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Show HN: Twosome - app created originally for my girlfriend (twosomeapp.com)
32 points by twanschik 4867 days ago
14 comments

Aaww, that is adorable, even if it is advertised by sickeningly youthful models who shouldn't even be holding hands without a chaperone. Good luck with it.

Please let us know if your sales figures are ever an odd number.

Not hating, but something about that site makes me glad I haven't been 15 in a long-ass time.
I think this is a great idea. FWIW, Couple (http://trycouple.com) seems way more complete than the OP's twosome.
Holy smokes, that intro video is almost tear jerking for some reason. Wow. I don't even know why but it tugged at my heart strings. Sheesh.
Haha, it didn't tug any of my strings but it's a very very well down product video nonetheless. Way beyond the usual, hey look at feature 1, 2, 3 etc. Love that it tells a little story and actually includes some drama instead of just all cheer. Kudos to whoever came up with that one.
The sushis they made look disgusting. Way too much rice.
Watch it again and look closely at how the video focuses on the woman the entire time. She's child-like and the only one who seems emotionally involved in the relationship… but in almost exclusively passive way. (All the dude does is smirk for a fraction of a second when something "nice" occurs.)

Every interaction focuses on her. She kisses him on the cheek; he just looks at the camera. She kisses his picture during the "shaving" scene. She watches him walk down the street and talk at her on video… the only personal expression element of the "story" is his. She simply receives it. When she's upset, the focus is on what he does to her — the arm, the drawing, she receives the apology but never participates in a make-up.

It looks like the boyfriend is a prop. But the joke is it's that the woman, the focus of everything, is the prop, because it's from the boyfriend's PoV and she's just this super-emo recipient of his actions. Except when she's delivering outsized love he doesn't return (omg! the fawning! the kissing! the posing! the crying! all while he looks on and, if he expresses any emotion, just a smirk).

And if you don't believe about the childlike thing, it's capped by the scene at the end where she's hiding under a sheet with one stripey sock sticking out, a direct echo of "kids reading under the covers when the lights are out." No adult does that.

So: the video is assuming you, the male viewer, are a narcissist (everything is about you, and ps, you don't have access to real feelings), and that the object of your affection (not "girlfriend" because that implies a two-way street) is a baby.

This video is insulting to everyone. Sheesh!

Amy, I agree with your analysis, except for what you leave out:

Most couples are like this.

The woman IS a silly, child-like, passive, docile baby, and the guy IS a silly, narcissistic, self-absorbed robot.

These are the ways women behave, and these are the kinds of guys women fall for, because that's what our culture encourages.

If you detect a sexist tone in what I'm saying because I seem to be blaming women, I can only say this: in modern western culture it IS women who ultimately choose who sleeps with who. Criminal activities like rape aside, it is women who choose which guys get to be in a relationship with them and which guys don't. So I don't think it's unfair to attribute the bigger part of this to women.

Anyway just my opinions.

I'm pretty sure I get to choose who NOT to sleep with, and so do women. All rape aside of course, ho ho ho.

The tone of your comment depresses me. It sounds so bitter. And confused. As if you hadn't had sex or a healthy relationship in a very long time, if ever, and feel powerless to change that.

If it's so, I hope it changes soon.

Yes, but women get to choose WHO TO (positively) sleep with; whereas, as a man, you generally don't have that choice, unless you're extremely famous/wealthy/etc., which you generally don't have control over.

I am bitter and confused about heterosexual relationships, because they seem to contain big contradictions which I can't work out.

I've tried to form a theory that explains most of what I observe in straight female attraction: women are attracted to men who are tall and socially powerful (i.e. popular).

This theory seems to generally hold. Yes, I know there are a multitude of OTHER qualities that women at least SAY they're attracted to.

But I think height and popularity are baseline requirements which are common to most women, regardless of what other requirements they choose stack on top.

Yes, I speak in terms of requirements. It's true.

Dating a woman is like going to a job interview. Any man who's honest knows this.

You know why the tone of my comment depresses you? Because it's true.

It's depressing, because you don't have anything to point to in reality that would refute my viewpoint, because it's just true.

And your success with women isn't based on anything you achieved yourself through your own choices in life.

