Questions
Things people actually ask
- Is this a cult, a protest, or a brand campaign?
- None of the three. Nobody is asked to believe anything, join anything, oppose anything, or buy anything. It happens once, lasts sixteen seconds, and then stops. There is no organisation to belong to afterwards.
- Why does the app want my microphone?
- It does not, unless you turn recording on yourself. The current build ships with microphone capture disabled entirely — the permission is not even requested. When it does ship, it will be off by default, asked for separately, capture a fixed six seconds, and keep the file on your phone unless you listen back and choose to upload it.
- Do I need an invite?
- To claim a seat, yes. Every seat carries three invites and they do not replenish. If you arrived without a code you can hold a place in the queue instead, and seats are released into it.
- Why only three invites?
- A seat that can invite everyone is a mailing list. Three is enough to reach the people you would actually stand next to, and few enough that spending one is a decision.
- What happens if I am asleep when it happens?
- For a large part of the planet it lands in the middle of the night, and the app tells you that plainly when you pick where you will be standing. If you arm the moment, your phone schedules a local alarm that fires with no signal and no network. Whether you get up is your business.
- Does it work without internet?
- On the day, entirely. Everything needed — the score, the reference tone, the corrected timestamp — is stored on the device well beforehand. The app is built on the assumption that our servers will be least available exactly when they are most wanted.
- Why 110 Hz?
- It is low enough that almost any adult voice can reach it comfortably, and one note requires no training and no shared language. If you cannot match it, hold whatever pitch is comfortable — that is written into the directive itself.
- What data do you collect?
- A seat is an opaque token, not a name, an email, or a phone number. There is no account, no advertising identifier, and no third-party analytics. See the privacy page for the full position.
- Will this show up on seismometers?
- No, and we will not claim it does. A billion voices will not move a seismometer. Dense urban seismic networks do register human activity — that was well documented during the 2020 lockdowns — and where we show that data it comes from IRIS and EMSC and is labelled honestly, including when it shows nothing.
- Who pays for this?
- Nobody, in the sense that matters: there is no funding round, no sponsor, and nothing sold. If that changes it will be said here first.
- Something is wrong / I have a question you have not answered.
- Write to hello@manouri.ovh. A real person reads it.