One More Tap

The new laundry app, One More Tap — because clearly we’re not tapping our screens enough — was supposed to replace the hassle of coins and streamline the campus clothes-washing experience. Many students would agree that it has accomplished these goals and more. My relationship with the app, however, is more complicated.

This story begins on the third week of school, when I ran into a housemate in the elevator who couldn’t praise the app enough. “It’s so easy,” she said. “You’ll be glad you tried it.”

Feeling encouraged, I rode the elevator the rest of the way down to the basement, my detergent and bag of laundry in hand. My hopes were high.

Standing in front of machine 611, I pulled up the app on my phone. I scanned the QR code and paid the fee. I piled my clothes into the machine and poured in my detergent. Once the clothes were swishing around inside the machine, I returned triumphantly to the elevator.

I was sitting in my dorm when notifications started flooding in. My phone was on the other end of the room, buzzing incessantly. When I finally got up to go look at it, I read the numerous texts One More Tap sent me with mounting astonishment.

“Congratulations! You are ten minutes away from clean laundry!”

“Clean laundry! Come and get it!”

“Your laundry has been sitting for 4 minutes. Don’t you think that’s… rude?”

I scrambled to put on my shoes. I did not want to get on the wrong side of this app so early in the semester.

Downstairs, a girl of about four feet six inches was taking my clothes out of the washer and placing them in a large plastic bag.

“My clothes have only been sitting for four minutes!” I exclaimed.

She looked at me and shrugged. “I need to get my points.”

“What points?”

“Towards my next gift card,” she said. “Is this your first time using the app?” I nodded.

She gestured for me to look at her phone. On the screen was a meter that read “300/500”.

“I haven’t gone to the dispensary in weeks,” she said. “I’ve been using One More Tap gift cards to order all of my edibles online.” I stared at her, dumbfounded.

“From the… laundry app?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m so glad they’ve made this change.”

I watched her gather the rest of my wet clothes into the plastic bag before dumping her heaping pile of dirty laundry into the machine. She scanned, paid, and walked away humming “This Little Light of Mine.”

I’ve since spoken to other students regarding the new laundry app and their feelings about it.

Sally Seashell ’27 says that the app has brought both peace of mind and love into her life. She says she once returned to the laundry room to find a sculpture consisting entirely of her own socks. Shaped like a giant sock.

“It was really sweet,” she says, “There was even a note. They said that they had received so many rewards from the app that they wanted to pay it forward, and that they really liked my underwear.”

Seashell and her anonymous suitor proceeded to go on several dates and are now, allegedly, a happy couple.

Gary Gyat ’26, a computer science concentrator, took things one step further. After “messing around with the backend for fun,” he discovered a way to turn One More Tap into a full-fledged dating service.

“Laundry is the most intimate act,” Gyat says. “Why not build a community around it?”

Since the “update,” students have been matched based on washer settings, laundry frequency, and total amassed points. The first 100 couples even got $20 Papaya Bowl gift cards.

“In ten years, I don’t just see students doing laundry,” Gyat says. “I see them doing life together — cycle after cycle, load after load.”

“But what about students who just want to wash their clothes alone, in peace?” I ask.

Gyat pauses and looks me in the eyes. “That’s outdated thinking,” he says. “Laundry isn’t about you anymore. It’s about the community.” He waves his hand in the air, as if to swat away my archaic ideas.

“Aren’t there other ways to build community?” I ask.

“Laundry is the last frontier of human connection,” Gyat explains. “We’ve already optimized dating apps, delivery apps, even meditation apps. But laundry? That’s where true intimacy begins.”

As per Gyat’s predictions, students are absolutely eating this app up. It is evident across the entire campus community. Students are congratulating each other on their most recent Spin Cycle Achievements in the dining hall, and asking for each others’ laundry usernames in-person. There are Lint Leader Leaderboards and midnight Folding Parties. I can’t even go to the laundry room without interrupting a conversation where students are comparing their high scores.

Personally, I am one more tap away from losing it. What was so horrible about coins?

— Magazine writer Dannie C. Bell can be reached at dannie.bell@thecrimson.com.