demand.
"It’s an experiment, we’re going to release it and see what happens," Scherba told Mashable. "If people like it, we’ll figure out how to keep it going."
