Josh Gad: The news isn't breaking, but the alerts sure are

A few moments ago, I got the alert I didn't even know I had been waiting for during the course of the past 12 months.

At first, I assumed, since my iPhone was dinging with the urgency of not one but three breaking-news sources, that the news must be of some urgency. Perhaps a piece of debris had been officially recovered from the wreckage of Flight 370?

I subsequently turned on CNN to find breaking news that a piece of the plane had officially NOT been found and that the plane was STILL MISSING.

Then, I thought that maybe there was a major confrontation brewing on the border of southern Ukraine, but again, this was proven patently incorrect by President Putin's calming reassurance that he would never do anything to harm his neighbors. (I don't know about you, but I take him on his word.)

So what, then, could this breaking-news alert be that sent my phone into a explosion of bells and dings? What would require every major news agency to stop what it's doing and text me frantically with the urgency of an impending nuclear annihilation? What could be so important that I was to stop cold in my tracks in the discount section of the Dollar Store to look down at these ferocious news alerts?

Lupita Nyong'o was named People's Most Beautiful Woman of the year.

My heart stopped in my chest. How could I have been so shortsighted to have forgotten that it had been 365 days since Gwyneth Paltrow had received the honor of being hotter than 7 billion other people on the planet? How were residents in the Sudan without cell service going to be made aware of this urgent information? What about my mother, who has not yet figured out to push the alert button on her settings page? Would she have to wait until her friends at the Tuesday night mahjong tournament broke the news to her in person? How would that make her feel?

You see, for the first time in history, news can be immediately dispersed and instantaneously consumed. I no longer need to sift through stories about unrest in the Middle East and impending climate-related catastrophes, because I now have Duran Duran (yes, I use Duran Duran ringtones for breaking-news alerts) to notify me of a story's importance.

For the first time in history, we have knowledge and information at our fingertips, so when important news like "There are 50 people more beautiful than you" breaks, we don't have to wait until 7 p.m. for Brian Williams to tell us.

Of course, this all hinges on news media outlets not taking advantage of this enormous resource. This hinges on editors being discriminating enough to not alert me of something that isn't of the utmost importance. This hinges on the unspoken trust that exists between us and our trustworthy news outlets. But when stories such as "the actress from 12 Years a Slave is so hot, she's hotter than Gisele Bundchen" are given the same precedence as "Ebola outbreak in West Africa kills over 140 people," one has to believe we're on the right track.

Oh, wait — I had to look that ebola story up the old-fashioned way. I'm sure if it comes to the U.S., Duran Duran will alert me. Until then, how good does Lupita look in that dress?