Last week, on June 3rd, 2024, I received the following email:
Dear Margaret I.,
The following subscription will expire soon:
Fabulous: Daily Habit Tracker
Fabulous Premium (1 year) - $39.99/year expires on June 19.
To renew or learn more, review your subscription.
Like 40% of the population, I’d forgotten to cancel my subscription after signing up for the 1-week free trial. At the time, I couldn’t care less. $39.99 might as well have been a jumble of runes; so long as I didn’t use it on drinks, I didn’t care where it went.
“Thank you for purchasing an annual subscription!” chirped the email. Hot, hungover, a bag of puke simmering in the corner, these words gave me the kiss of life, suggesting I’d get to live at least another year.
I logged on for my first Fabulous session one May day around 5am from my rented room in Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro. I’d discovered the app while ransacking the self-improvement section of the App Store, searching for systems, as I did so many mornings, that could help me change my life.
Fabulous is an all-in-one routine & self-care app, the description portended. Its mission was to prioritize my mental health, build healthy habits, and improve my life, one step at a time.
“This is probably the best app you could EVER HAVE on your phone,” divulged one reviewer, Olober Psychos, a 20-year-old college female who suffers from severe mental health issues and addiction.
“During my trip to rock bottom,” she wrote, “I stumbled across Fabulous. Now, after only 3 months, I drink water.”
Psychos rattled off several other mental health benchmarks she’d conquered, like “eating food,” “exercising,” and “practicing mindfulness.” Seeing as the app had been consecrated with an Editor’s Choice laurel, I decided to give it a try.
I hit download. Fabulous’ icon was colorful, too colorful—visually busy. Teal, crimson, and a marigold sun, with a ghost girl in a hoop skirt staring directly at it (girl, your eyes). I tapped it, and a surge of Middle Earth-era music blew through the speakers. I lept for the volume button to reduce the swell as the screen wheeled into motion.
It was clear I was not Fabulous’ primary user audience. Instead of tepid, airspace-y, Corporate Memphis graphics I was used to, the app seemed to bait adult babies still obsessed with Harry Potter and other fantasy worlds. I felt like a hobbit harboring at an enchanted inn on a stormy night. I got what it was going for, but the word “fabulous” still conjured up visions of cosmopolitans and Carrie Bradshaw and endorsements from the gays. This app didn’t know me. It didn’t care about me.
I thought of the bag of puke in my rented trash can. Did I care about me? Empties chirred in the drawers of my rented desk. I’d just showered, but my hair was already laminated to my forehead with alcohol-spiced sweat.
“Maggie,” Fabulous beckoned, once I’d typed in my name. On-screen, the ghost girl from the icon ballooned in size. She gazed from a mountaintop toward a distant horizon, skirts whipping in the wind. “Are you willing to re-write your narrative?” I searched for my reflection in her void, eyeless face.
Fabulous proceeded with its intake questionnaire.
“How much sleep do you usually get at night?” it asked.
7 hours or less, I tapped. My routine was to lose consciousness at midnight, wake up at 4, stay up wired for 2 hours, then pass out again for another hour and a half.
“Got it! Do you wake up feeling well-rested?”
‘No,’ wasn’t an option, so I tapped Rarely.
“How much time do you have at the start of your day?”
In May 2023, stranded in Brazil, my days had no starts, middles, or ends. Most days were long, barren plateaus governed by an unflinching sun. Sometimes they bunched around an enrichment activity, like visiting a secret beach, going on a hike, or a phone call with an erstwhile friend. These diversions gave the impression of propulsive motion, like life had value and purpose and might turn out okay. But as soon as the activity elapsed, time buckled, leeching across the surface of space like a viscous syrup. Every day I waded through time, willing some horizon to come into view.
I tapped Fabulous’ most generous option: 30+ minutes.
“What single change would improve your life right now?”
To start over from scratch, I yearned to tap. My options:
“More energy”
“More productivity”
“More mindfulness”
“More sleep”
More sleep, I selected. This seemed the closest to ‘dying.’
The screen dimmed to ultraviolet. A golden orb glowed at the bottom corner, with a tooltip instructing me to tap and hold in signature to the following contract:
I, Maggie, will make the most of tomorrow. I will always remember that I will not live forever. Every fear and irritation that threatens to distract me will become fuel for building my best life, one day at a time.
