
Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free - chris140957
https://bail-app.netlify.com/
======
VectorLock
Is this even a thing or just a landing page with an email harvester?

~~~
dang
Ugh, I missed that.

All: Show HN requires that a thing exists and that people can try it out. A
sign up page doesn't count. Please read the rules:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

------
bigiain
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...

~~~
ericmcer
I think more than 0.15% of people feel guilt/anxiety about wanting to cancel
plans last minute. I don't have any data to back that up, but it is a fairly
common emotion.

999/1000 people feel nothing when they have to renege on a social engagement?

~~~
derision
No those people just know how to communicate like a normal human and say hey
I'm really not up for it tonight let's reschedule. If anyone replies
negatively or aggressively to that they then should find new friends. This is
ridiculous

~~~
bigiain
"communicate like a normal human" is a bit unnecessarily negative/aggressive
there. Some people genuinely do have trouble with that. belittling them isn't
gonna help any...

~~~
derision
Normal is a perfectly fine adjective. If you struggle with something like
social anxiety by definition that's not normal. Not normal doesn't imply bad,
it means not normal

~~~
ketzo
"Not normal doesn't imply bad"

From a purely pedantic standpoint: sure. But, uh, I wouldn't suggest going
around dropping that one in conversation with people you'd like to have
conversations with in the future.

------
kerkeslager
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.

~~~
gfodor
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.

~~~
andrewzah
I’m sorry but this has nothing to do with empathy. As an adult, you should
have the grace to understand that sometimes people, for whatever reason, don’t
feel up to hanging out.

You are seriously overthinking this. Empathetic people can still communicate.

~~~
gfodor
My claim is that empathetic people can be dishonest and still be virtuous, not
that no empathetic people can be honest. Concretely, I know people who do not
express preferences directly on such things where it may harm me, out of
empathy for me. I don't consider these people morally corrupt despite not
being completely truthful. An app like this (or any tool like this) which
removes the conflict between these values seems productive since unhappiness
stems from not being able to live according to our value preferences.

I'm not sure who the "you" are addressing here, I'm talking about this problem
from a game theoretic perspective which abstracts over all people.

It some situations there will be no lack of clarity - for example, if two
people prefer honesty over empathy (shorthand for "will people be more honest
even if they are concerned it will not maximize utility between the parties,
or they are aware such utility is not at risk"), there will be no source of
moral confusion. It's when there's unrevealed information about value
judgements this problem manifests.

~~~
gizmo
The dishonesty doesn't help anybody, and it makes navigating the relationship
more difficult for all parties. Empathic dishonesty is a consequence of poor
social skills, where people don't know how to be truthful and set boundaries
without being hurtful.

~~~
gfodor
So says you. Like I said, I know people like this, and I am not willing to
label them as people who have poor social skills or other disparaging things.
I don't consider this category of dishonesty to be one that a person
necessarily needs to correct, if there are approaches to the scenario where
the conflict between honesty and empathy that conflict for them could allow
the person to live more according to their values by preventing the need to
make the trade-off altogether.

~~~
kerkeslager
> Like I said, I know people like this, and I am not willing to label them as
> people who have poor social skills or other disparaging things.

Labeling things like "ignorance" and "poor social skills" as "disparaging"
isn't particularly useful. When I say someone is ignorant or has poor social
skills, that's not a statement that they're a bad person, it's an
identification of a problem they have (which is correctable).

> I don't consider this category of dishonesty to be one that a person
> necessarily needs to correct

It sounds like this may be the core of our disagreement.

I won't say that a person "needs" to correct it--instead I would say that the
person, and my friendship with that person, will be significantly limited by
not correcting this problem.

------
busterarm
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.

~~~
codewritinfool
I wonder who bailed first?

~~~
VectorLock
Did they use the app? Talk about dogfooding...

~~~
ackbar03
Yea, they had an entry "work on startup" in it and realized all the founders
had chosen to bail so the project got canceled

------
leetrout
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
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.

