Jog on! Lazy Strava users are using a secret app to FAKE their runs - as furious joggers compare it to 'cheating at Solitaire'
But if you spot one of your friends posting impressive runs on Strava, all may not be as it seems.
Some lazy users are using a secret app to fake their runs.
The app, aptly named 'Fake My Run', lets users create custom running routes that look realistic on fitness tracking platforms like Strava.
Across social media, the app has received mixed reviews, with some users delighted at the ability to con their friends.
'insane, i hate it and i love it. great work,' one user tweeted, while another said: 'I hate this so much….but I also love that this is possible.'
However, others were less accepting - with one furious user comparing the con to 'cheating on Solitaire'.
'Who would care, really? It's like cheating at solitaire. You run/bike/workout for yourself, in the first place, right? To feel good, to stay healthy and to enjoy your rides/run,' they vented.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Arthur Bouffard (@arthurbfrd)
Some lazy users are using a secret app to fake their runs. The app, aptly named 'Fake My Run', lets users create custom running routes that look realistic on fitness tracking platforms like Strava
Fake My Run is the brainchild of Amsterdam-based developer, Arthur Bouffard, who was inspired after seeing a surge in Strava users paying 'mules' to run for them.
'Strava mules have gone viral recently for charging 10-20$ to run for other people and improve their stats, which made me think there has to be an easier way,' he explained on X.
'There is. And after a bit of clever engineering, I built Fake My Run.'
To create a fake run, users can visit fakemy.run and draw a custom route anywhere in the world.
To make the runs more believable, Mr Bouffard has even included the option to align the path to the roads.
'Your perfectly drawn path is going to follow curvature of the streets and make it look as realistic as possible,' he explained in a video.
You can also adjust the run details - with the option to select your own pace, date, start time, and a description.
'You can create really realistic runs or really insane and impossible runs. You want to go run in Mongolia? No problem,' the developer said.
Once you're happy with your fake run, you can download the file and upload it directly to your chosen fitness app.
'And boom, the activity has been added to your Strava account,' Mr Bouffard added.
Mr Bouffard is a runner himself, but became frustrated with the way the 'culture around running has shifted.'
'Running used to be a very personal sport that was mainly practised to challenge yourself, to improve your physical and mental health, to stay in shape, to compete with others, to discover new parts of the world, etc,' he explained.
'In the last couple of years, I've seen running increasingly shift towards becoming a social status and way of signalling a lifestyle.
'Every activity can be turned into an Instagram story, every marathon can become a TikTok video. And social running apps are the spine, the solid, irrefutable proof of those very achievements.
'Like social media though, running posts can be faked. Which is in part why I made Fake My Run. As a way to challenge the culture shift around running.
'To also prove the good old saying that you shouldn't trust what you see on the internet. But also because it was technically doable and entertaining.'
'Who would care, really? It's like cheating at solitaire. You run/bike/workout for yourself, in the first place, right? To feel good, to stay healthy and to enjoy your rides/run,' one user vented
'The digital world is a mess can't trust anything or anyone. In a few years or decades, most of the people will leave the internet and go back to the real world where real things happen,' one user tweeted
The app has garnered huge attention across social media, with a very mixed response.
'The digital world is a mess can't trust anything or anyone. In a few years or decades, most of the people will leave the internet and go back to the real world where real things happen,' one user tweeted.
Another added: 'Why would anyone be jealous how much somebody ran? This workout culture is getting out of hand.'
