Every night at around 10pm, WeChat will push out the day’s step chart to all users. Perhaps you will occasionally find a “god” who has done 80,000 or even 90,000 steps a day. To achieve such an achievement, besides the fact that the “god” has run two marathons or climbed Mount Everest today, there is another possibility –He fell asleep with the pedometer on.
The pedometer is a kind of “cheating device” developed for cell phone pedometer function. It is shaped like a cell phone holder, as long as the phone on it, start, it will shake up, simulating the frequency and vibration amplitude of people walking or running, so that the phone produces an illusion that you are in motion, and thus start counting steps.
“Who would buy such a boring thing? “Perhaps many people will have such doubts. But the reality is that the most popular link to the pedometer shaker on Taobao, with monthly sales of more than 20,000 pieces. This means that, whether you find it boring or not, every month there are tens of thousands of consumers with a variety of reasons to buy the basic model of the gadget that costs about 10 dollars per unit.
Why do they need a step shaker? To say it is all tears.
N kinds of methods of daily walking 8848 steps
On Song Ling’s desk, several pedometers are working like crazy at the same time, just like a row of windmills that keep turning on the prairie.
Song Ling works in a communication equipment company in Nanjing. In November last year, the company suddenly announced a new rule advocating all employees to walk more every day, and under the company’s call, each department set specific requirements for its employees.
Song Ling department of the big leader said, both weekdays and double holidays, the department staff must walk enough 8848 steps every day, he also organized a group-based competition, each group of 8 – 10 members. As soon as 10 pm passed every night, the group leader had to take a screenshot to save the ranking of the day and send it to the big group of the department, which was then collected and organized by HR. Based on the total number of steps and the achievement rate, the highest ranking group will get a total of 1,000 yuan at the end of the month, and other participating groups will also get a consolation prize.
“It’s pretty hard to take 8,848 steps every day. “Song Ling has the habit of walking every day at noon and in the evening after eating, and even so, her normal step count is around 4,000 or 5,000. Song Ling’s company is notorious for working a lot of overtime, and everyone is commuting by car, there is no time to exercise, few colleagues can really walk the full 8848 steps.
“In fact, if you do not meet the standard will not be okay, but it will affect the rate of our group to meet the standard. ” she said. During this competition, every night at seven or eight o’clock, the group leader will open the small program to see which members have not completed the goal, especially to the double holiday, people often forget to meet the target this thing, then the group leader will be in the group @ all the people who did not meet the target, if they have not received a reply, they will also call them.
In order to try to meet the standard, we can only do strange tricks. Initially it was a desperate hand shake, and during that time Song Ling would walk down the road shaking his phone hard for fear that he wouldn’t get enough steps.
“It was especially jerky,” she said.
Others used the phones of their colleagues who had reached the target to log on to their own WeChat, so that the steps counted on other people’s phones could be synced to their own WeChat accounts. Some programmers even used technical means to cheat.
One day later, a colleague of Song Ling’s group brought the pedometer to the office, and when he didn’t use his phone, he put it on to brush his steps. After other colleagues saw this “magic tool”, they also rushed to order, and in the end, on average, each group bought two or three pedometers, and everyone lined up to shake. Colleagues with sports bracelets will put their own sports bracelets up and shake with other people’s phones, so that you can brush steps for two people at the same time, without delaying the use of cell phones. “Every group is cheating. ” she said.
“That time should be a lot of shaking pedometer buyer’s delivery address is our company, right. “Song Ling said.
With the pedometer, Song Ling no longer needs to worry about dragging her colleagues’ feet. Every day when napping, put the phone on the pedometer, and wake up, the task of 8848 steps has been easily completed. She only needs to consider how to keep her steps from looking “too fake”. “Generally shake a 40 minutes a day is about right, after all, you have to walk yourself. “She said. Because of this cheating method once made a joke: a colleague forgot to put his sports bracelet on the pedometer, the final step count that day was fixed at more than 80,000 steps, even his own team leader could not look down.
At the end of the competition, Song Ling’s group eventually won a prize of 200 yuan, divided too little, we simply took to buy milk tea, and jokingly said: walking to lose that little weight, a cup of milk tea and back.
For similar purposes to buy a few people shakers. Liang Yi’s company also held an event to encourage employees to walk. Employees can set a daily step target according to their own situation, up to 15,000 steps. The higher the number of steps, the more days to clock in, the higher the points redeemable in the company’s welfare app. Because many colleagues have bought a pedometer, they set the highest goal for themselves. If you take 15,000 steps a day and clock in for 21 days, you can get 200 points, which is worth about 200 RMB, and the redeemable goods are very rich. The price of a pedometer is just around 10 yuan. “The return on investment is quite high. ” she said to the author.
2
Do you need a reason to swipe your steps?
There are 10,000 reasons to use a pedometer, and there’s always one that you can’t escape.
Public welfare enthusiasts buy pedometers to “plant trees”.
