Tod MaffinCanadian Commentator, From Far and Wide · Emotional Support Canadian

Incoming Messages from America

18 May 2026 · 1 min

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1:01

In this brief monologue, the speaker explains a personal project involving two long‑form online censuses—one for Canadians and a follow‑up for Americans. The American census included a prompt asking participants to write a single‑sentence notification they would send to every Canadian’s cell phone. Approximately 1,200 Americans responded. While the speaker cannot broadcast these messages directly to Canadian phones, they have created a website (incoming.todmaffin.com) that displays each message, rotating one every five seconds. Viewers are invited to visit the site and watch the collection of American perspectives aimed at Canadians.

Chapters

I have been keeping a secret from you, and tonight I'm going to tell you what that secret is. So as you may know, I did these goofy little long-form censuses, one for Canadians, and then I added one for Americans. For the American one, I added a question that said, "If you could send a one-sentence notification to the cell phone of every Canadian, what would it say?" And lots of people answered it. There's about 1,200 Americans that have filled out that sort of, uh, fake census. Well, here's a surprise. No, I can't send it to the screen of every Canadian cell phone, but I can come close. I've set up a website and every single one of them is on there. They rotate through, one every 5 seconds. It'll take you a couple hours to watch them all if you care to. And the address is incoming.todmaffin.com. Incoming messages from America, from real Americans who said they wanted us Canadians to see what they had to say.