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Google Maps Ditches Walking Calorie Counter After Backlash (engadget.com)
Following online backlash, Google is removing a planned feature in Maps that shows you how many calories you'd burn when in walking mode. Google's attempt to promote a healthy lifestyle caused a number of people to lambast the feature on Twitter, claiming it would "shame" and even "trigger" those with eating disorders. Engadget reports: Taking note of the negative reaction, Google is now dumping the experiment. It confirmed to Engadget that the update was briefly tested on iOS, and has been abandoned based on user feedback. As The Hill's Taylor Lorenz noted in her tweets, there was no way to turn off the feature. Lorenz also claimed that using pink cupcakes as the unit of measurement was "lowkey aimed at women." Others pointed out that Maps wasn't the appropriate place for the update. After all, there are plenty of fitness and calorie counting apps that keep track of your activity and consumption -- again emphasizing how misplaced the feature was.
>Google's attempt to promote a healthy lifestyle caused a number of people to lambast the feature on Twitter, claiming it would "shame" and even "trigger" those with eating disorders.
Those people are poisoning our society. They need to be ostracized and allowed to wallow in whatever ghetto they manage to find refuge in.
How can this feature be added back in? I'd find it handy.
What's wrong with encouraging people to walk instead of drive?
Where else could you put such a feature, apart from Maps? Adding navigation to a fitness app would be even worse.
What's wrong with pink cupcakes? Raspberry icing is awesome. How dare women try to claim it for themselves.
I'm outraged that they're implying pink cupcakes are only for women. I love all cupcakes equally.
If only it weren't against every principle of modern UI design to, you know, actually ALLOW PEOPLE TO TURN FEATURES ON AND OFF.
Because if it were, those who find a given feature useful could turn it on (or leave it turned on), and those who don't want it could simply turn it off (or leave it turned off), all without starting a massive Twitstorm.
But of course, it's no longer fashionable to trouble the user with such responsibilities. Google Knows What's Best For Us All(tm)... and if they don't, Apple and Microsoft will be happy to take on the burden of making decisions on our collective behalf.
the universe doesn't care about your feelings
True. But if I'm trying to sell you something? I sure as hell care about your feelings--at least until the check clears.
Remember, Google is in it for the marketshare. They don't make money off of Maps, they make money keeping track of to where you ask directions and using that information for marketing purposes. "Oh, look, you go to this grocery store? Maybe you'd be interested in some coupons..."
The standard "cupcake with frosting" image includes pink frosting. Chocolate frosting is far more common in real life, but that ends up looking like poop when used in any sort of graphical sense.
White frosting is usually taken to mean vanilla, and vanilla is synonymous with "boring".
Green and blue are unappetizing colors for food.
Strong red (such as frosting) looks like blood and is a hard color to get consistent (be it across print, web, etc., and don't you dare try to JPEG anything with large solid blocks of red).
Yellow has the piss likeness if it's too strong, and looks weak and lame if it's too weak.
Orange? Only for Halloween. (All colors are valid for their respective holidays.)
Pink frosting is the default because it's "fun", doesn't look like a bodily secretion, doesn't look like rotten food, etc.
Go ahead, use your favorite search engine to look up images of real life cupcakes, then look up drawings / clip art / cartoon / etc. cupcakes. Notice the huge spike in representation of pink frosting.
But PC culture *is* ruining everything. It's not some kind of false conclusion. Remember when that scientist, celebrating the achievement of a lifetime, landing a space probe on a fucking COMET, was forced to tearfully apologize the next day for his choice of shirt?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!