Previous: How does a two-way mirror work? - Big Questions - (Ep. 24)
Next: Misconceptions about Allergies - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep. 17)



View count:489,200
Last sync:2018-11-28 22:20
A weekly show where knowledge junkies get their fix of trivia-tastic information. This week, Mike looks at some (very) weird apps for your phone.

Like Mike and want more? Check him out at:

Mental Floss Video on Twitter:

Select Images and Footage provided by Shutterstock:

Mike: Hey there, I'm Mike, this is mental_floss on YouTube, and did you know that Iceland has a very specific yet useful dating app?  The population there is pretty small, it's around 323,000 people, so the app ensures that you're not related to the person you're dating using an Icelandic genealogy database.  That's the first of many weird apps and games that you can download onto your smartphone that I'm going to tell you about today.

(mental_floss intro)

Another bizarre dating app: Crowd Pilot.  You can stream your date via your phone to your friends, who can then help you with what to say if things get awkward, like, say, if you chose to stream your date via your phone to your friends.

For when you can't get someone off the phone, there's Fake-an-Excuse, an app that plays a sound like a siren or a doorbell or a killer bee attack so that you'll have an excuse to end the call.

Pimple Popper is a game in which you pop pimples on a cartoon face by squeezing your actual fingers.  There are also themed versions of the game for Halloween, Easter, Christmas, and Valentine's Day.  How romantic.

A little less gross, but similarly weird is Shave Me!  You try to shave a beard without making the face bleed.  There's even little bits of tissue for when you mess up.  You can pay extra for a razor, tweezers, and shaving cream.  Some of us are lucky enough to be able to play the not-app version of this game. 

The description of The Pointless Game reads: "Warning: This game is pointless."  All you do is hold your finger on the screen of your phone, you get one point for each second, making the game, strictly speaking, I guess not totally pointless. 

A similar app is Hold On!, in which you press a button for as long as you can.  The high scores are for multiple hours.

Another button pressing game, 30 Second Life.  For this one, you push two buttons as fast as possible, pushing fast enough will allow you to become something cool like a doctor or a millionaire or maybe John Green?  We should be so lucky.

The Punch a Hipster app is exactly what it sounds like.  You get points for beating up cartoon hipsters.  You can also upload photos of hipsters you know to punch.

With Spirit Story Box, you can investigate the paranormal for just .99 cents.  The app tells you words associated with paranormal energy it picks up from wherever you are.  For example, one user went to a cafe and got the words 'shin', 'engineer', 'using chisel', 'crow bar', and 'harm neck'.

If you're looking for something less specific, you can download an EMF Meter for your phone.  It will detect electromagnetic fields just like they do on ghost hunting shows. 

Equally spooky, the Death App.  You just put your name in, and it'll tell you the day you are going to die and what of.  I got '2015', 'mental_floss production mishap'.  Uh-oh!

Crack my Screen is a prank app that makes it look like your screen got cracked, which is probably fun, like, one time.

Bowel Mover allows you to track your bowel movements, plus it asks how many cups of water you've drank, whether your meals were gluten free, and what the texture of your BMs were.  Unfortunately, unlike the Pimple Popper app, this one doesn't have its own built-in Valentine's Day mode, so you're going to have to solve that problem on your own. 

And if Bowel Mover's not enough, you can download Places I've Pooped, the app that allows you to remember everywhere that you've pooped.

For fictional toilet use, there's the iDragPaper game, in which you unroll toilet paper as fast as you can.  This app also doubles as a simulation of what it's like to be a cat. 

The Toothbrush Fitness app times your toothbrushing while also displaying a 3D animation of where you should be brushing and for how long.

Carrr Matey is a simple app that helps you remember where you parked your car, but it's pirate themed, so you don't park your car, ya dock yer ship and drop yer anchor.

Talking Tom Cat has over 390,000,000 downloads and all it is is a cartoon cat who repeats your words in a weird voice.  (Cartoon cat repeats your words in a weird voice.)

For something a little more intimate, there was Passion.  It's now unavailable.  You would pull the app up and leave it on your bed while having sex, and it told you how good you were at it on a scale from bad to perfect, because why ask your partner when you can ask your phone?

You might be wondering who would download an app like that.  Probably the same people who would use your iAmAMan app.  This allows cool guys to track the menstrual cycles of multiple girlfriends, and they can have a different password for each lady in case one of them catches them using it.  It will look like they are the only one being tracked. 

And when they get dumped by their multiple girlfriends, they can download the Watching Cute Girl app, which contains video of a young woman who stares at you and sometimes says something nice or asks if you want to hug.

Speaking of breakups, Breakup Notifier was shut down in 2011 after getting 3.6 million downloads.  The app would let you know when your crush had changed their Facebook relationship status, but Facebook put their foot down and blocked the app.  They cited 'irreconcilable differences' as the cause.

iVooDoo is a virtual voodoo doll that you can stick pins in, and yes, before you ask, you can customize the face.

You can set the iNap@Work app to make office sounds so people will think that you are working when you're actually napping at your desk.  The sound options include typing, mouse clicking, and stapling.  You can even pick which sounds you want played and how often.

CNN Money has named Zips Lite the number one dumbest app. All the app does is let you zip and unzip pants.  Now that is literally pointless. 

It costs $4.99 to download the Cry Translator on iTunes, despite its one star rating.  The app claims to be able to know why your baby is crying and what you have to do to stop it.

The Annoy-a-Teen app plays sounds at a high enough frequency that adults can't hear it, but it drives teenagers crazy. 

The app iFrenchKiss claims it can rate your kissing skills by just having you make out with your phone, please don't do this, phones are covered in germs, especially if you're an avid Places I've Pooped user. 

Finally, I return to the salon, which is clearly in need of a new fireplace app to tell you that the Melon Meter app will charge you $2 to access its amazing technology that knows whether a watermelon is ripe or not.  For it to work, you have to hold your phone mic on a watermelon, and then you knock on the fruit until it tells you to stop, then the app will let you know if the watermelon is okay to eat.

Thanks for watching mental_floss on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these very nice people.  Let me know which of these apps you have downloaded, I would love to hear about your experiences, maybe not if you download Places I've Pooped.  My name is Mike Rugnetta, if you like my face, you can find more of it on YouTube at PBS Idea Channel, and if you like my voice, you can find it on my podcast, Reasonably Sound.  Links to both of those things in the dooblydoo, and hey, DFTBA.