Wakie Gets You Up With A Stranger

Pillow Talk Without The Fluff

Assuming you’re not one of those obvious liars who claims to be a ‘morning person’, your alarm clock is a faceless plastic war criminal that must be stopped at all costs. The piercing, repetitive cacophony it produces every morning is pepper spray to your ears, and although every single fibre of your very being wants nothing more than to stay inside the protective cocoon of your cover until the end of time, that blaring siren wants you up. Ready. Standing to attention.

At first you'll resist. Staying in the warmth all day is worth fighting for, you’ll think, even if it means losing yet another minimum wage job. But you’ll succumb. You always do. You’ll roll out of bed, wash the morning from your face and prepare for another day of grey monotony. Repeat indefinitely, until eventually you retire and then die.

It’s not, you’ll be shocked to hear, a process I'm fond of. But Armenian entrepreneur Hrachik Adjamian can save the day. His app Wakie has been billed as a ‘social alarm clock’, and it could help even the staunchest of morning haters see the light.

Upon first inspection, Wakie looks like a regular alarm clock. You download the app, input the time you need to get up and wait for it to spring to life. However, Wakie doesn't use brute force to get you out of bed - it connects you with another user, who then has 60 seconds to ease you from your bedsheets with the power of conversation.

If you want to return the favour, you can search for others around the world who need help. Once you've found someone, do your best to make their waking process as painless as possible in the 60 second limit. If they think you've done well, they'll give you a thumbs up. If they end up sulking back in bed, you get a thumbs down.

The idea came about when Adjamian realised that waking up gradually over the phone was far more pleasant than being shaken awake by an alarm. A phone call allows us to grow into a conversation as we become more alert, making getting out of bed a slow, gradual process.

It's the hotel alarm call of the digital age.

As with every app since the release of Tinder, Wakie even has a potential dating twist. When searching for fellow 'wakies', the app will do its best to match people of the opposite gender. Why? According to Adjamian, we generally tend to be nicer to strangers when they're of the opposite sex. If only someone could tell the women who meet me.

Wakie makes for an intriguing, potentially weird premise - and one I'll certainly give a go. With 1.5m million users in Russia, our alarm clocks might too become a thing of the past. All I can say is good riddance.

Emile Cole

Emile is a postgrad from the University of Saint Mark and Saint John. He’s hoping to break into journalism or publishing, and won’t stop blogging until he’s managed it! Follow him @EmileAtSMF.

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