BroApp vs Romantimatic
2014-02-24 23:34:23.629459+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments
Compare and contrast:
- Romantimatic is an iOS app to remind you to express affection to your significant other. Article about Romantimatic and author Greg Knauss here.
- BroApp is Your Clever Relationship Wingman: Automatically message your girlfriend sweet things so you can spend more time with the Bros.
On the one hand, both of them are focused on the same relationship issue, but somewhere in there is a strong disconnect. I don't for a moment dispute that BroApp is obnoxious, and I kind of think that Romantimatic is sweet, but I also think that Romantimatic is already somewhere along the continuum, and isn't solidly at one end.
It's also interesting reading the page about the development of BroApp, about the heuristics for not messaging while you're with your girlfriend, or if you've been messaged in the past hour, or... basically, trying to appear to be human, trying to pass the Turing test.
I have a set of scripts which help me manage my social media updates. I can schedule updates for the future. Once or twice I've gone in and removed a pending update because of the evolving conversation, and far more often than that I've thought about it. I also make an effort to send Charlene a message every once in a while telling her how much I appreciate her and, yes, have considered setting up something to remind me. I haven't yet done that, but I could easily see heading down that path, putting in heuristics, automating attention...
And then somewhere we're back into Turing test territory: Is this what AI looks like? Some set of heuristics and hacks to simulate empathy?
And if I augment myself by further building systems to help me do these things, and I probably well (After all, what's the difference between reminding myself that I should acknowledge Charlene's contributions to my life and reminding myself of any of the other tasks I should be undertaking), is, in the end, the difference between BroApp and Romantimatic just one of tone?