~~~
brnt
Maybe its a cultural thing. Around here we grow up and learn to state our
preferences honestly and understanding its not hurtful to be truthful but
rather the opposite. Weaseling about is something you correct small children
on.

~~~
retsibsi
Does that extend to backing out of a social engagement at very short notice,
simply because you no longer feel like it, without fear of causing offense? I
think a lot of people make plans with friends in all sincerity, but sometimes
end up feeling tired or socially burned out whatever, and wish they had left
the time free but would feel unfriendly canceling at the last minute without a
stronger reason.

edit: also, I think sometimes preferences are kind of fuzzy. Like, maybe I
have no social energy and feel like staying in, so I'll only follow through
out of a sense of obligation -- but there's a decent chance the social contact
will actually energise me and be enjoyable once I snap out of my funk. So
maybe the social pressure is good for me up to a point -- but if my friend is
feeling the same as me, maybe we'd both be better off taking the night off and
seeing each other next time.

~~~
gizmo
Social commitments are called that because they are exactly that: commitments.
You promised to your friends you'll show so you just show. If you never flake
you don't have to waste precious brain cycles agonizing on whether to cancel.

Do you want to be a flake and do you want others to think of you as a flake?
If not, just keep your social commitments. Pretty basic stuff.

~~~
retsibsi
Which is the point of this app, right? You don't want to let down your friend,
so you're not going to cancel in the normal way; but in the case where the
commitment no longer really suits either of you, it would be nice to take a
night off, rather than both show up because you think it matters to the other
person.

------
robbiet480
Based on this tweet obviously
[https://twitter.com/mattiekahn/status/1224100727578120193](https://twitter.com/mattiekahn/status/1224100727578120193)

~~~
chris140957
Yep, making no attempt to claim this idea as my own. But just saw it had huge
traction

------
ipnon
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
I'd pay for that just for the lulz

------
scarejunba
Haha, this is a hilarious idea. I love it.

Clearly this is to combat
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance](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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox)

------
BossingAround
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
This concept is begging for integrations into existing calendar apps, not
being an app itself.

~~~
chris140957
Might be absolutely right about this - thanks for the feedback. Will probably
start with a google integration in the first instance. As you can probably
tell, this concept is still in its infancy

------
romwell
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
> 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
It's basically solving a version of the prisoners dilemma by giving both
parties a filtered communication channel to signal cooperation.

------
aridiculous
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
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

~~~
itake
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.

~~~
chris140957
I did wonder that. Personally, I put social events in my calendar but don't
specifically invite the other people to it. I'm still validating the concept,
but am initially leaning towards this being more of an integration with
calendar services, particularly facebook where people probably do have common
invites

~~~
itake
I've only used FB events among friends for big events (Lets all go to Vegas!)
and even then most of the coordination happens in a chat group.

------
blast
This is like Bang With Friends. Whatever happened to that thing?
[https://www.businessinsider.com/bang-with-friends-co-
founder...](https://www.businessinsider.com/bang-with-friends-co-founder-
interview-2013-4)

Maybe it should be called Bail With Friends.

~~~
_vertigo
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

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
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
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?

~~~
kelnos
It's situation dependent for me. If I've made plans with a friend to grab
lunch/dinner/drinks on a particular day, we often won't decide on a location
until less than 24 hours beforehand. So in that case, I'll usually open with
"Hey, are we still on for lunch? Where should we go?" Even if a location is
already set up, if the plans were made more than a few days in advance, I'll
likely confirm.

But if I've made plans with someone for only a few days in the future, and
we've already picked a location/activity, I'll assume they'll be there unless
they reach out to cancel.

