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Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

83 points| chris140957 | 6 years ago |bail-app.netlify.com

163 comments

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[+] VectorLock|6 years ago|reply
Is this even a thing or just a landing page with an email harvester?
[+] bigiain|6 years ago|reply
Back of envelope total addressable market calculation:

I’m guessing this will appeal greatly to people 3 or 4 standard deviations to the “introverted” side of the introvert/extrovert bell curve. So maybe 0.15% if it’s as high as only 3 sigma.

It’ll be useful to people who’s friendship circles overlap in that 3 standard deviations of introversion.

Let’s assume Dunbars much discredited but widely quoted ideas are right, and that people typically have ~150 social connections.

So there’s about a 1.5:1000 chance that someone would find this useful.

There’s about a 1:50 chance that any of their friends would also find it useful. (That May be higher if introverts tend to have more introverted friends, but is more likely way lower if introverts have fewer friends than extroverts).

In a city of 5 million, there are probably 150 people who’d have one friend for which this is useful, and maybe 3 people who would use it with two of their friends...

My assumptions might be way off. But to a first approximation nobody is ever going to find this actually useful in their real world relationships...

[+] kerkeslager|6 years ago|reply
I can't imagine being friends with someone who is this incapable of communicating.

The solution to this problem is sending a text that says, "Hey, I'm not feeling like coming out today after all. Rain check?" This app is a worse solution than the obvious solution.

Trying to be empathetic: if you feel the need to use something like this, I'm not qualified to diagnose you as having social anxiety, but I would suggest you talk to someone who is qualified to diagnose you with social anxiety.

[+] kazinator|6 years ago|reply
But this app doesn't send any notification to the other person unless they also bail, so it is not equivalent to sending that text.

If the other person doesn't bail, you can stick with the commitment.

That opens possibilities, like getting a better opinion about time spent with that person.

[+] saber6|6 years ago|reply
To be fair I think this falls into the category of "ugh I'm not really feeling like going out... and I don't want to disappoint my friend.... if only I knew he wasn't too hot to trot tonight as well..."

But I understand your point and agree with you. I prefer direct communication. If you don't want to hang out just say so - I like clarity.

[+] gnulinux|6 years ago|reply
Ok. I think you're right, but I just want to point out that people who are inclined to do things like this experience irrational thoughts. Anxiety is not rational. It fills my mind with irrational thoughts. It makes me afraid of things that rationally do not pose any risk whatsoever. I understand that my social anxiety should be fixed and I should not be inclined to do something like this. Truth is, it's very hard to communicate everything well with people, I have no problem communicating most things to my friends, but some things are very hard. This seems to be always missing in this conversation.
[+] hosh|6 years ago|reply
I agree.

The protocol works, but it does avoid emotional honesty. If this is a chronic thing, then perhaps there are some unsaid things that need to be said between the friends.

For others reading this, I suggest a book called Crucial Conversations. If bailing out is a proxy for deeper issues in the friendship, maybe it is time to have a good chat about it.

[+] Reedx|6 years ago|reply
Agree this is not the solution (though I find it funny and clever), and I say that as someone with lifelong social anxiety.

In fact I think it's counterproductive because you'd bail more often and get less practice with confronting and overcoming anxiety. Avoidance is really tempting, but not the answer.

[+] unknown|6 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] gfodor|6 years ago|reply
I disagree, hear me out. The reason this app makes sense is because if you are an empathetic person, and know other empathetic people, there's actually no good way to solve this problem through direct communication.

Lets say you have plans with someone. But then, you decide fundamentally: if the other person would still like to do this, I am happy to. But if not, I'd prefer not to. This is the game theoretic situation this app attempts to solve.

Now lets figure out a way to solve this problem through direct communication. The problem with trying to do so, is often when someone expresses a change to preferences, if you assume that person is empathetic, they will likely be diluting the degree to their change insofar as that change could negatively affect the recipient of the news. Why?

It's because there's a catch-22 in this situation between empathy and honesty. Empathy dictates we try to maximize utility between the parties. When expressing this new preference, if one is empathetic, one expresses it in a way to try to maximize the likelihood that the other party interprets it in a way they can still act selfishly to the maximally acceptable degree. However, the recipient of the information, if empathetic, can anticipate this, and hence may interpret the person's statement as pre-diluted, so in order to maximize utility from their perspective (out of empathy) they in turn may yield due to the imperfect information and assume the preference expressed is stronger than implied by the statement directly. In other words, if I hear this from someone, I put even odds that the person is being completely honest (out of valuing honesty), or, that they actually would really want to skip this plan if it would not cause me emotional pain, and have chosen to continue to express it in a way that leaves the option open (out of valuing empathy.) I know people who would do one or the other, and I don't consider either approach a sign of a moral failure.

