Endless Hell and SMS

There's a story. I can't remember where I saw it (slatestarcodex?) It was really creepy. It described someone in hell, and he/she/they were walking across an endless desert, getting thirstier and thirstier, never relieved, never dying. And after an endless aeon, the devil came to them, and offered them a different hell. And he/she wouldn't tell them anything about the alternative, but they thought "anything but this".

And inevitably, the alternative was infinitely worse, and they suffered for another aeon, all the time thinking this was worse than anything and they wished they'd stayed in the desert. All the time blaming themself, and feeling they brought it on themselves. And then the devil came to them again, and offered them the choice to be put into a different hell. And they thought "I know it was a mistake, but anything at all is better than THIS".

And of course they were wrong, and the suffering was even worse, and they wished they could go back to the second hell. And this pattern repeated every aeon for eternity, getting ever worse and ever more self-blaming.

So anyway, it turns out, when I get an SMS, now google hangouts says, "would you like to install google's SMS messaging app?" and I say "surely it's more convenient than hangouts?"