A Sinking Synctuition
Something about this App Doesn't Add Up
Everyone meditates now. If this was my RPG character sheet, it’d show I’ve been meditating off and on for 20 years or so, never advancing beyond “apprentice.” Still, I try to meditate daily, particularly when I notice my irritability getting the better of me more often that I’d like. And like most people who dabble, I’ve tried the apps: Headspace (didn’t get it), Waking Up (found it extremely helpful), etc. etc. So when I got pitched a mediation app called Synctuition via an Instagram ad, I stopped and looked at it. Which, because it was Instagram, meant I started to see the ad repeatedly and continuously.
Everything about this app screams “scam.” The sales pitch proudly claims “10 years in development” and “Get all the benefits of 4 hours of deep meditation in just 25 minutes a day!” Whatever the fuck that means. 7-day free trial? Check. $100/year auto-renewing subscription? Check. Reviews from users claiming they were charged despite canceling? Also check.
Of course I downloaded it.
The app doesn’t get any less scammy once you’re inside. It divides its meditations into 7 levels, with 20 meditations each. Each meditation and level claims to further unlock your intuition, or some other such new age gobbledygook nonsense. But you can only unlock one meditation every 12 hours. Meaning you can only access all of the content over several months, baiting the hook with increasingly outlandish promises for you to spend cash on an annual subscription. Each individual meditation also has a bunch of 5 star reviews from “users” that read like they’re written by GPT3 given the prompt “tell my about your recent amazing mediation experience.” I’ve done 3 of the individual meditations. And they’re … well they’re fucking weird.
The individual meditations start with a porny woman’s voice giving you the ASMR tinglies, describing what an awesome experience you’re about to have. You can skip this part if it’s not your thing. The main body of the meditation is a fairly heavily produced combinations of tracks, with environmental sounds (rain, waves, wind, or babbling water) nature sounds (birds, insects), and singing (yes, people singing). And it all bounces from ear to ear in a kind of dizzying 3D audio merry go round. It’s a lot of noise, and sometimes is distracting.
Here’s the thing: the meditations are reliably putting me into altered states of consciousness that I have not experienced with other meditation. They are completely engrossing (even when they are distracting) and my visual field goes absolutely haywire. The most reminiscent experience I’ve ever had is being on ayahuasca, it’s that unusual. The production quality of the tracks is astonishingly high. The sound quality is crystal clear, the singers are (for the most part) quite good, the spatial audio is impeccably positioned, and tracks are seamlessly produced. Even if each meditation is pieced together from off-the-rack audio tracks, someone has put an enormous amount of work into them.
There’s very little about the company behind the app online. The website is polished, and screams that there is seed or venture backing here somewhere. The guy who founded it is apparently Estonian and has done a couple interviews I could find, but is otherwise ghosty apart from his LinkedIn. They company is now selling physical pods to do your meditation in. Seems all like standards startup goofiness.
So if they have funding, and are making a legitimate product, why all the scammy sales tactics and quirks? Maybe just because they work? And what’s actually going on in my head here? I really wanted this app to be as much bunk as it appears. I was savoring the taste in my mouth of my acidic judgement proven right. Yet despite myself and my hunches about the placebo effect, I really like the meditations and look forward to a new one each day. Am I the perfect patsy for this nonsense? Maybe.
Well maybe not perfect. Turns out if you look up the app in your iPhone subscriptions, you can simply choose a yearly subscription at 30% off ($68/year) instead of renewing at full price. So I did that instead. Goodbye, hard earned cash. Hello enlightenment.