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Comment by ogwh | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't help you maintain connections with people, it's emotional forgery and anyone caught using something like this will find their "connections" evaporate instantly.

If you want to maintain connections with people put the effort in, that's the substance of the connection in the first place. If you don't, then don't.

People want to feel like they matter to you, so you contacting them shows that you care about them and fulfills that need. This app is a betrayal of that.

Is this connected to an article from The Onion or something? A joke?

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I came to this thread earlier and thought I'd taken crazy pills, so I'd check back later. Not a single non-positive comment.

People who use this or think this is a good thing have fundamentally misunderstood social interaction. Your girlfriend doesn't want the signal that you care, she wants you to actually care, and keeping in contact is an expression of caring. If you need to forge something this foundational, I'm sorry but that's not being introverted, that's treating social interaction as a game or trade. I feel like it's bordering on psychopathy.

I mostly agree. When I'm focused on something, I tend to isolate myself. I forget to contact people. I care but I'm just distracted.

I would prefer reminders of "You haven't called your Mom in X days". Set configurable threshholds of how often you want to contact different people but still require you to actually do it.

This is a symptom of caring too much about what you're focused on, though. While I appreciate that sometimes it's easy to forget important things, I think if you need inorganic means to remember to call your mother, you need to take a moment to actually consider that, rather than looking for the nearest software "solution".

Not everyone's brain works in the same way as yours, that doesn't make them a sociopath.

For what it’s worth, the app, by default, will not take any action and largely act as a helpful reminder, and I highly recommend this type of use.

I think the part you're missing is that this is supposed to be followed up by actual conversations and interactions.

There are a great many friends where Life Happens™ and although I genuinely care about them, I haven't contacted them in months / years (and vice versa) because I'm not generally the type to initiate small-talk. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy catching up with friends and going over the little things in our lives, it's just not something I naturally do. Having an app that helps you keep in touch with the people you care about (if you don't care why would you bother to set up an app) seems helpful.

And I think stating that this is not introversion but more like psychopathy is a bit beyond the pale. It can be hard for introverts to kickstart conversations with people they haven't talked to in a while for various reasons, none of which are "because they're a sociopath". They might feel like they're intruding or they might have confidence issues which cause them to feel that messaging people out of the blue will make them seem weird, even if neither of those things are actually true from the other person's perspective.

It may not be because they are being a sociopath but it also isn't just because of being an introvert. What you are describing is social anxiety which some introverts have and others do not.

Nobody said all introverts ("can be hard"). I think you'd classify anyone with social anxiety as an introvert. Therefore this is a problem that introverts have.

Words have meanings, and that's not what introvert means.

> Introvert: a shy, reticent person.

What person with social anxiety does that not apply to?

No idea why the two of you are quibbling over the use of the word introvert here.

The popular and psychological definition are quite different from one another.

To go even further, there are multiple definitions to the word in psychology, depending on what sources you rely upon (ie Jung’s, the "Big Five"’s, and probably others)

So, yes, there is a lot of room for miscommunication

People with social anxiety often come accross as introverted, because they are anxious about interacting - however that doesn't mean they don't want to interact, the desire might be extremely strong, exacerbated be the perceived difficulty in doing so. Compare an introvert who is not socially anxious, who simple has a lower desire to interact. Likewise, some socially anxious people cope by being more extroverted, louder, more interactive. So.. there is a difference in the internal experience, and the external presentation.. and i think when we're talking about a person, rather than their current actions, we normally mean the former but are mislead by the latter.

Introverts don't even necessarily have a lower desire to interact. Many introverts very much desire to interact and do frequently interact with others. They just do so in a different manner than extroverts. Usually more one on one and often for a shorter duration than extroverts.

That's incorrect. Extroverts can also be shy and be affected by social anxiety. Having those conflicting traits together is often more frustrating than for introverts.

This app won't last long enough to remind you to message year old dormant relationships, so if that's important one should find something else.

I also don't see how an automated message helps you keep in touch though. It seems like people with a lot of this anxiety will just fiddle with the settings exactly like they fiddle typing out drafts they never send.