In reality, both sides of the communication wrangle with the conflict between empathy + utility maximization in framing their expression, and honesty, which (despite its virtue) runs the risk of being misinterpreted given the other party may assume it is being diluted to maximize utility out of their empathy. Diluting the statement or being direct about it are both rational, depending on how important maximizing utility is due to empathy vs expressing honest preferences.

This app neatly solves this problem. It's not about reducing social awkwardness, it's about preventing the need for mutually-empathetic individuals to have to make trade-offs between the competing desires for objective communication (out of the value of honesty) and trying to maximize utility (out of the value of empathy and selflessness.) If one could be certain another party is being honest, this kind of technique would not be necessary, but since dishonesty in this situation falls out of empathy, its potentially virtuous and comes down to a preference of one's values in how to deal with the situation.

[+] m463|6 years ago|reply
You could sell the "flake metric" to advertisers.

It would be valuable information to say, used car salesmen.

They could look up a prospective customer wandering around the lot. If the customer asks for a test drive, check the "flake metric" and deny it for high flakers, who are probably just noncommittal tire-kickers.

:)

[+] ryandrake|6 years ago|reply
This reminds me of those apps that will call your phone so that you have an excuse to get out of a social interaction by pretending to have an emergency. Rather than, you know, being a grown-up and just telling the other person you have to cut things short for whatever reason.
[+] danShumway|6 years ago|reply
I think you might be underestimating:

A) the number of degrees of discomfort between, "I can talk about this any time with no effort", and "I literally can't talk about this".

B) how normal it is for certain types of people to struggle with this kind of interaction in general.

On the first point, I am perfectly capable of being frank with friends. I am perfectly capable of telling them how I feel. And when I need to have confrontational conversations with friends, I do. But that's not the same thing as feeling no aversion or worry at all about disappointing someone. And if a crutch exists that mitigates part of that problem, I just don't see the harm in that crutch.

There are dozens of tiny, inessential affordances everyone gives themselves every day to help manage non-crippling problems. That's normal. It shouldn't be weird to anyone that people with even mild anxiety around friendships might want similar affordances. Sometimes it's not about necessity, people just want a tool that makes their life easier.

On the second note, I'm not going to go in depth here, but people who don't struggle with social anxiety usually don't understand how many other people do, or what their experiences are actually like. There's a pretty wide range of different annoyances or aversions that people can have about this stuff, and I really don't want to pretend to speak for other people. Some introverts don't struggle with this at all, some struggle in completely different areas.

I am speaking in very broad generalities. But I consider these to be very common situations for someone like me:

- going to an event I'd rather not just because I don't want to disappoint a friend or make them think I don't enjoy their company.

- actively not inviting a friend to an event because I'm worried they'd only come out of obligation and would resent that I asked.

- feeling like if I just express interest in changing plans a friend will accommodate me even though they had their heart set on something.

I'm not going to say people like me are a majority: we're definitely not. But we're not that rare. If you've never had even a casual acquaintance like me, you're not looking very hard.

> I can't imagine being friends with someone who is this incapable of communicating.

I realize this is somewhat blunt and a little uncharitable, and I don't mean it as an attack or as a character flaw -- but in the general spirit of being confrontational and open: when I hear this, my immediate thought is, "this person probably doesn't have many introverted friends, and they probably don't have many deep, honest relationships with the few introverted friends they do have."

Your perspective definitely isn't uncommon, and it shouldn't surprise me when I hear it, but I'm always surprised anyway. :) It's like seeing someone who lives in a completely different world, to the point where when they see the world I'm familiar with it's not just unexpected to them, but so unexpected that they think, "there must be something wrong with that."

[+] fantasicferret|6 years ago|reply
I think it's quite funny, and you're taking it a little too serious.
[+] busterarm|6 years ago|reply
Some folks I knew who rented an apartment in East Village to do their own startup had this exact same idea with this exact same name back in '14. I don't think they lasted very long with it and all ended up getting jobs, but this did at least make me check if this was the same folks.

