Anti-social media app helps users evade friends
An anti-social media app has been launched by a New York student, in an attempt to showcase his disdain for social media.
Hell is for Other People harnesses Foursquare location data to pinpoint the location of friends and family but rather than encourage connections the app seeks to show safe routes and locations where these people can be avoided.
This is achieved courtesy of an ‘avoidance map’ which plots people’s movements in real-time to minimise the risk of a dreaded random small talk encounter.
Colour coded points add an additional layer of detail with orange locations indicating the 20 most recent places that friends have visited and green areas denoting ‘optimally distanced safe zones’.
App creator Scott Garner, a student at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Programme, said the work was “partially a satire, partially a commentary on my disdain for "social media" and partially an exploration of my own difficulties with social anxiety.”
Ironically Garner had to sign-up to Foursquare to make his idea work - and befriend people so he could avoid them.