The Fatness Machine certainly tried to turn me into a ‘Puffer Fish’ in the hope I would give them money…
Today has included some great experiences, some average experiences and some which are just down right bizarre.
After a great holiday day with my better half, it concluded with some household shopping at Westfield Warringah Mall (in Sydney’s Northern Beaches). It’s a great shopping mall which has some unavoidable disruption right now with an upgrade, making it slightly hard to navigate and a tricky time for all.
As we moved along and on the way out, was this ‘Health & Fitness’ tracking machine. It resembled one of those sticker photo-booths (like the great ones you get in Asian parts of town) and on the inside it had a lock on the door and quite a pleasant environment.
Out of interest, we both tried it and the machine just asks for more and more in a prompt. It ends up asking you to strip down to your underwear as it scans your almost naked body with a range of infrared signals to build a ‘3D Body Map’. We both did it and as part of it, it generates a report, adds you to its database and generates a 3d image of you.
Now, before I obviously launch into an attack on this machine – yes, I am in the process of losing weight. I go to the gym about 3 – 4 times a week, look quite fit – but still am losing more ‘body fat’ right now (so far so good). My fitness clients have said that I look great and I only have a few more kilos to go of fat loss and I am there.
Sounds good right?
Well, my view of the ‘Health & Fitness’ machine turned into a ‘Fatness Machine’ very quickly. Instead of actually giving me an accurate 3D map, it generated quite a ‘fatty photo’ that I can tell was an exaggeration. As I looked at it, I worked out quite quickly what it had done.
Instead of mapping me for what I am, it worked out my height & weight – and just generated a fat image of someone of that height (assuming no gym work). It was quite a psych-out actually and I am sure my ego is quite fragile and bruised.
NOT – I don’t think so at all. I could figure out very quickly the agenda of the machine. Basically it was to attack me, get me insecure and on the email it sent me it was asking me to upgrade to the ‘Premium Features’ to work on my health and solve this ‘massive fat issue’ I have because according to the machine I am a massive fatso with no hope in life.
It was quite amusing actually and when I figured this out, we both laughed in total humour and got it.
It was very 1980’s type sales training actually. In this era, lots of it was about attacking your potential client and getting them to freak out about the issues they have. For example, you are selling weight loss. You tell them they are fat, they are going to die soon unless they give you money.
Not very nice, ‘Modern Day’ is much more respectful than this and would more be like ‘We like you just the way you are, however if you want to lose some weight we’d love to help’.
It was quite manipulative actually as we both were slightly unhinged for a certain while. I even felt like eating a kilogram of choclate and doing stuff to the Fatness Machine.
My lessons from all this? Be careful when you see stuff in shopping malls and on the negative – have your guard up for scams and people trying to manipulate you.
On the positive? Sell by being nice to people. It feels better and is the winner these days.
Love your work, yes I am losing body fat, no I don’t think my ego is totally out of whack and with full thanks to the fatness machines for the blog inspiration.
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