------
siracusa23
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
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.

~~~
flatiron
Are we getting yelped?

------
xyzelement
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.

------
reidjs
Off topic, but OP if you need a guide to help you get off netlify and host
your service through a remote server (e.g. a DO Droplet) check out this guide
I recently wrote

[https://medium.com/@reid.sherman/deploying-and-
configuring-a...](https://medium.com/@reid.sherman/deploying-and-configuring-
a-digitalocean-droplet-to-host-server-side-rendered-web-
applications-382fdce32ff)

------
duxup
I feel like whatever social awkwardness situation this "solves" ... it just
doesn't solve it.

Folks are bound to just hit that button all the time just to find out what
happens ... and still be bothered that the other person did too.

Nobody cares just that someone else doesn't want to do something... they care
/ wonder about why they don't want to do it. You figure that out by talking.

------
JohnFen
If I feel like I can't ask my friend "are you really up for doing this?", then
they aren't actually a friend...

------
Andrew44
One problem I can see is this: If I was the one who made the plan in the first
place, I could hit the "Bail" button just to see whether my friend secretly
wanted to bail and then I could call them up on it... This would result in
things being more awkward than just having a frank conversation in the first
place!

------
stbtrax
A version for intimacy:
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/31/20939932/lovesync-sex-
bu...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/31/20939932/lovesync-sex-button-
gadget-tech-kickstarter-campaign-viral)

~~~
chris140957
I've also seen a similar one about wanting to get out of your marriage. Some
people have questioned the antisocial aspect of the concept, but at least its
more light hearted than that...

------
ronyfadel
“ Bail is still being built, and will be available very soon, on iOS, Android
and online.”

I have a feeling that OP hasn’t started working on anything, and is using this
to prove that there’s a market for it. Sneaky, but good for you!

------
coupdejarnac
Next up, an AI to send you friendly texts, because you have no real friends.

~~~
csours
Pretty sure this already exists

------
maxymajzr
How exciting! I can't wait for next brilliant idea. Maybe... "notify your
friends when you're thirsty via click of a button! Subscribe now, only $4.99 a
month!"

------
mooreed
Is my action of “bailing” transparent to the other party? Via (re)prompting my
friend with a notification or something where they might be able to guess I
was trying to get out?

~~~
chris140957
The idea is that if you bail and they don't, they'll never find out and your
plans will remain uncancelled.

But if you both decide you no longer want to meet up, you no longer have to,
and nobody gets offended

~~~
thestoicattack
This could leak information to the other party if bailing is still available
during the event. By trying to bail myself after you show up I could "prove"
you really didn't want to be here after all.

~~~
retsibsi
Similar to the problem with the 'secret crush' version of the same idea --
people can insincerely tick every box, simply to see which of their friends
has a crush on them. I guess the same caveat applies: only use this app with
people you trust. (Of course, some would say that if you really trust each
other you don't need this app; but I don't know, I can see a use case for
those situations where your plans have become inconvenient, but not
sufficiently inconvenient to back out at short notice without seeming rude. I
wouldn't use it myself but I don't even use a calendar app.)

------
rhacker
I'm a little confused. Do you have to make the plans in the first place using
an app called "Bail"?

If so I imagine the non-bail rate will be extremely extremely low.

------
egypturnash
How on earth am I supposed to get my friends to use this without implicitly
saying “hey I kinda want to bail on this thing” by telling them to use this?

------
hardlianotion
I think the name would be better applied to an app for crowdfunding
conditional releases from gaol pending trial.

------
oh_sigh
There was an app on Shark Tank that was this, but for timing your hook up with
your preferred sexual partner

------
dpeck
it's weird to see social anxiety as a "popular" thing in culture now. Is it a
humble brag as an easy way to have social-proof of having plans and people who
want to hang out with the them, while not having to "document" that they
actually do?

------
adamrezich
younger generations are losing the ability/will to communicate decisively in
uncomfortable social situations, can't see any positive long-term effects here

------
adaisadais
This is the most San Francisco thing ever.

~~~
duxup
Someone once noted that there were a whole series of various startup ideas and
products that could be covered by "things 20 something engineers wish their
mom would still do for them".

I feel like this one is "Mom I don't want to meet up with Sarah today, can you
tell her mom that I have a doctor's appointment?"

~~~
sandoooo
It's remarkable how much of the criticism aimed at SV can be summed up as:

# they're 20-something.

# they're white.

# they're male.

# and this is low status.

~~~
duxup
The criticism was about the products / services.

~~~
sandoooo
The criticism is that it is made by and caters to low status people.

