Men of the modern age, you have a new technological enemy. There is now an app designed specifically to help women accurately track your every deficiency: The Boyfriend Log.
Secret diaries are out; big data is in. Now, your girlfriend can harness big data to remember every accidental belch, glance at another woman, and forgotten birthday. Like an insurance company sizing up liability, she can quietly determine when to drop you.
Any ‘tool’ encouraging you to log love rather than giving it has the whole equation wrong.
The Boyfriend Log is basically a calendar that encourages users to give each day a color-coded rating. A friendly green heart means every moment was amazing, blissful, and romantic, while an orange flower means it was a happy, fun day. The middle ground is yellow, and it means “flat.” A blue day is sad and heavy, and a red day is plain awful. Women can leave little notes detailing how wonderful, or annoying, their boyfriend is each day.
Of course, it’s much easier to complain than give compliments. For example, you likely won’t say a word to anyone if you go to a Starbucks and get really great service, but the day you get coffee poured down your shirt, you’ll tell everyone and their Twitter account all about it. That’s why the news is full of violence and why gossip exists. If everything is great, then there’s little to talk about, and, in this case, very little to log. We never think to log our best times, but anger and frustration, that’s what we talk to others about. Guess which type of feelings will get more attention in The Boyfriend Log?
Here’s the problem: the app is a complaint box masquerading as a solution. It logs every thought a woman has about her boyfriend, but gives no real advice back. After a woman has rejected a few men with her Log, a true relationship app would look at the trends and give some advice. “Honey, these seem like nice men. Maybe your expectations are a little out of whack” or “Are you sure you’re not unhappy for other reasons?” Of course, that’s what friends are for, not apps.
Even ‘perfect’ boyfriends should have a problem with this NSA-level of surveillance. Sure, you could argue that if you’re not doing anything wrong, there’s nothing to hide, but what man – or woman – wants to be tracked like a patient in a psychiatric ward? Girlfriends probably don’t even need to fill log in, because just knowing you’re constantly watched and logged will be enough to subliminally control your every move, thought, and action. Once evidence of its existence has been strategically introduced, the male population will be forced to conform with the unrealistic expectations placed on us by legions of women influenced by Sex and the City. There is a relationship virtual war coming, and women now have all the ammunition.
Women can leave little notes detailing how wonderful, or annoying, their boyfriend is each day.
If guys do have to get dirty and start logging their own relationship ammunition, maybe the developers can include a way for the apps to communicate. Since the whole point of this app is to let an app tell us how we truly feel, maybe the apps can just talk to each other and tell us when to break up, too. They can figure out who gets the kids on the weekends and goes home with the couch, too. That way we don’t really have to think about anything at all.
Go ahead and use apps to remember to pick up the dry cleaning; use them to order flowers for your significant other; use them to find an exciting new meal to cook for dinner; but don’t use apps as a barometer for love.
Love and relationships are about more than a daily happy diary log. They’re about hard work. Instead of logging all our feelings and watching each other like relationship police, maybe we should put our energy toward helping and supporting one another. Make love, not logs.
