The man behind a program that lets you trick apps like Strava with fake workouts is trying to make a larger point. “I feel like I’m poking at a very real problem,” he said.
By his own admission, Arthur Bouffard has always enjoyed dabbling in a healthy bit of mischief that blurs the lines between technology and reality. He found his sweet spot when he unveiled his latest project this month.
Mr. Bouffard, 26, built a website called Fake My Run, which he described as “truly a milestone in lazy technology innovation.” And it is exactly as advertised: a site that houses a program that produces, in exacting detail, complete with mapped routes, fraudulent runs that users can upload to online exercise-tracking services like Strava.
When Pedro Duarte, the head of marketing for a software company, reposted a 42-second video by Mr. Bouffard on X that demonstrated the program’s ease of use — and its apparent deviousness — Mr. Duarte spoke for the masses when he wrote: “believe nothing. not even people’s runs.”
He added, “insane, i hate it and i love it.”
Which was exactly the point. Mr. Bouffard, who lives in The Hague, where he works as an augmented-reality developer, wanted people to feel conflicted.
“It’s all very tongue-in-cheek,” he said.
As an avid jogger, Mr. Bouffard had become familiar with certain trends in the running community — some more pernicious than others. He had noticed, for example, how often people would run marathons and immediately grab their phones so that they could upload their results to platforms like Strava. Because if a run does not exist on Strava or on social media, it might as well not exist at all.
