Forget ‘if you build it, they will come,’ the real current mantra has to be ‘if it can be built, it will be built, no matter how unnecessary, no matter how detrimental to the long run good of society.’
This strikes me as the case with Scene Tap, yet another one of the invasion of the privacy snatchers that we really don’t need and we really shouldn’t want. Scene Tap is:
...a new smartphone application designed to let users know the gender makeup and average age of patrons at participating bars. (Source: SF Examiner.)
Why bother to stop in at a bar, when you can check out ahead of time what the M-F ratio is, and how old the crowd is skewing? I guess going on a voyage of discovery, sticking your head in and deciding whether a place is too noisy, too crowded, too young, too whatever is so yesterday. People have so much more important things to do with their time, like graze the app store for more nonsense to fuel their addiction to ‘always on’. (Tell me again why they call them smartphones?)
Scene Tap “wants the app to act as a simple scene barometer for bar hoppers, and as a marketing tool for the establishments to track demographics.” But it seems like just a matter of time before the ante gets upped. If won’t be enough to let you know the M-F ratio is trending in your direction, next thing you’ll want the ratio of hotties to no-so-hotties. Then it will be wanting to know the education and income data. And so on.
All part of a general, noxious, obnoxious trend.
Why shouldn’t the insurance company grocery cart tap your purchases to decide whether to write (fresh veggies and fruits) or not write (Cheez Doodles and Ben & Jerry’s) you a policy.
Why shoudn’t a potential employer tap your book list on Amazon or the library to figure out whether you’ve got what it takes to become one of theirs? Depending on the company, it could mean points off for your taste. (Most likely, the rejects would be those outsiders who’d stacked up pointy-headed non-fiction and literary fiction, rather than the “normal” download of a couple of beach reads and some self-help books.)
It makes you want to put on a V mask and pay cash for anything.
Of course, paying cash will end up being a subversive act. You’ll have to pay extra for the privilege and/or show some ID so that they can track what you bought even if you aren’t willing to debit or credit the purchase.
I don’t want to be picking on Scene Tap here. They’re just trying to turn a buck off their goal, which:
… to give you an entertaining and informative tool that helps you answer a common question, "What's it like at my favorite venues right now?"
I can honestly say that I have never uttered that common question, although there are plenty of Sunday evenings when either my husband or I have asked ‘wonder whether we can get into 75 [Chestnut] without a reservation?’ After which we do one or two extremely old-fashioned, old-fogey things: we call and ask how crowded it is, or we walk over and look in the window. Both work.
Then again, we’re not concerned with the age or gender mix. (One thing we very much like about our neighborhood go-to “venue” is that it’s a good mix of locals and not-locals, families with kids, young couples, girls-night-out-ers, middle aged folks, and really old geezers (i.e., a lot older than us). And we’re not going there to get lucky, either. Our idea of lucky is getting our favorite table, having the hostess comp us on dessert, and coming home with a doggy bag. (In many ways, life gets simpler as you get older.)
In truth, the end of privacy (and the end of pick-up bar kismet) is only part of it.
Who’s going to stop some mad scientist from ginning up a mermaid or a centaur in his lab?
I do not want to be around when we start finding Man-o-manatees crawling onto shore, looking for a hopping venue, and needing to know the humanoid vs. mixed species mix before they scoot on over.
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