GetUpp Lets You Broadcast Your Sad, Sad Life

Finally there’s an app on the market to let your friends know exactly how pathetic you are. A German start-up has inexplicably created a smartphone application called GetUpp that takes the promises you make to yourself during the day's sober moments and humiliates you when you fail to live up to them.

Let’s say you plan on going to the gym after work, and you program the appointment into the app. Then, rather than going to the gym, you end up ordering Chinese take-out on your cab ride home, planning to eat it in your underwear as you watch that Glee episode you DVRed two weeks ago. In the old days you could have just eaten your shame away. But now your failure to meet your goals will be broadcast across your selected brand of social media to your friends and co-workers, and everyone will be able to take a bite of your personal brand of sadness.

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But seriously, who is this app actually for? Going for the shame based punishment-as-motivator would be suited for the lazy people of the world, but who in their right mind is going to subject themselves to that? Do I really want the world to know that I put off going to the Laundromat for yet another day? I think, ultimately, GetUpp will prove to be a bragging tool for the already fit. A “Hey! Guess what? I went to the gym every day this week.” Do we really need another way for the self-motivated to feel good about themselves? I think not.

One can even imagine a world in which parents use this system to keep their more rebellious children in check. “Oh, so you’re going to be at Sally’s house tonight? Not down at the concert with that boy again? Well if you’re not where you say you're going to be, I’m going to find out about it.” This certainly could be an uncomfortable extension of the whole location-based tech world we currently inhabit. Aside from the obvious parental usage, businesses could start requiring time and location based check-ins to ensure employees are at work when they claim to be. Honestly, that’s not too scary… But you can see the potential is there for something positively Orwellian.

So if you're a micromanaging business owner, a health nut, or if you just plain hate yourself, I think this just might be the application for you. I'll be sticking with the chinese food, thank you very much.

- James T. Tynion IV