There's A New Fitness App With A Morbid Twist

If you’re still feeling the spooky spirit of Halloween but can’t quite justify donning your costume now that the holiday is officially over, you may want to check out a darkly-themed app that has made its way to the iTunes app store and might just send a shiver down your spine. A new app called Deadline can supposedly determine the date of your death, or as the app politely puts it, your "expiration." Um yeah... talk about creepy.

Per the app’s store description, Deadline places heavy emphasis on the information from your phone’s Healthkit tool, which records statistical information, like your height and diastolic blood pressure, and monitors your sleep and the amount of steps you take in a day. Using this data and a short survey with more questions about your lifestyle, the app determines the approximate date and time of your demise, and then counts down how much time you have left. Like I said, creepy.

So why in the world would anyone want a time-ticking app literally counting down your limited days on Earth? In reality, Deadline is more of a fitness app, albeit one with a significantly more morbid take than most. Obviously, as the app's developers Gist LLC point out in the product's description, “no app can really accurately determine when you will die.” Instead, the company suggests using the app as a way to monitor your own health and motivate yourself to make better lifestyle choices or consult a physician, if necessary. You can even change your predicted date of death by following a healthy diet and an active exercise routine.

The concept is a little bit too disturbing for me, but I guess I can see how it would serve as a twisted form of motivation to help you get off the couch and hit the gym. Having a clock constantly reminding you of your impending doom can have that affect — especially one that sits on your phone’s lock screen, so that you can’t avoid it. In fact, it’s already inspiring some users to make changes. As one reviewer put it, “Guess I should stop drinking so much booze… it adds years on.” Ah, progress.

Source: iTunes