Are you a 4.8 or a 4.2? Rate Me, the horrific but entirely believable popularity app featured in Black Mirror, is now real. Sort of.
The tongue-in-cheek-app has been released by Netflix to promote season three of Charlie Brooker’s near-future nightmare anthology. It’s a pretty simple setup: click Get Your Rating, type in your Twitter handle and despair at why you’re only a 3.4.
You can also rate others, doling out two stars to over-eager colleagues and five stars for perfectly crafted social media posts about sunsets and cocktails. It isn’t clear what the app bases your rating on, (but maybe that’s part of the point).
We’ve been here before. In October 2015, Peeple – an app described as “Yelp for humans” – was released and then quickly canned following an online backlash. The app sought to “rate and rank” people but raised fears of public shaming and harassment.
Read more: Charlie Brooker on where Black Mirror will take us next
If you haven't seen season three of Black Mirror stop reading now to avoid spoilers.
The app is based on Nosedive, the first episode of the new series of Black Mirror starring Bryce Dallas Howard as Lacie Pound. Based in a world where everyone rates each other out of five for nearly every interaction and social media post, the episode focuses on Pound’s obsession to get a rating of 4.5 or above so she can move into an exclusive new apartment.
Somewhat inevitably, given Black Mirror’s track record, Pound’s obsession with improving her rating sends her on a rapid spiral to madness, culminating in her gatecrashing her more highly-rated friend’s wedding and threatening the groom with a knife before being dragged away by police.
There’s a sort-of-happy ending though. The imprisoned Pound, freed from a world of star ratings, finds new freedom and happiness by exchanging insults with a prisoner in the cell opposite without fear of being ranked down.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
