The kids aren’t just swiping these days. They’re stomping. Stompers, the self-proclaimed “app of the summer,” is designed by Soren Iverson and Josh Rozin, and pits users against each other in a daily step-counting competition. Its App Store pitch is succinct: create your stomper, walk with friends and beat them up with items.
Throughout the day, Stompers sources data from the Health app on your phone, displaying your step count in a scoreboard style. Obviously, that isn’t so exciting on its own; we’re all accustomed to having pedometers on our wrists or in our pockets. It’s the fact that you can monitor the step counts of friends and family — and in some cases, whack them with a giant baseball bat, sending them backwards 750 steps — that gamifies the daily mark, and separates Stompers from standard fitness-tracking fare.
I haven’t cared so much about my step count in ages. Certainly not since the “10,000 steps a day” rule was outed as a marketing farce by a Harvard epidemiologist. As a runner, an urban commuter, and a guy who likes to get out of the office for a bit after lunch, I don’t stress my exact step count at the end of the day. I figure that if I keep doing what I’m doing it’ll end up okay.
But Stompers has me focused on the number like never before — and in a way that I would actually call healthy. That’s for a simple reason: it’s fun.
I should mention that stompers are weird characters. Their base setting is car show inflatable. But from there, users can choose their preferred color or body type, and eventually add pants, shirts, caps, sunglasses and even extravagant beards. Once you’ve acquired friends (you need a few for your app to start working — smart move by the developers), the daily leaderboard is a chaotic mosaic of strange creatures…some of them mildly disturbing.
They become particularly unsettling when they’re gaining on you, and perhaps wielding a baseball bat. That’s an excellent time for you to make another trip to the water cooler, or even take a loop around your closest park. As you walk, your stomper will stumble upon other nifty items: like dynamite (which will surge your avatar forward hundreds of steps), or bananas (to be flung at creatures anyone near you; though there is a 50% chance the peel will add to their total).
At 9 p.m. the app releases the results. The next “day” doesn’t begin until midnight. I think this is to A) ensure the podium reveal arrives at a time people are paying attention, and B) to discount dancing steps. I’m not yet sure if that’s totally fair. What I can say, having used this app for weeks now, is that when you’re walking home after 9 p.m. — or walking anywhere without your phone or watch — there’s a bizarre sensation that the steps don’t count. They aren’t certified stomps! (That said, you can pay for night mode, to make sure every last step is a stomp. Unfortunately, I pay for too many streaming services to justify that.)
The fact that steps are only stomps when a device is on your person may not be particularly “healthy.” As I’ve previously advocated, it’s a good idea to leave you phones behind in a drawer once in a while. That’s when your walks can actually tap into all those fabled creativity benefits we hear so much about.
Still, it’s been fantastic to see so many of my friends and family get inspired by this objectively silly app. A number around 20,000 stomps is usually enough to win the day — but sometimes it isn’t, and there have been some real barn burners. I had no clue so many people I know were putting up massive numbers on a daily basis. (Or maybe that’s just the Stompers effect!)
At a time where we’re more attuned to the potency of walking than ever before, here’s a great way to keep your steps top of mind…without stressing about them. This is fitness tracking — and social media in general — at its most low-stakes and Looney Tunes.
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