Ant Forest is a public welfare initiative launched by Alipay, in which users get virtual “green energy” by walking, paying utility bills online, buying tickets online and other “low-carbon” behaviors. After accumulating a certain amount of “green energy”, users can adopt a square meter of protected land or exchange it for a real tree, which will be adopted by public welfare organizations and planted in areas with serious desertification. planted in areas where desertification is serious. If you take a certain number of steps every day, you can get the corresponding amount of green energy.
Antforest user Li Si’s goal is to “unlock all tree species”, she said in Zhihu She found a shortcut in the answer to “How to get green energy fast” in the “How to get green energy fast” section. Currently, the most “expensive” tree provided by Ant Forest requires 198 kg of green energy, 296 grams per day, which takes nearly two years to complete. Li Si put his phone on the pedometer for four hours every day, easily completing the goal of 18,000 steps.
The game players are playing the pedometer into a “hang”. “Catching demons” is an AR exploration hand game launched by Tencent, imitating the popular Nintendo game Pokemon Go (精灵宝可梦Go). The core gameplay is “catching demons”, and players can catch the “demon spirits” around them through the AR function. Players can catch the “demon spirit” around them through the AR function. The game has a “spirit stone system” where players can walk in real life to awaken “spirit stone”, get “demon spirit “The longer the distance walked, the stronger the “demon spirit” can be obtained.
Since the game system is to judge the walking distance by collecting the number of steps counted by the cell phone, some players have keenly discovered the loophole of this judgment method: using the pedometer can easily brush out the super high step count and get the highly qualified “demon spirit”. The “demon spirit”. Searching for “pedometer” in the game’s posting bar, you can see a large number of players on this pedometer The “physical plug-in” discussion.
The result of a large number of players “brush steps”, is that the original very rare high-intensity The “demon spirit” is everywhere, destroying the balance of the game. Therefore, the official has taken measures to limit the abuse of the pedometer, first of all, to reduce the upper limit of the number of steps, in addition, if the system determines that the player has used the pedometer, will also be blocked.
When using a pedometer, the phone will keep shaking at the same frequency for a long time, so it is not difficult to be recognized. Unfortunately, the devil is one foot high and the road is one foot high: there are already inverter pedometers on the market, and players have found that they can bypass the system’s detection by using pedometers offline.
The wool party uses the pedometer to “wool”. Some banks and insurance companies have apps where you can redeem your steps for benefits. The Ping An Gold Manager’s “Ping An Health Walk” campaign accumulates steps on a weekly basis, and the higher the number of steps, the more times you can redeem them for lucky draws. The higher the number of steps, the more times you can redeem for the lucky draw; Ping An Insurance’s “Ping An Welfare” product, which accumulates at least 10,000 steps per day for at least 25 days in each of 18 or 24 months in the first two policy years, will start from the third policy year. In the third policy year, the coverage amount will be increased accordingly; you can upload your steps on the CITIC Bank app to gain energy and win prizes by ranking your energy value. These activities encourage consumers who don’t want to exercise but want to “weed out” to buy a pedometer.
Fans use pedometers to “power up” their idols. In 2019, Tencent teamed up with Weibo to organize a “Supernova Online Marathon”, a charity event in which fans could send their pedometers to the Super Nova Games. ” a public welfare activity in which fans can donate their steps in the name of their idols to help build rural sports rooms.
This activity announces rankings in real time according to the number of steps donated by each idol fan group. Since most of the participants in the program are young idols, their fans have a strong desire to win and fight, and they strive to be at the top of every list, and many fans have purchased pedometer shakers for this purpose. Some Douban users posted that “Supernova marathon can be renamed as pedometer competition”. In the end, the fans of former female idol group “Rocket Girl 101” member Wu Xuan Yi donated over 50 billion steps to help her idol reach the top.
3
Fear of being dominated by WeChat sports rankings
Some people’s pedometer stories are sad.
Lin Shasha graduated from college in 2020, and because of health reasons, she quit her job for a while and rested at home, hardly leaving the house. The consequence of not going out is often receive greetings from distant relatives and friends: “Look at your daily WeChat steps are so little, what’s wrong lately? “
It just so happens that there is an unused pedometer at home, she used it. “To cover up the fact that you don’t go out,” she said. “It can also force yourself to put down your phone and quit your phone addiction. “
Her family bought the pedometer to “claim the number one spot on WeChat,” but she didn’t want to do that.
“I just want to hide in the middle of everyone. Don’t be the person with double-digit steps on WeChat. Can you understand this feeling? ” she said. There were times when she got careless and shook too many steps, and many elders gave her praise, and she felt very embarrassed. Generally she will control in 6000-8000 steps, almost stop.
Some other WeChat users interviewed by me also said that they experienced the fear of being liked by their mothers for WeChat sports every day. The more you walk, the more you will be asked where you went today, and the less you walk, the more you will be asked why you don’t move more. Lin Shasha’s mother, no matter how many steps she took every day, would give her a like for her WeChat campaign, giving her the feeling that “mom is watching you.
“I use the pedometer for the purpose of just wanting to look like a normal person in the WeChat movement. I just want to look like a normal person in the WeChat movement,” said Lin Shasha.
(At the request of the interviewer, all characters in the article are pseudonyms)
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