I pressed the orb and held on for dear life. It pulsed and dilated, filling the screen with light. All went dark. A set of instructions appeared like invisible ink, revealing how Fabulous pledged to improve my life:
Every morning, before anything else, you will drink a glass of water.
“Do you agree?” asked the app.
Yes, I tapped, I agree.
I made my way to the shared kitchen. My mind was already stirring with plans and blueprints for how I was going to engineer the perfect glass of water to herald the coming of my new, perfect life. I would purchase the finest bottled water from the Rede Últra down the street. I would set it to cool in the fridge overnight, right before I trotted myself soberly to bed for 8 full hours of sleep. I would buy limes at the Tuesday farmer’s market each week, and squeeze one into my glass every morning with a pinch of salt.
Humidity already impregnated the atmosphere of the open-aired hostel kitchen; it wasn’t yet 6am. I checked the cabinets. The only glassware available was a badly beaten plastic Darth Vader cup. With shivering hands I retrieved it. I dug my weeks-old water bottle out of the fridge and set it on the counter, icy condensate pearling and skidding down.
Lime. I needed a lime. I checked the fridge again and found one tucked between an aging tub of butter and a fungal tapenade. Its skin was blanched with midnight shadow—no matter. I found a jar of communal salt in the spice rack, a relic from generations of hostelmates past. The mise-en-place was complete. It was time to assemble my glass of water.
First, salt. I dipped my fingers into the jar like pincers, avoiding the crusty edges.
Next, lime. Its insides were lifeless and desiccated, so only a few runnels of juice ran down my knuckles and into Darth Veder’s hood. I flicked my fingers to conserve each drop.
Finally, water. Água. I poured the contents of my plastic bottle into the cup, refilled it in the sink, and stuck it back in the fridge, vowing to treat myself to a fresh bottle later.
And there it was: the symbol of my rebirth.
I hustled back to my quarters, Darth Veder humming in my hand with pride and promise. A nearly perfect glass—no, a goblet—of water. The first goblet of water of my new life.
I closed the door to my room and sat cross-legged in bed, my phone unlocked to Fabulous before me. I drank the water down. Several enormous swallows, a gasp of air, then the remaining gulps. Now what? I consulted Fabulous.
With this cup of water, Fabulous explained, I was taking the first step. Incrementally, I would prove myself capable of several other pursuits, including (but not limited to):
Adding structure to my life
Creating healthy habits
Focusing on “deep work”
Joining a community
Learning how to be grateful
“Join us here tomorrow,” Fabulous directed, “where you’ll let us know if you completed your daily habit.”
Fabulous’ interface wheeled back into motion, then slowed to a putter; the faceless ghost girl waved me adieu through the screen. In her wake, a menu of Premium options appeared, all paywalled. Stillness fell. I shut off the screen. My bag of puke cooled in the corner. It was 6:09am.
I was able to make my glass of resurrection water for four whole days in a row before wiping Fabulous off the face of my phone. Out of sheer retribution, I managed to scrape together two weeks without a drink—the longest I’d ever gone. I got through it with a carefully constructed self-care routine: by day, obsessively doing Move with Nicole pilates videos on the shared roof, glaring odiously at anyone who dared hang their laundry while I was out there. And, by night, screaming bloody murder into my pillow until my throat gave out.
After two weeks of abstinence, I rewarded myself with an explosive night of drinking that ended with me leaping out of a moving car on the hooker strip of the Santa Teresa at 2am. I woke up in the same place I started: overheated, hungover, a ticket back to New York (purchased by my parents) the only thing I had to look forward to. Wherever you go, there you are.
When I got Fabulous’ email a few weeks ago, on the other side of a year, I was still hot, but relatively well-rested, my dinner digested. I haven’t been hungover since June 16th, 2023. I wound up getting sober the analog way (AA), and though that $39.99 is sorely missed (I have $73 in my checking account), today I like to think I have a life worth saving for.
I thought I’d revisit Fabulous’ App Store page for old time’s sake, and to collect some data points for what eventually turned into this writing. Not much has changed UX- or design-wise, though my own life looks starkly different from when I first downloaded it. There stands Olober Psychos’ 2023 review, five stars strong, and in my sober state I can now observe one key detail that’d previously escaped my notice:
Unfortunately, the poor reviews here arent (completely) asinine. Fabulous does have severe billing issues that they have yet to fix. Please, be VERY CAREFUL if you decide to accept a free trial or purchase a subscription.