Seriously?

Andrew Leonard at Salon.com introduces us to something which he calls “sheer genius” and “true smartphone brilliance” in a technology article, “App of the Week.” Yes, I still read Salon, but I have no real idea why. It goes back to when they paid their writers and had people like Glenn Greenwald, but now all of their writers work for free and the articles are worth exactly what Salon pays for them.

Anyway, back to the “true smartphone brilliance” that Mr. Leonard has discovered. It turns out that it’s an app that makes your phone sound like the shower is running, and is intended to be used to cover up the sound of you going to the bathroom.

He describes the horror he has felt over the idea that someone might hear him performing either of two basic bodily functions, and how he turns on the shower to prevent that from happening. Apparently he has the idea that this social anxiety afflicts virtually everyone, and that turning on the shower while using the bathroom is causing millions of gallons of water to be wasted every week.

I have to say that never in my life of seventy years have I turned on the shower to hide the sound of me going to the bathroom. It has just never occurred to me to do that. I’ve never imagined that anyone who knew me would think that I don’t...

I’ve never known anyone else to do it either. In fact if someone did do it I would think something weird was going on. Someone asks if they can use my bathroom; I tell them it’s the first door on the left and pay no more attention, unless I hear the shower running, which I would notice. Wtf? They’re taking a shower?

Tell me, if a visitor uses your bathroom, do you go listen at the door?

Besides which, only a portion of the sound of a shower comes from the shower head and water in the bath; how is a cell phone successfully going to sound like water running through the pipes in your house? Weird.