Rating people with an old fashioned star system. Offended yet?

It’s 2015. You’re smart, young, financed up to the wahjoozy and you have the power and desire to create a social media app.

What do you do? What do you choose to create?

One that connects people in small local communities? One that connects people across vast continents and seas? One that’s just a bit of fun and makes people smile?

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Don’t be silly. You create an app that rates people, of course. Without them knowing. With an old fashioned star system. Like the ones used for dishwashers, cars and restaurants. You can leave negative comments too. That person you met at the dinner party, the one who mentioned his Toyota Prius three times? Boom. Half a star, plus a little passive aggressive rant about smug inner-city types who think they save the world by driving electric cars then fly to New York four times a year.

'Peeple', a people rating app for "people you interact with in your daily lives in the following three categories: personal, professional, and dating", was set to launch in November. Then the entrepreneurial team behind it got some push-back from concerned world citizens. It's was dubbed "Yelp for people". Critics said it would be the new home of cyber-bullying and trolling and that its human reductionism for profit was evil.

And Peeple co-founder, Julia Cordray, defended the app on Linkedin and announced it would change its functionality so that people would not appear in the app without permission.She wrote:

Peeple will not be a tool to tell other humans how horrible they are. Actually, it’s the exact opposite.

Peeple is a POSITIVE ONLY APP. We want to bring positivity and kindness to the world.

And now I’m going to use myself as an example for what can happen when negative comments can be made about you without your approval.

Since the interview with The Washington Post, I’ve received death threats and extremely insulting comments aimed at  me, my investors, and my family on almost every social media tool possible. I hope now if nothing else by watching me you can clearly see why the world needs more love and positivity.

The notion of rating people is so outrageous there's been the usual speculation that the app is a hoax. But the idea of it made us ask, have we become desensitised to rating apps?

What if there was a rating app that rated your children, your partner, your house, your cooking skills, your family, your dog, your ability to correctly pronounce "cerebral"? People, families, partners, children, houses are imperfect by nature. That is part of their wonder.

Of course, we do judge people - and things - all the time. But we have the gift of restraint and diplomacy. Mostly, those judgments never go beyond the inside of our heads. Along with our superfluous appendix, that is a gift from evolution: over thousands of years, our frontal cortex has developed to aid us with our executive function (problem solving, mental arithmetic, self-control etc). It’s simply genius that we can keep our thoughts to ourselves.

We don’t have to say, “Your kid is a pain in the arse and every time he comes over for a play he finds a way to have huge issues with small things and it’s bloody exhausting. I think he is spoilt.” You simply say: “It was a pleasure.” Genius. 

The people at Peeple, whose tagline is character is destiny (please, just say nothing), might have decided to tweak their app for their relaunch. But many apps that came before them didn't, and these apps should have thought long and hard about their mission statement before they launched. It might have saved them from being banned.

Perky Nipple App.

Simply take a photo of a girls chest without her knowledge and a stats sheet magically appears, giving you that woman's vital statistics ie 24/36/24.  

Bacon Bra iPhone App.

Pics of women only wearing bacon across their boobs.

Barbie Plastic Surgery App.

Aimed at little girls who can inject, cut into and reshape Barbie just as though they were a plastic surgeon.

iBoobs.

An app that allows you to jiggle women's breasts on screen.

Carrot Dating App.

To get a date, men dangle incentives such as shoes, jewellery, a trip away or maybe even an island.

What do you think of Peeple? Let us know in the comments.