An answer to the question “If you go out and no one's around to see it on Foursquare, did you really go out?”
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If you follow me on Foursquare and Twitter, you'd have witnessed a lovely night out this past Thursday: After an empowering cup of artisanal coffee at Clinton Hill's Urban Vintage, I took in a weeknight show at Brooklyn Academy of Music. The show, enhanced by a smooth caffeine buzz, was incredible. Then I downed a few glasses of Merlot at Mauzac, a trendy wine bar.
Sound wonderful? I'm sure it does. But here's what really happened last Thursday: I spent my night drinking Rolling Rock at home before I passed out around 10 p.m.
My amazing night out was manufactured by an app called CouchCachet, a Foursquare plug-in that's the brainchild of Brian Fountain, an improv performer and part-time developer who became frustrated with the pressure social networks place on people to be out and about at all times. CouchCachet is like a topical treatment for FOMO — on the surface, it makes it look like you're not missing out on everything a city has to offer, even if below the layers of social you're quietly crying in your Rolling Rock. When Fountain introduced it at a recent New York Tech Meetup, he called it "the only application that increases your social status while you do nothing at home."
The app is simple to set up. All I did was go to couchcachet.com, hit the "connect to Foursquare" button, and then check in at home. After I checked in, CouchCachet presented me with a standard itinerary for my "night out" — a visit to a fruit and vegetable store and a stop at a popular bar — which I rejected in favor of the "artsy fartsy" option, one of six varieties the app offers.
After looking over my night's "plans," I hit a button to approve my itinerary and let CouchCachet get to work. I sat, planted on my sofa, as it created my presence at one hot spot after another, checking in and tweeting about the good times I was having every step of the way. When CouchCachet checked me in at Urban Vintage, for example, it tweeted, "I only drink coffee a cat has pooped." At the wine bar, it wrote, "Great Grapes!"
