Everything About You Is Bad

What’s the worst Facebook app? Well, Sparkey seems to have infiltrated numerous profiles without anyone really understanding much about it, but aside from the influx of annoying updates, it seems mostly benign. It’s refrain can be summed up as: People want to date you! Okay, well, that’s a little awkward, but flattering, I suppose. Instead, my vote goes to Compare People. The idea itself, ranking people according to a variety of personal factors — a sort of multi-characteristic Hot or Not — is kind of objectionable. Yes, most of us make continual comparisons between people, but that doesn’t mean that much good will come of making those mental comparisons public.

More insidious, though, is that it mails your ranking changes to you a couple times a week. Maybe that’s fine if you’re awesome. But apparently I’m not, which leads me to what I suppose is the real root of my hatred for the app: I get a note every few days telling me my rankings have changed, and invariably, every single one of them has gone down. According to Facebook, I’ve been getting comparatively worse in every way since I signed up for this thing. I’m all for bursting the self-esteem bubble, but shooting notes to your customers telling them how much worse they’re getting — at least in comparison to everyone else — doesn’t seem like such a good business plan. Compare People, I declare you the worst among all Facebook apps. See how that feels?