You're Literally the Worst—New App Will Let You Rate People Like Yelp

Around late November, the app Peeple will finally fill the void of harsh human judgement The Internet apparently stopped occupying.

The app will allow you to give reviews and one- to five-star ratings to everyone you know, whether they want you to or not because it's 2015 and your privacy means dick. Not only can you not delete negative reviews about yourself, but you also can't opt out--once you're in, you're in for life--unless you violate Peeple's terms of service. I can't imagine what would be a violation but considering those terms seem a tad more lax than slavery, so...death?

Of all the places, Canada--and not Bravo--came up with the brilliant idea of a Yelp for people who really need their awfulness made aware to the general public. Or their awesomeness...if you're about that life. Though if we're being honest with ourselves, no one is going to use this app to throw anything but shade. Gorgeous, glorious, oak-worthy, life-ending shade.

Of course, on the one hand, it makes sense in this land where cyberbullying is the new national pastime and relevance is directly proportional to the number of likes and retweets. Remember "Hot or Not"--that nadir of the internet's nascent years where strangers could vote on other strangers' relative hotness or notness? It was only a matter of time before someone took that model and applied it to qualities far more important and far more subjective than physical beauty.

The idea is the brainchild of Teutonic twosome Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough, who claim to be "two empathetic, female entrepreneurs in the tech space" just trying to "spread love and positivity." Along with a proper understanding of "empathetic," Jules and Nic have neglected one thing: how generally terrible people are, especially when given the power to assign a number value to a human being's worth.

But hey, it's not like you're giving carte blanche to the trolls of the interwebs to take a collective shit all over your good(?) name. There are rules, after all. From The Washington Post:

To review someone, you must be 21 and have an established Facebook account, and you must make reviews under your real name. You must also affirm that you "know" the person in one of three categories: personal, professional or romantic. To add someone to the database who has not been reviewed before, you must have that person's cell phone number. (The app was originally supposed to scrape names automatically from Facebook, but the site's API wouldn't allow it -- to Cordray's visible annoyance.)

In the spirit of spreading love and whatever, positive ratings post immediately while negative ratings get a 48-hour window, during which they are open to disputes. And in the spirit of not getting sued, those who haven't registered for the site, and therefore can't dispute their negative ratings, will only be subjected to positive posts.

But what of my favorite kind of compliment: backhanded. Can you give someone 5 stars while still calling attention to their basic bitchery?

More importantly, who's going to take any of this chicanery seriously? Is this going to be like LinkedIn, meaning no one? Or, once the tweens get their grubby little hands on it, will Peeple eventually be--like everything--a part of Facebook, a feature that makes even the slightest poke an act of passive aggression?

These questions and others will be answered once Peeple hits the Apple Store next month, but for now, at least one thing is crystal clear: by using Peeple, Life itself will automatically give you one star.

Les Fabian Brathwaite--noted 5-Star Bitch