Edit: That said, I would pay to use this if it were done well and if I could get all my friends to use it.

[+] chris140957|6 years ago|reply
Yeah, a number of people have suggested that similar things have been proposed but have never got off the ground.
[+] 27182818284|6 years ago|reply
There was a similar app for Facebook too where the app remained quiet unless you were both interested in having sex with each other and then it would send notifications to the two people.
[+] leetrout|6 years ago|reply
This is a little bit sad and a little bit scary. Have we reached the point where we now prefer to avoid actual communications with our "friends" that this exists? It's up there with people who won't answer phone calls and only want to text.
[+] lostcolony|6 years ago|reply
That's not the reason.

Telling a friend you want to cancel is hard, and depressing, and so you oftentimes go just to not bail on them. And hate it.

But what if your friend is feeling the same way? What if you both want to cancel, but neither of you wants to hurt the other person.

Well, with something like this, you can bail without letting them down; they only know you wanted to bail -if they also want to bail-. That's the key bit.

[+] calebio|6 years ago|reply
I agree, this app is dumb.

But what's up with getting mad when people don't want to talk on the phone? I don't want to assume but it sounds like you feel entitled to a certain method of communication .

[+] dgellow|6 years ago|reply
The service exists, that doesn’t mean there is a demand or a need for it.
[+] ipnon|6 years ago|reply
I thought this was going to be a service to schedule robocalls to your phone:

Robocaller: "Hello is this $FIRST_NAME $LAST_NAME?"

Happy customer acting surprised: "Why yes it is. May I ask who is calling at such an hour? I'm hanging out with my friends."

Robocaller: "Yes this is $AUTHORITY. We need you to do $MANDATORY_TASK immediately.

Happy customer acting surprised: "Oh my! Okay, I'll be there soon."

Happy customer to friends: "Guys, this is so crazy, but I've got to run!"

Then you leave the party or whatever. Side-effects: you can't sleep at night because you're thinking about how weird you are.

[+] ackbar03|6 years ago|reply
I'd pay for that just for the lulz
[+] scarejunba|6 years ago|reply
Haha, this is a hilarious idea. I love it.

Clearly this is to combat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance on the two-person level[0] which is utterly reasonable considering the phenomenon is widespread no matter how much people like to talk about their ability to be socially able to handle interactions.

My objection is that it may make it too easy to get what I want momentarily, i.e. I want to place high activation energy constraints on exiting because in the period leading up to the event, there will be many moments where I dip below my threshold of excitement for the event. However, since activation energy to set up the event is high because of natural constraints (I have to make sure everyone is available, that the event is available, that the venue is available), this means that if I lower the threshold to exit, I will bias strongly towards exiting.

Given that, I consciously hard commit myself to events. Post making this choice I have a far more active social life. This is why I won't use your app. It's because it actually does make a thing easy, but I don't want it to be easy.

Love that you used Netlify to knock it out, though. How did you enjoy the experience of developing it?

0: Really, this is exactly the Abilene Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

[+] BossingAround|6 years ago|reply
Looks interesting, but would really require some velocity. There's the social problem of requesting others to install the app by an individual. I'm not gonna ask my friends to install bail just in case they'd like to cancel, because I might want to cancel.
[+] marcofiset|6 years ago|reply
This concept is begging for integrations into existing calendar apps, not being an app itself.
[+] chris140957|6 years ago|reply
I'm leaning towards a setup where its a calendar integration where you and your friend may have no idea if the other even has the app installed.
[+] romwell|6 years ago|reply
To the developer: kudos. Ignore the naysayers. Why build this — why the f* not? It's not like there are apps out there that do the same. And adding another way to interact with people is fun.

That's not to mention it might help people with anxiety. Sure, it's not a silver bullet. I don't know if I'd really use it. But it's novel, and why not.

Now, there's a real problem with this app, and it's that it's a feature turned into a product.

It's a problem because:

1) Bail is not a Google Calendar / Facebook Events replacement, which is what people use to schedule things, AND

2) It would be a great feature in both of these products. If it ever gets implemented, Bail is instantly obsolete.

Again, kudos to you! But as a user, I hope the calendar software I use gets this functionality, and I won't have to introduce anyone to yet another app.

It's not at all a problem unless you're betting everything on this app. Who knows where this will bring you though. Best of luck!

