Ever wanted a real, no-holds-barred, statistically sound rating on how you just did in bed?
No, neither have I, frankly. But that hasn’t stopped the latest app to launch on the intimacy market.
Spreadsheets (get it?) works like this: you turn on the app before you get started, put it on the bedside table, then assess your statistics afterwards to see how you stack up.
It measures three different areas of data – decibel level reached, the peak amount of thrusts, and the total amount of time spent, including foreplay, before orgasm. You also get a handy little reader of your audio patterns.
Pretty harmless, right? Well, that depends.
The pros? New data on intimacy is always welcome. It can be difficult to assess time when you’re in the moment, for instance, and seeing just how much you did actually spend on each other might prompt the neglectful to get a bit busier.
Plus tallying times when you’ve had an earth-shaking experience with the data from it might be an aid to having better sex – though frankly, ‘do that again’ might work just as well.
The makers also suggest that it be shared with your gynaecologist if you’re trying to get pregnant and failing, though we’re not quite sure whether this amount of data would really be necessary (generally pregnancy depends on when in the cycle you try and a host of other factors, not how loud you yell or how hard your partner thrusts).
And the privacy is actually fairly stringent – it’s only stored on your mobile, not uploaded to a database or put on the internet. It doesn’t record any sounds or identities, either.
However, that leads to one of the biggest cons – that it’s stored on your mobile, and can be ‘shared’ with whomever you like. Not cool if your date decides, inspired by his insane thrust ratio, to show all his friends how manly he is without asking you first. Forget that.
There’s no control over sharing, only a request that you be over 17 before using, and that makes for a dangerous environment. Even if your partner’s the most trustworthy person since Gandhi, it’s still personal information, and if that phone gets stolen it’s officially out of your hands and on the public market.
The problem with this app in general is that it takes the focus off sex as experience and makes it into a competition. There’s a growing school of thought that thinking of intimacy as something with ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ is actually severely unhelpful to a healthy sex life.
Spreadsheets is selling itself as a way to motivate couples who’ve entered a rut to make their sex lives more exciting by challenging themselves, but it’s not really addressing the inherent problem of ruts at all. If you’re looking to improve your ‘score’ rather than attempting to please your partner more effectively, you’re not doing anybody any favours.
Luckily the scoring system doesn’t presuppose that being louder, faster, stronger (thanks, Daft Punk) makes for better encounters – intimacy is hugely varied, and quiet and slow can be just as phenomenal as quick and loud. Actually it might be fun to see just how few decibels you can register – can you have stealth sex?
However, it also has a Records & Achievements section that is alarmingly competition-driven – from trying to have 40-minute sex to getting above a certain decibel level. It even has a points system. Unhelpful and distracting.
Of course, one other key problem is also that it might not be particularly friendly for non-straight couples or those who do more non-traditional things in bed – the mechanism for how it collects data isn’t fully explained, and so it may not be queer or kink-friendly.
What do you think – will you be getting into new app Spreadsheets or leaving the data to the more scientific amongst us?
Image: Spreadsheets
