Sometimes you see a story that is such a rich seam of idiocy, ignorance, stupidity and irony, that it’s just a case of sit down, get some popcorn and watch the farce unfold.
So it is with Peeple. The creators of this ghastly idea seem to think that it is all very jolly to create an app so that we can review each other. They have forgotten one rather important point – consent (not to mention data protection laws). Because, if you know someone’s mobile number, you can create a profile for them. Great, isn’t it? And, if you want the profile removed because it was created without your consent, too bad, you can’t.
When the app does launch, probably in late November, you will be able to assign reviews and one- to five-star ratings to everyone you know: your exes, your co-workers, the old guy who lives next door. You can’t opt out — once someone puts your name in the Peeple system, it’s there unless you violate the site’s terms of service. And you can’t delete bad or biased reviews — that would defeat the whole purpose.
Given this, there has been the inevitable backlash. Which just got funnier. You see, the people who created the app – an app that allows people to be thoroughly nasty to other people, really don’t like it when it happens to them.
Both the company’s social media accounts and the personal accounts of the founders have been hit hard. It didn’t take long for Peeple’s positivity to fizzle out. Cordray whined:
Bullying IS WHAT YOU ARE DOING and that is what are [sic] app is NOT. You are the reason we have an app.
Both founders have been deleting critical and aggressive comments and tweets as fast as they can all day – and failing miserably.
In one now-deleted Facebook post, Cordray asked: “Anyone know how to prevent people from posting on the comments on a company Facebook page? I know how to prevent people from posting on our page just not commenting on our posts.”
And of course that was then picked up and sent around the internet on in a kind of Mexican Wave of irony.
You’d need a heart of stone…
And, to make matters worse, they pinched the name from another company that is entirely unrelated and is having to cope with a backlash from folk who don’t know the difference…
Interestingly enough, their website appears to have gone south… I was on the point of saying that it will all end in tears. Looks like it might have done that already. Some have suggested the whole thing is a hoax, but Snopes doesn’t seem sure one way or the other. I’m watching this with amused interest.
It’s a hoax, or the people behind it are as gormless as they look in their publicity photo’s. Think about it legally ~ it would be a ambulance chasing lawyers wet dream for deformation cases.
There was something a bit like this going on, at a primitive level, in Wales in the distant past: a Cursing Well. How it worked was fairly simple, though devious. If you paid a fee, you could put a curse on someone.
If however you felt that someone might have put a curse on you (by inscribing your name on a piece of slate) then for a fee the well guardian would go and check if they happened to have such a cursing tablet on their premises. Woe betide you if they did, the fee for removing a curse was much, much higher! So much work involved, you see, but they’d dispose of the slate for you no problem…
Quite a nifty little earner, all things considered. Granted, a bit of work in the start-up, inscribing a range of names onto slate tablets, but after that its profit all the way!
No wonder the local church eventually stamped on it very, very firmly (perhaps the well guardian hadn’t been paying the appropriate kickback or something).