And one wrote: 'Surely people aren't using this, you're only cheating yourself.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
3 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Nudifying apps are not 'a bit of fun' - they are seriously harmful and their existence is a scandal writes Children's Commissioner RACHEL DE SOUZA
I am horrified that children are growing up in a world where anyone can take a photo of them and digitally remove their clothes. They are growing up in a world where anyone can download the building blocks to develop an AI tool, which can create naked photos of real people. It will soon be illegal to use these building blocks in this way, but they will remain for sale by some of the biggest technology companies meaning they are still open to be misused. Earlier this year I published research looking at the existence of these apps that use Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to create fake sexually explicit images through prompts from users. The report exposed the shocking underworld of deepfakes: it highlighted that nearly all deepfakes in circulation are pornographic in nature, and 99% of them feature girls or women – often because the apps are specifically trained to work on female bodies. In the past four years as Children's Commissioner, I have heard from a million children about their lives, their aspirations and their worries. Of all the worrying trends in online activity children have spoken to me about – from seeing hardcore porn on X to cosmetics and vapes being advertised to them through TikTok – the evolution of 'nudifying' apps to become tools that aid in the abuse and exploitation of children is perhaps the most mind-boggling. As one 16-year-old girl asked me: 'Do you know what the purpose of deepfake is? Because I don't see any positives.' Children, especially girls, are growing up fearing that a smartphone might at any point be used as a way of manipulating them. Girls tell me they're taking steps to keep themselves safe online in the same way we have come to expect in real life, like not walking home alone at night. For boys, the risks are different but equally harmful: studies have identified online communities of teenage boys sharing dangerous material are an emerging threat to radicalisation and extremism. The government is rightly taking some welcome steps to limit the dangers of AI. Through its Crime and Policing Bill, it will become illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to create child sexual abuse material. And the introduction of the Online Safety Act – and new regulations by Ofcom to protect children – marks a moment for optimism that real change is possible. But what children have told me, from their own experiences, is that we must go much further and faster. The way AI apps are developed is shrouded in secrecy. There is no oversight, no testing of whether they can be used for illegal purposes, no consideration of the inadvertent risks to younger users. That must change. Nudifying apps should simply not be allowed to exist. It should not be possible for an app to generate a sexual image of a child, whether or not that was its designed intent. The technology used by these tools to create sexually explicit images is complex. It is designed to distort reality, to fixate and fascinate the user – and it confronts children with concepts they cannot yet understand. I should not have to tell the government to bring in protections for children to stop these building blocks from being arranged in this way. Posts on LinkedIn have even appeared promoting the 'best' nudifying AI tools available I welcome the move to criminalise individuals for creating child sexual abuse image generators but urge the government to move the tools that would allow predators to create sexually explicit deepfake images out of reach altogether. To do this, I have asked the government to require technology companies who provide opensource AI models – the building blocks of AI tools – to test their products for their capacity to be used for illegal and harmful activity. These are all things children have told me they want. They will help stop sexual imagery involving children becoming normalised. And they will make a significant effort in meeting the government's admirable mission to halve violence against women and girls, who are almost exclusively the subjects of these sexual deepfakes. Harms to children online are not inevitable. We cannot shrug our shoulders in defeat and claim it's impossible to remove the risks from evolving technology. We cannot dismiss it this growing online threat as a 'classroom problem' – because evidence from my survey of school and college leaders shows that the vast majority already restrict phone use: 90% of secondary schools and 99.8% of primary schools. Yet, despite those restrictions, in the same survey of around 19,000 school leaders, they told me online safety is among the most pressing issue facing children in their communities. For them, it is children's access to screens in the hours outside of school that worries them the most. Education is only part of the solution. The challenge begins at home. We must not outsource parenting to our schools and teachers. As parents it can feel overwhelming to try and navigate the same technology as our children. How do we enforce boundaries on things that move too quickly for us to follow? But that's exactly what children have told me they want from their parents: limitations, rules and protection from falling down a rabbit hole of scrolling. Two years ago, I brought together teenagers and young adults to ask, if they could turn back the clock, what advice they wished they had been given before owning a phone. Invariably those 16-21-year-olds agreed they had all been given a phone too young. They also told me they wished their parents had talked to them about the things they saw online – not just as a one off, but regularly, openly, and without stigma. Later this year I'll be repeating that piece of work to produce new guidance for parents – because they deserve to feel confident setting boundaries on phone use, even when it's far outside their comfort zone. I want them to feel empowered to make decisions for their own families, whether that's not allowing their child to have an internet-enabled phone too young, enforcing screen-time limits while at home, or insisting on keeping phones downstairs and out of bedrooms overnight. Parents also deserve to be confident that the companies behind the technology on our children's screens are playing their part. Just last month, new regulations by Ofcom came into force, through the Online Safety Act, that will mean tech companies must now to identify and tackle the risks to children on their platforms – or face consequences. This is long overdue, because for too long tech developers have been allowed to turn a blind eye to the risks to young users on their platforms – even as children tell them what they are seeing. If these regulations are to remain effective and fit for the future, they have to keep pace with emerging technology – nothing can be too hard to tackle. The government has the opportunity to bring in AI product testing against illegal and harmful activity in the AI Bill, which I urge the government to introduce in the coming parliamentary session. It will rightly make technology companies responsible for their tools being used for illegal purposes. We owe it to our children, and the generations of children to come, to stop these harms in their tracks. Nudifying apps must never be accepted as just another restriction placed on our children's freedom, or one more risk to their mental wellbeing. They have no value in a society where we value the safety and sanctity of childhood or family life.