[+] ravenstine|6 years ago|reply
> To the developer: kudos. Ignore the naysayers. Why build this — why the f* not? It's not like there are apps out there that do the same. And adding another way to interact with people is fun.

Because some people have the moral compass to think about the consequences of the applications they build.

The world doesn't need more crutches for people who can't communicate in such a basic way.

Think about it; if you don't want to do something with someone or are unable, you owe it to both yourself and the other person to speak your opinion. Waiting for the other person to bail first is a lack of communication. This isn't going to help people who have communication problems. It can only make their disability worse, or cause them to resort to being friends with others with the same disability, which can prevent them from overcoming it.

Personally, I'd lose respect for someone who tried to use this "feature".

[+] jupp0r|6 years ago|reply
It's basically solving a version of the prisoners dilemma by giving both parties a filtered communication channel to signal cooperation.
[+] aridiculous|6 years ago|reply
If anyone winds up using this consistently with friends (which they won't), it's likely they'll just see a continually increasing number of aborted events, due to the removal of a barrier.

It's good that a cancelling party feels some shame. It keeps humans from letting their short-term avoidance always overcome the communal and long-term benefits of some kind of sacrifice.

[+] chris140957|6 years ago|reply
Hi, I created a quick landing page to validate an idea for an app.

I'll be honest, the idea isn't mine. I saw it suggested in a Twitter post which had huge traction, and decided to run with it.

At the moment I'm just trying to refine the concept and get an idea of whether there really is space for something like this out there

[+] nrclark|6 years ago|reply
How do you get people to use it?

Like let's say I have drinks plans with my friend, and I want to bail using this service. How to I tell her to install the app?

Wouldn't asking her to install it be pretty rude? It would basically be saying "Hey, FYI I like to bail on stuff a lot. So you probably shouldn't make any plans involving me."

I could see that stigma as a critical roadblock against growing the kind of user-base you'd need for this to get popular.

[+] itake|6 years ago|reply
Do people send calendar invites when hanging out with friends?

Personally, if a meetup did actually make it into my calendar, I would not ship it to a friend.

[+] bennicholes|6 years ago|reply
i saw the tweet as well. if you want some help designing and researching UX and flows, let me know.
[+] blast|6 years ago|reply
This is like Bang With Friends. Whatever happened to that thing? https://www.businessinsider.com/bang-with-friends-co-founder...

Maybe it should be called Bail With Friends.

[+] _vertigo|6 years ago|reply
I like Bail On Friends better, in part because it partially increases the guilt factor back to where it should be.

"I'm gonna have to bail" vs "I'm gonna have to bail _on you_" feels different to me

[+] tclancy|6 years ago|reply
Use a capital I just to make it parse weirder.
[+] RcouF1uZ4gsC|6 years ago|reply
It would be pretty depressing if you got "You're off the hook" messages every time you hit bail. That means, most of your "friends" were looking to get out of the plans they made with you.
[+] mywittyname|6 years ago|reply
Where I come from, it's common practice to follow-up before an event in an effort to give the other person an out. I.e., "are we still up for lunch tomorrow?"

Do other people not do this?

[+] siracusa23|6 years ago|reply
I wouldn't like a friend which is incapable of communicating.

I can't look at this and consider it interesting, it's not only enabling a toxic behavior, it's encouraging it. I'm actually disgusted by this.

I'm glad I see other people with the same perspective in the comment section as the fact that someone thought about this, thought it's a good idea and implemented it is terrifying.

What happened to "Hey, I don't feel like doing this tonight, let's postpone it?"

[+] crtlaltdel|6 years ago|reply
i applaud the lean methodology. minimal detail, free-tier hosted contact form. throw it out on HN and a few other sites (i've not looked, just assume) and check the your conversions per channel in a day or two. HN is a great place to see what tech-leaning people think of stuff (even if it can get a bit sideways at times) and get some free unsolicited advice on everything from implementation patterns to prior art to the occasionally valuable feature idea.
[+] xyzelement|6 years ago|reply
I don’t think the developer even thinks this will ever work.

To begin with - this means that both parties must register their event on the service when making the original plan. (How else would you later manage what to bail on and who that affects)

Can you imagine anyone actually doing that? If you are someone who makes such flaky plans constantly, you aren’t also someone who will think ahead like this.

To be honest reading the comments that treat this as something other than an obvious dead end is scary.