It's all pre-determined by how tall you are and how many friends you have.

You're full of romantic delusions about actually having some sort of genuine mental connection to the women you date.

I'm revealing the shallowness and emptiness of your ACTUAL relationships.

Sadly, not having a relationship can be a cause or… a symptom. Not speculating about this commenter cuz who the hell knows, but… most of the people I've known who were truly alone were people who drove everyone away.
"Sure, they're babies! But they're babies with POWER!"

I guess you live in the movie The Incredibles?

I didn't say women have power, I just said women are in control when it comes to sex, in western societies.

This is assuming normal, legal situations. Of course all forms of rape are an exception to this.

There's just no getting around the fact that women CHOOSE to be with men like this.

Those men are "winners" in regard to relationships, except that it's not much of a victory to win the type of women they win.

> she's hiding under a sheet with one stripey sock sticking out, a direct echo of "kids reading under the covers when the lights are out." No adult does that.

Have a middlebrow dismissal: my wife does that, and she's 33. She loves hiding.

I do have to say that you seem a bit grouchy for someone who works at a baby blue and pink startup called 'Freckle' :)

I don't "work" at a "startup," I founded the business! I designed every last bit. That's all me, baby. True cheer doesn't come from denying reality, it comes from understanding life and laughing at the joke.

In this case, understanding means understanding narcissism and calling it out (cuz it's opaque to just about everyone else).

PS - Does your wife do it while one cutely pigeon-toed stripey-socked foot hangs out and she fawns and coos and pets your virtual image on her iPhone? No? Then sadly it's not a parallel to the video.

> understanding means understanding narcissism and calling it out (cuz it's opaque to just about everyone else).

I enjoyed the irony there :)

Apologies for confusing your role at Freckle; "Chief Butt Kicker" was obviously not simple enough for my brain.

Much as I complain about women, I have to admit, this guy is a complete doofus for assuming you "work at" a startup. LOL
I'm waiting for ThreesomeApp.
if my gf gets that I'm gonna hate you
WHAT TWOSOME NEEDS Twosome has to be installed on your and your sweetheart's phone. To create the special link you need a connection to the internet just for the moment both of you bump your phones. It doesn't matter how Twosome gets the connection (WLAN, EDGE, UMTS,...). From this moment on, NO further connection to the internet is required.

I must be missing something, if "no further connection to the internet is required." How does it send messages between two devices without an internet connection? Presumably if it's on iOS it's not using SMS...

I'm guessing it's syncing a seed to srand(), so neither of you control when the messages pop up
That's elegant.

So, OP, I have to know: did you come up with the synced seed first and then try to build an idea around it, or did the idea of simultaneous, server-less, auto-generated endearments drive you to this solution?

I had the gift idea for my girlfriend a few years ago. How to implement it came next (even so the tricky part was how to sync the seed)
Interesting. I really do like it. It's naff but in the best possible way. (I'm working on something related for my wife at the moment but it's even cheesier than Twosome - not sharing it here :])

Do you do some sort of seed exchange/negotiation? Something like swap current system times, and use the higher as the seed?

Something similar: both phones exchange a random seed and compute the arithmetic mean in order to get a common seed :)
That's correct. So once connected you will always get random notifications at the same time, even with NO network :)
Aha, that's what I was missing. I didn't realize from the app description that it was a randomized message, and I thought it was one device's user sending a message to the other.
It's brilliant.

1. onetime investment of a few minutes while you install the app and sync

2. secretly uninstall or turn off the app

3. your SO gets to feel like you're being sickeningly cute together constantly, and you don't have to do anything!

Just one note: uninstalling the app will cancel all notifications. Just turn the app off to stay connected.
Sorry to the maker of this - but it just makes me want to be sick having an app like this..

I guess there are others that may enjoy this!

Sorry to the maker of this - but it just makes me want to be sick having an app like this. [2]

I just keep thinking that people are so overwhelmed with this "there's an app for this" thing that they're forgetting to solve real problems.

I feel sick reading the copy on that site. FOREVER ALONE.
On the main picture: She's holding him but looking at me.
related, from the creator of Google Reader: https://avocado.io
facepalm.