Times
7 minutes ago
- Times
This summer men are baring their chests — how low will you go?
It has been remarked many times that the history of women's fashion can be traced through the rise and fall of hemlines — a pendulum that swings from modesty to liberation then back again. Men's tailoring, in contrast, has gone down a more linear path: one towards undressing. In the 1970s men shed their suit jackets in an effort to shake off some of the formality inherent in tailoring. A few decades later they ditched their ties, relieving the accessory of its symbolic labour until it was only seen at weddings and on newsreaders. Now, in this moment of deshabille, men are moulting their dress shirts. Where they once served as cotton backdrops for a bit of patterned silk, shirts now offer a different kind of display: buttons undone, one by one, until the placket becomes little more than a frame for a patch of bare chest. There's no ignoring how men's style has become so intentionally suggestive. Earlier this year the actor Colman Domingo — arguably the best-dressed male celebrity of the moment — appeared at the Baftas in a floor-sweeping leather overcoat, sharp black suit with cigarette-cut trousers and a silk Versace shirt unbuttoned down to his navel. At the Gladiator II premiere in London Pedro Pascal wore an all-black outfit with his shirt's neckline dipping far below his sternum. And then there's Harry Styles, whose fondness for showing his chest has become an established part of his uniform. One suspects he keeps buttons more for decoration than for closure. Men didn't always dress so freely. In the mid-19th century the average bourgeois Englishman encased himself in layers that spoke less of personal style than of propriety. His linen day shirt — a pared-down descendant of the ruffle and frill-fronted shirts worn by his forebears — was plain by design, as it wasn't meant to be seen. The shirt was considered underwear at the time, serving as what the sociologist Elizabeth Shove has called a 'boundary object': a mediating layer between the private body and the public world. It protected the outer garments from the body's secretions, shielded sensitive skin from itchier wools, and conferred a sense of decency in a society uncomfortable with nakedness. This layer disappeared beneath a high-buttoned waistcoat, a tailored suit jacket and a tightly cinched cravat, leaving only the bright punctuation of shirt collar and cuffs to be seen. These dress practices were rigid in both code and structure. By the late 19th century the collar had become a site of exceptional severity — stiff, detachable and often punishing to the jawline — a starched band that operated, quite literally and figuratively, as a cultural chokehold. There's something telling in the story of John Cruetzi, an American man found dead in Baltimore one evening in 1888. Having had too much to drink, Cruetzi nodded off on a park bench and, as his head tilted forward, the starch-bound collar pressed inward, constricting his windpipe and cutting off the blood flow to his brain. The coroner ruled it death by asphyxia, but one might say he died from his fidelity to decorum. • Read more fashion advice and style inspiration from our experts As cultural codes loosened, the stiff, armoured layers of Victorian respectability eventually fell, one by one. The first casualty was the waistcoat. By the interwar years men had embraced the two-piece suit, revealing the once-invisible shirt beneath. Soon garments once confined to the realm of underthings began migrating outward. Chief among them was the T-shirt, a humble descendant of the calico undervest worn by labourers. Initially meant to warm the torso and absorb sweat, the garment slipped into public view aboard US naval decks, thanks to conscripted sailors, before landing in cinema. There it became the calling card of the disaffected youth: Marlon Brando brooding in A Streetcar Named Desire; James Dean adrift in Rebel Without a Cause. This current wave of male exhibitionism fits within a longer history of changing dress norms, but it doesn't emerge directly from such distant pasts. Instead, it's the