‘Anti-Social Media’ App Will Help You Avoid All The Annoying Moms In Your ‘Hood
This graduate student from NYU probably didn’t have moms in mind when he made his “anti-social media” app, “Hell Is Other People.” I’m guessing he was trying to avoid an annoying classmate or ex-girlfriend when planning his weekend jaunts through the watering holes of NYC. He should target moms though, because they can be way more annoying than exes – and there is usually no booze to make a day at the park easier to endure.
From ABC News:
The experimental anti-social media app was created by Scott Garner, a master’s degree candidate in the interactive telecommunications program at NYU.
“The key to the idea started when I moved to New York for grad school,” Garner said. “It was overwhelming for me to be around so many people in the city, and social anxiety was at the top of my mind at the time.”
Garner got the idea from seeing a presentation by FourSquare co-founder Dennis Crowley. FourSquare operates on the assumption that you want to find certain people. Hell Is Other People operates on the assumption that you want to avoid them.
The Web app is simple to use. First, a person connects his or her FourSquare account through “Hell is Other People.” Then, the Web app conjures up an avoidance map. The map contains orange and green points. Orange points indicate check-ins by other users, and green points represent “optimally distanced safe zones,” as suggested by the app.
I could certainly have used this app when going to play dates in Brooklyn parks. God, some of those moms were so annoying. I don’t think I ever left an organized play date without an inferiority complex. There was the mom who only brought snacks she sourced from a local farmer’s market and grilled all of the other moms about where they bought their offerings. Then there was the mother that insisted her babbling 12-month-old was forming actual sentences and words.
Daaa!
Yes honey, that is a truck! You are so smart.
Baaa!
Yes, that’s a police man! You’re right!
Good God, she was annoying. But for every super-annoying mom there were a handful of great ones. It would have been priceless to be able to plan my outings accordingly.
You’re right Garner, hell is definitely other people. Until you move to a new state where you have no friends, like I did three months ago. Then one morning while talking to your 3-week-old about the amazing filibuster you witnessed the night before, or the death of DOMA – you may realize that you’re not as anti-social as you once thought.
Ugh.
(photo: iQoncept/ Shutterstock)
