A FEW YEARS
ago, there was really no way to know how we would use the Internet of Things. A
handful prescribed functions for home devices like Nest and Philips Hue made
immediate sense. But beyond the gadget-specific actions that blink our lights,
lock our doors, and kick on our air conditioners lie scores of automated tasks
that can be used to manipulate hearts and minds.
IFTTT, one
of the largest platforms for using the internet to do our bidding, hosts a
shocking amount of recipes dedicated to obsessing over our romantic partners.
Users of the service have created automated triggers to monitor, control, and
interact with our significant others.
Here’s one
that notifies you when your wife posts anything to Instagram. Another sends
your wife a daily report of your activity. This recipe simply keeps a wife up
to date on the whereabouts of her husband. And one to notify your boyfriend
when you’re five minutes away. And this classic: “Get a notification when your
girlfriend posts a new picture so that you can like before she gets mad.”
Simple search terms like “wife,” “husband,” “boyfriend,” “girlfriend,” and
“spouse” return fascinating results.
IFTTT hosts
a shocking amount of recipes dedicated to obsessing over our romantic partners.
The recipes run the gamut, from the totally sexist (“Text my wife that I work
very hard for us“) to the digitally endearing (“Text girlfriend ‘I love you’
every day at midnight“) to the totally practical (“Forward your kid’s school
report card on to your husband!“).
I reached
out for a comment on some of these more stalkery recipes. An IFTTT
representative offered this summery response: “We’ve seen incredibly personal
stories from our community about how they IFTTT in their daily lives. Some very
sweet and some very silly. From simple recipes like an email reminder to plan
for a wedding anniversary, to recording a homemade love song and sending it straight
to your sweetheart. The possibilities for personalization are endless.”
IFTTT isn’t
singularly responsible for cataloging a collection of relationship triggers.
Apps like Romantimatic and the now-defunct Kahnoodle help (and helped) people
remember to communicate and, um, have sex with a partner—In the case of
Kahnoodle, the app would ping you with a notification that it was time for some
lovin’. But these were one-off experiments, more art pieces than practical
solutions—whereas IFTTT is arguably one of the biggest purveyors of the
actionable internet. And the service’s recipes, many of which harness the APIs
of the social web, are user-created. These aren’t one-off apps produced by
brogrammers after a weekend hackathon, simply hoping for a quick moment in the
sun (which in the app universe means one morning on Product Hunt). These are
things that real people made because they actually want to use them.
There’s a
good and a bad side here. Many of us would prefer a more attentive significant
other, one who texts us every day at lunch just because, or one who never
forgets an anniversary. The very act of setting some sort of reminder system is
endearing in itself. But the negative is that we might be programming ourselves
to need digital prompts to participate in our relationships—and worse yet, we
might be abusing technology to totally and utterly control and monitor our
partners.
There isn’t
just a smattering of “remember to” recipes; there are many, many recipes for
secretly watching the every digital move of a significant other.
But do we
deserve it? A recent survey came to the conclusion that a whopping 42 percent
of Tinder is made up of married people (cut to that link for Tinder’s denial
and the surveyor’s cheeky rebuttal!). Dating app Hinge is taking steps to
actually let you know which of its users are married or in a relationship,
because that’s something we all have to be mildly concerned about now. And the
dearth of relationship distractions in our lives (many of which are
technology-induced) means that maybe such motivation to interact is something
we need. Technology has caused some problems for relationships (both concerning
infidelity and being consumed by screens entirely) so perhaps we’re all just
figuring technology could also fix them.
Dr. Keely
Kolmes offered a few insights about the pros and cons. “For some people who
already have problems with attention and concentration, digital reminders may
be a useful prod in order to remember to do nice things such a giving one’s
partner a hug or a compliment,” she wrote me via email. “But for those who
don’t have a problem remember these things, we may begin to find there are
consequences to outsourcing the motivators for things we’d like to regularly
remember to do. For example, there has been research by Sparrow, Liu, and
Wegner (2011) that has shown that when people expect to have future access to
information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and
enhanced recall, instead for where to access it.” Essentially, using—or rather,
overusing—digital prompts can decreased your own instinct to remember to do
something.
“Given
their findings, I wonder whether people may come to rely more upon technology
than they need to in order to do the usual things to enhance their
relationships and relate interpersonally.”
It could
probably go without saying, but there are drawbacks to monitoring a partner,
too. According to a study concerning romantic digital surveillance, people who
use multiple forms of monitoring are also more like to believe his or her
partner has done something wrong (regardless of whether they actually have).
What’s more, monitoring a significant other also results in increased stress
for the person who’s doing it.
Dr. Kolmes
also says that software used to monitor someone comes with its owns pros and
cons. Yes, you can feel more connected, but someone who is prone to anxiety
over fidelity is only going to become worse. “I have seen this happen
clinically with some of my clients where check-ins become triggers and sources
of tension in the relationship instead of having a soothing affect,” she
explains.
It feels
like it probably all comes down to trusting your gut. If technology that
reminds you to be kind to your significant other is solving your relationship
needs, then look no further than IFTTT’s smorgasbord of recipes. The real
trouble only begins when the temptation of easy and constant alerts start to
dull your own romantic instincts.
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