product of cultural shifts that have brought sexual display to the forefront of menswear. For much of the past 20 years, men's fashion has favoured restraint, often drawing on the cultivated taste of old-money elites or the heroic look of mid-century labourers. But with changing taste and shifting cultural norms, designers and style-conscious consumers have begun taking inspiration from the lush decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Consequently menswear has become increasingly louche and libidinal. To understand this shift, we have to go back to the early 2000s, when designers such as Raf Simons, Hedi Slimane and Thom Browne shrank men's silhouettes as a counter-reaction to the oversized silhouettes of the previous two decades. For a time men squeezed themselves into clothes that seemed to have been put through a hot wash and tumble-dry: shrunken jackets with narrow lapels, suction-fit shirts with diminutive collars and hip-hugging, low-rise trousers that clung to calves. Twenty years on, the clothes that once telegraphed youth now feel irredeemably middle-aged. To distinguish themselves from the mass market, cutting-edge designers have revived the voluminous styles that earlier designers rebelled against: broad shoulders, deep pleats and billowing fabrics that set sail in the wind. The overall aesthetic recalls Richard Gere's Armani swagger in the 1980 film American Gigolo. • The 'wonderbra' for men, and nine other new menswear trends This shift in proportions has come at a time when gender norms have loosened. Thus, it's no wonder that the flamboyant, expressive styles of the 1970s and 1980s — originally provocations against the bourgeois — have become relevant again. Brands like Bode and Kartik Research tap into the period's bohemian spirit through patchwork and embroidery, while Saint Laurent and Husbands Paris channel the glamour of the era's padded tailoring. As old anxieties around flamboyance recede, a new kind of straight male exhibitionism has emerged: Jeremy Allen White in a mesh tank top; Aimé Leon Dore normalising lace shirts. Shorts are routinely cut with thigh-baring 5in inseams; silky shirts are barely buttoned. If there's any cover at all, it's often in the form of chunky, glamorous eyewear from Jacques Marie Mage, which has muscled out the minimalist, geek-chic frames once associated with intellectualism. While this new style is openly suggestive, it's not always aimed at women. Just as many women dress for the appreciation of other women, straight men now often dress for a discerning male gaze, such as fashion-savvy friends and Instagram followers fluent in the same visual language. The look is sleazy, yes, but sleazy for the boys. A touch of good sense is required when venturing into unbuttoned territory. If you're wearing a standard office shirt with chinos and dress shoes, keep the buttons fastened (no one wants a call from HR). But when away from fluorescent lights and cubicle walls, unfastening a few shirt buttons brings summer comfort and telegraphs ease. A deep, open placket works best with casual shirts, such as chambray work shirts or denim western button-ups. When paired with bootcut jeans and a denim trucker — or, better still, with casual tailoring in linen or a wool-silk-linen blend — the look has a certain roguish charm. For some style inspiration, check out the Instagram accounts for Mark Maggiori (@markmaggiori), Ben Cobb (@bengcobb), Kamau Hosten (@kamauhosten) and Peter Zottolo (@urbancomposition). Or revisit the tousled masculinity of a 1970s Robert Redford. A bit of facial hair — maybe even some chest hair — helps sell the look. For those unsettled by the sight of so many bare sternums, it's worth remembering that every stage of male undressing has been met with discomfort. The T-shirt was once considered improper; tielessness seemed too casual for serious men; even the visible shirt itself was, in Victorian times, akin to showing your underwear. Today's bare chests may raise eyebrows, but they belong to a long lineage of men loosening up. Ultimately there's nothing wrong with any style move, as long as you know what you're expressing.