I agree. Most people are happy when I reach out to them, but I have what feels like an irrational feeling that people don't want me to reach out. I don't particularly care about the pre-made messages in the app, but making reaching out to people an obligation by using reminders means I make time for friends.

It’s the same level of psychopathy which demands your “genuine care and interest” in a society where the worst everyday risk is spilling coffee on your desk. Many childish psychopaths (who often call themselves extroverts) simply like you to do these things, they feel great when you put aside everything and message or reply to them on a nonsensical topic like “where you at” or “what you’re doing”. Most people who I attribute to “normal”, and I mean most people in general, never required it.

No offense to anyone, but if you’re vocal and succesful at consuming lots of attention, it doesn’t automagically mean that your behavior is healthy.

Is the effort knowing, when to reach out yourself instead of a tool reminding you? Or is the effort about spending time with a person?

I use a running tracker, but I still have to run myself.

And how often do people reach out on their own? Often it’s seeing a post in a feed or some other trigger. Is that more authentic?

The willingness to add a reminder and spend time shows that you care about a person.

I agree, and many others have seen it this way as well.

If it's just a reminder, why not use any of the other reminder tools? (Because it's not)

It looks like you are trying to trick your person about when you sent your message. Because of an introverted personality concern? Seems like a weird use of a timer to me.

The concept is creepy and hilarious to me at the same time.

Imagine getting a "How's life?" text from your friend when they're taking a nap in the same room.

If there's nothing deceptive about this, the app should append "This message was sent by a bot" to what it sends.

Except then no one would reply, because it's clear that you're not actually invested in talking to them at that particular time, so why should they be? They can contact you when they feel like it, not when your bot believes you two should talk.

> If there's nothing deceptive about this, the app should append "This message was sent by a bot" to what it sends.

I agree it's deceptive if the bot is making the final decision to send the message, and the message fails to make clear that it's been sent by a fully automated process.

Obvious alternative: the app could offer the user a pre-populated message. That way the system is doing more than a calendar would, but the action of sending the message is still up to the user. Looks like the app does support a variation of this:

> CommuniqAI will cleverly send text messages of your choosing to, and smartly prompt you to call and email, those that mean the most to you.

The intent of the app does appear to be to enable 'emotional fraud' though, as it seems they do aim to mislead the person being messaged (about it being an automated message). They would even want to support deceptively impersonating you for the purpose of replying, if only it were possible with current technology:

> Warning: CommuniqAI works well when used sparingly with simple messages—perhaps too well. While it’ll keep you in regular contact with those that mean the most to you, they’ll be inclined to reply back and, at this time, CommuniqAI is not intelligent enough to reply in context—so you’ll need to reply back yourself.

Here, works well is clearly referring to its ability to deceive someone into thinking the message was not sent automatically.

> Imagine getting a "How's life?" text from your friend when they're taking a nap in the same room.

A possibility, but more likely, imagine getting a How's life? text from someone you met up with yesterday.

Great points, and I agree. But… As someone with ADHD one of the less talked about problems is remembering things that aren’t happening right now. Friends and family are the biggest problems in this category. And friends eventually stop reaching out because I just don’t think about contacting them without there being a specific reason for doing so. It’s not because I don’t care, it just doesn’t come up in my busy brain. And the few times I do remember they’re almost shocked that I reached out.

It is very painful to lose friends you care about. It’s much worse to lose them because you made them feel unimportant by not staying in touch. An app like this could really help in that way. Just by being the nudge to start the interaction.

By caught do you mean somebody sifting through your unlocked phone?

If one of the edge cases the author mentions pops up they could deduce from the context of the message that you didn't personally send it at that moment. Short of lying about it and claiming it must have been slow to arrive, I'd say you were caught.

"I use a program to send messages at a programmed time"

All I see is a privacy respecting solution to the problem Facebook id solving.

Better yet when your "friends" get this as well then neither of you have to waste time actually sending anything.

Just move the message into a folder too so neither of you have to waste time reading the automated message.

Chatbots on both ends. Full AI conversations.

Now you can have millions of friends!

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