#focus friend

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

Genuinely surreal that my brother @edwardspoonhands, despite having eighteen jobs and making six videos a week et cetera, also co-created the sixth most popular app in the world.

(Good app, too. I use it daily.)

[stitchy-queerista]

The most popular app being an app that gently forces you to put your damn phone down is.......... something. I don't know. It's funny. It's scary. It's sad. We're so stuck on our phones, but we don't want to be. We can't stop ourselves from picking up our dopamine rectangle every ten seconds, so we put a cute little bean in the phone and say if you pick up your phone in the next half hour, that little bean is gonna get distracted and lose its spot in its knitting, and then the bean will be sad—and we don't want the bean to be sad more than we need the dopamine rectangle for those thirty minutes.

And it became the most popular app immediately. It's cute, it's free, there's no account to make or signing in to do, so there are other factors, but. We're so desperate for help. We're so desperate to put our phones down.

I named my bean the baby knitten, and today I studied ASL for the first time in over a year, because it was the most interesting thing around me that wasn't my phone, and the baby knitten needed to focus.

[ilivebyshipping]

I don't know how to feel about the fact that "sorry I didn't text earlier, my bean was knitting" is now a thing I have to say

[motleyfam]

Idk who all uses Focus Friend on here but I’ve just achieved Maximum Frog™️ and I had to share

[papermonkeyism]

ADHD was in fact ADHDing so bad, I had to externalize my impulse control for a bit.

Watching a tiny bean garden gives me joy.

[marlinspirkhall]

Hank Green v Kathryn Moon Knitted Sock Discourse (Focus Friend App)

Important disclaimer: as far as I can tell, Hank Green didn't "tell" people this beyond the programming of the Focus Friend app making socks "worth less" than scarves. Both items can be exchanged for furniture. This probably isn't relevant.

Here are my very unqualified thoughts on this as someone who's been knitting for only 4 years and has knitted approx 15 pairs of socks and only 5 scarves total (I favour 4mm needles and 4mm yarn, but can go up or down if necessary. I've made chunky socks and smaller socks and I don't knit in the round- I knit flat, then sew it together with a seam down the side):

Scarves are faster and easier to make, so scarves arguably have more economic value in that they're one-size fits all. Socks require measurements (and often more precise measurements than you'd expect- the joy of handmade socks is they can be extremely snug and cozy- once you've knitted one pair for yourself, you'll realize just how subpar store-bought socks have been your entire life), but in terms of "amount of effort to make" correlated to "economic 'value' created by the knit", scarves definitely win. That doesn't mean that scarves SHOULD win, but there we are.

However, not everyone chooses to wear a scarf. A scarf is a fashion statement, and bulky to carry around when not in use, whereas everyone who has feet will (probably) wear socks at some point in their lives, if not daily- especially in winter- which means, historically, having socks has always been incredibly necessary and also incredibly time consuming to make, even with the advent of automation. There's a reason why handmade lace (and by extension, stockings) was historically one of the most expensive products, due to the time it took to produce them [X]

Scarves may use more yarn, so the cost of acquiring the materials is higher, but the monetary cost of labour is also important- using the same needle and yarn gauges (4mm for both), it takes me 4 hours to knit a plain 10x100cm scarf, versus 4 hours to knit a single plain (UK size 5) sock... And that's without factoring in the time it takes to sew the sock together and/or weave in the ends if there's any colour work going on. With a scarf, unless you're making an infinity scarf and sewing the ends together, there's rarely any sewing involved in the process.

It's also indisputable that knitting a sock takes a lot more experience than knitting a scarf: while nobody likes a stiff scarf, the gauge is much less important when knitting a scarf versus a sock. If your sock is too rigid, it's completely unusable; you won't be able to get your foot inside it.

Conclusion: The "Bean" character in Focus Friend is making generic one-size-fits-all socks which can be easily replicated by a modern knitting machine. This is a completely valid choice if they're choosing to do it for the love of creation, but, unfortunately, they're using the scratchiest eyelash yarn they can find which will fuck your skin up for days. If you see that idiot knitting a sock, you SHOULD tap the screen until they drop their needles, because nobody wants that shit.

[agoodpretender]

Gonna have to update this in a few years to what the original looked like anyway, John.

[somecunttookmyurl]

i have now had Bean for almost 2 weeks and am still completing my full to do list every single day. my house is clean & tidy. i'm catching up with crochet. i've had time to do some model kits.

also he has a living room now and naps on the couch

(still waiting for the addition of a tuxedo kitt-ney bean skin)