The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Pope Leo XIV gets rock star welcome from young Catholics at huge vigil
Hundreds of thousands of young faithful feted Pope Leo XIV like a rock star on Saturday at an open-air prayer vigil outside Rome, after the head of the Catholic church made a dramatic entrance by helicopter. Pilgrims began crying and cheering when the white military helicopter descended over the sprawling site in Rome's eastern outskirts. Organisers said more than 800,000 young pilgrims from 146 countries around the world had assembled as part of a Jubilee of Youth – and perhaps as many as 1 million. Smiling from his popemobile, the first US pope waved to throngs of screaming young people lining his route, many running for a better vantage point. They had already spent the day in the hot sun listening to music, praying and talking with fellow Catholics. 'The pope is here' announced an excited voice over the public address to thunderous applause from the crowd. But the tenor of the event became more solemn and contemplative as the pope took to the stage, carrying a large wood cross. 'Dear young people, after walking, praying and sharing these days of grace of the Jubilee dedicated to you, we now gather together in the light of the advancing evening to keep vigil together,' Leo, 69, told them. In the crowd was French pilgrim Julie Mortier, 18, whose voice was hoarse from singing and screaming for hours. 'We're too happy to be here. Seeing the pope, that's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,' she said. Event organisers said people had continued to arrive during the vigil and that it was possible that attendance numbers had reached 1 million. Most pilgrims said they would camp overnight for a Sunday morning mass at the site led by Leo. That will mark the culmination of the week-long youth pilgrimage, a key event in the Catholic church's Jubilee holy year. Some in the crowd were so far away they could not see the massive stage with a golden arch and towering cross that dominated the open area – which at more than 500,000 sq m was the size of about 70 football fields. 'I'm so happy to be here, even if I'm a bit far from the pope. I knew what to expect,' British student Andy Hewellyn said. 'The main thing is that we're all together,' he said ahead of the pope's appearance, as other young people nearby played guitars, sang or snoozed in the sun. Italian broadcaster Rai called the event a Catholic 'Woodstock', as throughout the day nearly two dozen musical and dance groups, many of them religious, entertained the crowds. In a video message, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed pilgrims to the capital, who were 'praying, singing, joking among themselves, celebrating in an extraordinary party'. The Jubilee of Youth, which began on Monday, comes nearly three months after the start of Leo's papacy, and 25 years after the last such massive youth gathering in Rome under Poland's pope John Paul II. Early on Saturday, groups of young people set off from central Rome for the venue in Tor Vergata. They were ready to spend the next 24 hours surrounded by a crowd of people and sleep under the stars. Victoria Perez, who carried a Spanish flag, could not contain her excitement at seeing 'the pope up close'. 'It's the first time I'm going to see him, and I can't wait,' the 21-year-old said, looking forward to a 'night of prayers under the stars'. French pilgrim Quentin Remaury, 26, said he had been inspired by the late pope Francis's rousing message to youth during a 2016 visit to Krakow, Poland. 'Pope Francis told us to 'get off your couches', and that really gave me a boost,' he said. Throughout the week, attenders participated in church-planned events, such as confession at Circus Maximus, one of Rome's top tourist spots. On Friday, about 1,000 priests were on hand, with 200 white gazebos serving as makeshift confessionals lining the hippodrome where chariot races were once held in Ancient Rome. The pilgrimage unfolds as under-30s navigate economic uncertainty, the climate crisis and international conflict, with some pilgrims travelling from war-torn areas such as Syria and Ukraine. Samarei Semos, 29, who said she had travelled three days from her native Belize to get to Rome, said she hoped Leo would have a strong say about 'third world countries'. The Vatican said that before the vigil the pope had met and prayed with travellers accompanying an 18-year-old Egyptian pilgrim who died on Friday night. Rai News reported that the young woman had died of a heart attack on a bus while returning to her lodging from an event in Rome. Amid tight security, more than 4,300 volunteers and more than 1,000 police were watching over the vigil, organisers said.
