Shame Eats Earn Shame Tweets: Matt Haughey Attempts to Curb Bad Habits Through Automation and Geolocation

Matt Haughey is an interesting guy. Not only is he the founder of MetaFilter, but he’s a really fun person to follow on Twitter.

Today, I happened across an older article he wrote entitled Shame Eats Earn Shame Tweets. It all began a while ago, when he noticed some bad habits surfacing…

Being a tech guy, he naturally decided it was time to take matters into his own hands. Or rather, out of his hands, and into an automated IFTTT recipe.

His solution is a pretty ingenious use of FourSquare check-ins, which would then trigger an automated post on Twitter to all his followers letting them know he was eating him some hot garbage. Social media as social shaming.

Though I’ve got an account at IFTTT, I haven’t really used it much in the past few years. It’s not part of my daily routine, but after seeing what Haughey’s done with his recipe… I’m interesting to go in for another look. I really never understood the draw of FourSquare, and this is one actually good, legitimate use for the service it seems.

Note: I listened to One Direction’s Story of My Life for the first time, after reading this article. Thankfully, I don’t see that becoming a bad habit I’m going to one day write up an IFTTT recipe for.

Related:
The Vending Machine Challenge, Part 1
Intermission: Video Clip Available
The Vending Machine Challenge, Part 2
An Introvert’s Guide to Better Presentations