BOISE, ID — A Boise man who accidentally enabled read receipts on his iPhone in December has spent the last four months constructing an elaborate social fiction in which he does not own a phone, does not check messages promptly, and is frequently “just seeing this.”

Garrett Odom, 38, enabled the feature while attempting to disable notifications during a church service and has been unable to locate the setting to reverse it. He has since read 214 messages from family, friends, coworkers, and one group chat he does not remember joining, responding to each with a carefully calibrated delay designed to suggest he is a man who lives fully in the present moment.

“I saw Dave’s message about the fishing trip at 7:14 AM,” Odom confirmed, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I responded at 3:40 PM. He knows. I know he knows. We have not discussed it.”

“The read receipt just tells people what I’ve been doing with my time. I don’t need that kind of accountability from my contacts list.”

Odom’s wife, Renee, 36, said the situation has produced what she described as “an unexpected spiritual discipline.” “He actually put the phone down at dinner last week because he was afraid to open anything in front of witnesses,” she said. “It’s the most present he’s been in years.”

Odom visited the Apple Store on March 4th, where a Genius Bar technician disabled the feature in eleven seconds. Odom re-enabled it by accident on the drive home.

At press time, Odom had been staring at an unread message from his mother for six hours and was describing this as “setting a boundary.”