Today’s newspaper is brimming with bad news: yet another college shooting in the US, Russia bombing Syria, GPs being offered cash incentives to cut the number of hospital referrals……. I could go on. The only good news is that the pumpkin harvest is looking promising for Halloween.

By far the worst news though is that some bright spark has decided it will be fun to launch an app where we can all rate our fellow humans. These days we are encouraged to put a rating on everything: books, music, food, hotels, delivery services, hospitals. Feedback is de rigueur, and I won’t pretend I don’t use it to make judgements about everything from buying a kettle to deciding which hotel to book in Barcelona. I also offer my opinions if and when I think they might be helpful, especially from a coeliac’s perspective. We have all become judges and  – obviously – this opens up plenty of opportunity to complain (often anonymously) from behind our screens. And vitriol abounds.

I once stayed in a hotel in Indonesia where the buffet breakfast was quite literally the best thing I have ever seen. It was a foodie heaven and I could have happily lived there in that brekkie bubble for the rest of my days. A review on TripAdvisor, written the week before we arrived in this culinary paradise, was a long and detailed account of how disappointing one guest found this breakfast elysium. Well it takes all sorts.

This new app, coming to a mobile device near you in November is called Peeple, people, and is a bully’s paradise. To join up you must be at least 21 and have a Facebook account. To add a new person to the database, you must have their mobile phone number (implying you are on at least some sort of friendly basis with them before you deign to offer you marks out of 5 rating; but these days we all have mobile phone numbers for everybody and their dog). Positive reviews will be posted straight away, while reviews of 2 stars and under will go straight to your inbox, giving you and the reviewer an opportunity to ‘work it out’ (or call your lawyers). The most hilarious part is that

~  reviews will  expire after a year, to reflect people’s capacity to “grow and change for the better”.’

Isn’t that kind of them to offer us all that opportunity? The lovely inventors of this abomination go on to say it is “a positivity app for positive people”. And yet, it doesn’t take a genius to work out it is likely to end up being the exact opposite.

Perhaps April Fools Day has come round 6 months early. This will end in tears folks. Mark my words. But please don’t mark me anything less than a 4 out of 5. People.

Annie Bee x