Cyber badgering could help you shed pounds
Reminders via email popular among dieters
Misty Harris , Canwest News Service
Proving mother knew best, professional nagging services are exploiting pester-power to get people motivated.
Though the behaviour is loathed when unsolicited, it appears multi-taskers are open to -- and even enthusiastic about -- scheduling their own nagging, whether for reminders to eat healthier foods, write the great Canadian novel, or take medication at proper intervals.
The newest arrival in the cyber-badgering business is weightnags.com, which markets itself as a tough-love personal trainer that will "nag you once a week until you get off of your fat (butt) and lose some weight."
A woman reads an email message on her Blackberry.
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The free e-mail service can be augmented by a $5 subscription fee that ups the harassment ante with regular text messages that warn dieters they "won't have that doughnut without hearing about it."
"I just outgrew my 34 (pants) and I don't want my fiancee to say, 'I love you anyway.' I want the truth -- that I put on 20 pounds and need to do something about it," says Tal Boyd, the Texas marketer behind the online nag service.
Evidently, he's not alone: after just two weeks of operation, the site has 500 registered users.
Each of the automated nags assumes dieters might fall off the wagon at any time. A Saturday night text message, for example, might warn of the calories in beer and remind people of the spare tire around their doughy waist.
"We've taken a brutal approach," says Boyd, whose site was inspired by a Yale professor who paid a student to nag him via e-mail to lose weight. "We'll bug the hell out of you until you do something."
Also part of the mushrooming cottage industry of naggers are hassleme.co.uk, which lets people determine the topic and frequency of their own nags; thewritersnag.com, which sends twice-daily e-mails that "remind you of the commitment you've made to yourself to take your writing seriously" and offers tips and exercises designed to improve "everything from your attitude to your ability to develop finger-wringing plots;" and nagmenow.com, which launched in January and combines voice messages, letters, e-mails and text messages in "nag packs" running roughly $30 to $40 for a select period of time.
Susan Boon, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Calgary, sees the trend as a symptom of a society that's at once overcommitted and hyper-organized. She said most people likely interpret their use of cyber-badgering services as a way of "outsourcing" their memory -- much the same way a man might rely on his wife to remind him to shop for upcoming birthday.
And although being nagged can be irritating, Boon notes that it can also play a positive role.
