As much as this fact will shock you, not everyone thinks I’m a wonderful, gentle, kind-hearted imp, devoted to the happiness of others and unmindful of my own problems.
I have issues. You don’t?
I once petted a dog, and I know for sure she liked me. Her tail wagged. Maybe she was lying.
But there it is. Life experience reflects clearly that everyone in my life and yours — bystanders, intimates, total strangers and relatives — can either take us or leave us. They usually ignore us. Makes me no never mind, according to the operative aphorism in my family.
But there is a difference between knowing the truth and having that truth thrust in your face like a dead carp as mandatory self-improvement. I hate self-improvement.
For example, business management theorists decided decades ago that employees could improve themselves, even if they didn’t want to rectify their weaknesses, with constant, inescapable, soul-sapping performance feedback.
This is, of course, a grotesque lie concocted by people who want to run your life and have no proof they can do it better than you can.
Unless I am completely wrong about this, those of you who have escaped this abominable personal imposition up to now will get a full dose of permanent self-improvement beginning sometime in November.
It will be like being locked in a small elevator with an angry ex-in-law.
In November, developers of “Peeple” claim they will unveil their new Internet application. You will be able to “review” everyone you know, just like the Yelp rating system used for businesses.
There are rumors it might die before it sees light. We can always hope for that. But it’s such an awful, intrusive idea that you should expect it to come true and make someone a zillion dollars.
Do they have to ask before they can rate you? No. Can you decline participation? No. Can you ever escape being listed? No.
Will they be anonymous? No. Reviewers have to be signed up with Facebook, which at least prevents cowardly trolls from hiding in the weeds.
But what the “app” most profoundly would do is end the concept of personal privacy forever, not that commercial and governmental types have not ripped that idea into tiny shards.
The concept of shyness would be rendered inoperative. You would be what people say about you.
If it hits the market, everyone who has ever known you can plug into that app and tell the world how big a jerk you are with a point-rating system. Have you adopted halitosis as a hobby? Lousy wardrobe even an Amish beggar wouldn’t wear? Or are you fundamentally a jerk? Every decrepit spiritual flaw in your soul will be laid bare, and that’s presuming the critics tell the truth.
As with Yelp, there are no inhibiting punishments for telling a lie.
For most of us, the truth is pretty ugly, especially if you stack our accumulated imperfections into a neat little pile of human detritus.
All of this is a totally wonderful idea, according to inventor Julie Cordray, the marketer profiled in the Washington Post, the Guardian and breathless Internet publications everywhere.
She’s perky, happy and totally oblivious to human carnage. As TV news editor Lou Grant once told reporter Mary Tyler Moore: “You got spunk … I HATE spunk.”
In Cordray’s universe, reducing human essence to a number is not reductive character assassination. It’s just compiling useful info that makes you a smarter consumer of other humans.
The questions of libel and abuse seemed to be ignored with this new advancement. After all, a business tortured out of existence by Yelp assassins has no real defense because it’s just an opinion.
And everyone’s entitled to their opinions, right? The ultimate defense for the right to be stupid now has a companion right. Now being vicious and vengeful might become rights, too.
If you have been waiting for the one invention that would make hating the 21st century seem the only reasonable position, we have found it.
In times like these, you better value your friends. At least my dogs loved me.
