Love In The Time Of Apps Read online

  When rumors about Pragat Corporation’s online rating system first circulated over the Internet, members of the press, media, every resident of the blogosphere, as well as most working comedians, took the company to task. Negative tweets outnumbered positive tweets by 1000 to one. Adjectives such as “ludicrous,” “ridiculous,” and “obnoxious” were probably the most commonly used words in editorial comments, followed closely by “ominous,” mostly from those fearful that the assignment of numbers to people would be a precursor to some form of a Brave New World reality or worse. For one group, those with very low ratings, these fears were not too far off the mark.

  Alex Pragat and his team, however, were undeterred by the system’s critics. They fully believed in the new survey, its legitimacy as well as the accuracy and reliability of the ratings Pragat would offer. Above all, they expected that the website housing its personal rating survey, www.ppr.com, would have so many visitors that it would be monetized in a way that would make it extremely profitable. Judging from the number of travelers to the site the first day of its launch and thereafter, those expectations were quite realistic.

  In its final iteration the look and feel of the ratings as they appeared on the website paralleled those of Zagat, as illustrated by what turned out to be the most notable of Pragat’s ratings.

  Philip Goodwin, Age: 54

  Married to Sheila Goodwin

  No Children

  Grace Harbor, New York

  CEO: Threads, Inc. New York City

  PPR: 28.

  S L P A H

  28 28 28 27 29

  S – Standing in the Community

  L – Likeability

  P – Personality

  A – Appearance

  S – Sense of Humor

  PRAGAT PERSONAL RATING (PPR) = 28

  A gem of a guy. A bon vivant with class. The most honest person we know. A man of vision. What sets Philip off from his peers is his keen sense of humor and rapier wit. President of the Harborside Country Club for eight consecutive years, Philip leads by example and always seeks consensus. Well read, a movie buff and golf enthusiast, Philip is the kind of man people genuinely like and admire.

  Given the initial hostility of the media and the skepticism of the public, Pragat realized that unless he turned public opinion around, his venture would be a commercial failure. For almost a year prior to its launch, Pragat Corporation pitched the reliability, accuracy, and science underlying the ratings. Scientists, sociologists, survey experts, former governmental officials and, most importantly, celebrities, all on the payroll of Pragat, appeared on television shows, in advertisements, and infomercials and without reservation sang the praises of the Pragat ratings. The thrust of the Pragat campaign was that its “judgment,” about a person was more reliable than members of the general public. Tag lines like, “Because you don’t know as much about your friends, neighbors, and colleagues as we do” or “What do you really know about your friends and neighbors?” or, somewhat ominously “Everyone has secrets, except from Pragat,” became ubiquitous.

  Thousands of focus groups told Pragat what he was hoping for: the campaign was completely effective. Thus, on the eve of the launch of Pragat’s website, the mindset of the American public was that the ratings would truly be reflective of a person’s inherent worth. As the Pragat team would soon learn, the statement by one reporter and a slogan later trademarked by the company, “You are what you rate” would be a truism. One reason for this was that a number was so easy to use. Just as a 28 rating from Zagat’s Restaurant Guide instantly told a diner everything he or she wanted to know about a restaurant, a 28, or a 20, or a 10 immediately defined the person to whom it was applied. A 29 evoked the salt of the Earth, a four the scum of the Earth.

  Pragat’s pre-launch party for investors, the press, and A-list celebrities, friends, and relatives was held in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Midway into the evening, Pragat stood on a small stage, tapped on a champagne glass to gain his guests’ attention, and said: “Thank you for all coming. This effort took years to bring to market and I want to thank all members of my team, our investors, and friends who assured the public of the reliability and accuracy of our ratings.” With a bit of flourish, Pragat held up a cell phone, pushed a speed dial button, and said in a voice loud enough for all in the room to hear, “Now.” A fraction of a second later, the most anticipated, debated, maligned, divisive, and in some quarters, feared, website in history was launched. Traffic was so heavy immediately after the launch that the site had to shut down temporarily. The delay only heightened the frenzy of those anxious to see their long awaited personal ratings.

  As people linked into the PPR website and searched for their names, many experienced a mix of high anticipation and dread not unlike that of a student receiving a college acceptance/rejection letter or a young lawyer receiving the results of the bar exam. To those who thought that their ratings were of paramount importance to their futures and many did, the experience was more akin to that of receiving the results of a biopsy. Of course, the next best thing to receiving a high PPR was having people you knew receive low PPRs. If there were a graph that measured national Schadenfreude, it definitely would have spiked at that moment.

  The reaction to the site by Pragat’s guests might have been a microcosm for what was happening throughout the country. Fingers that minutes before were wrapped around the slender stems of champagne glasses were now directing Messrs. Blackberry, iPhone, or Android towards the Pragat site and the prompts to personal ratings. Once the ratings were revealed, some of Pragat’s guests laughed and gave high-fives; others cursed or walked out of the party without saying goodbye. Pragat’s former wife slapped him in the face. He savored the pain.

  Because the ratings were housed only online, they were not static. New information about people was fed continuously into the PPR system. Thus, if someone did something horrible, his or her PPR would drop. If a person did something wonderful, his or her number would rise. Mimicking the stock market reports, the site had a daily “most active” list, populated more often than not by celebrities. Within months of its launch, a ticker tape showing PPRs began to appear on the screens of television news programs directly below the stock market ticker tape. “Young starlet du jour gets married again +2. Young starlet du jour divorces in ten days -3. Young starlet du jour marries and divorces twelve times in one year in effort to break Guinness Book of Records +6.”

  Major declines often made headlines, sometimes in the national press, but more often in regional or local papers if a non-celebrity type was involved in a scandal. In one case, for example, a local New Jersey paper ran the headline: “Rabbi Greenburg arrested for soliciting prostitute, PPR drops by 10 points.” The Rabbi was later dismissed by his congregation, not because of his indiscretion, but because his PPR had fallen to a 14. “We simply can’t have a Rabbi with a reputation equivalent to that of a Denny’s,” one congregant stated.

  The PPR survey also paralleled the published Zagat Restaurant Guide since it contained, numerous lists including: “Twenty Five Top Rated People in America,” as well as “Top Twenty Five by Ethnicity” and “Top Rated People by Locale,” for example the Top Twenty Five New Yorkers. The dark side of this, for those at the bottom of the rating totem pole, was that they could also be grouped together. Websites carrying the title “Worst People in America” and others of a similar ilk were soon appearing on the Internet.

  “These were pretty heady and dramatic times at my company,” Pragat told a reporter from Wired Magazine who, years later, was writing an article on the Pragat System and its aftermath (Philip Goodwin, The Man America Loved To Hate). “We all realized that we had created something very special. What shocked and delighted us was how quickly the ratings were accepted and relied upon by the public.”

  Pragat’s observation was completely accurate. Within months of the website’s launch, an individual’s PPR came to define for one and all the worth of an individual to society,
no questions asked and no explanations accepted. Pragat later admitted that when the system was launched neither he, nor any member of his team, could have really anticipated the profound sociological impact of the new survey.

  Long-standing and solid social and marital relationships were decimated by incompatible PPRs. In several states, a ground for divorce, in addition to irreconcilable differences, was “irreconcilable PPRs.” Coop boards changed their application forms to include a PPR section, followed by the instruction, “Please include a complete explanation if you do not have a PPR.” Some power restaurants in Manhattan would only allow reservations for people who had PPRs equal to or greater than their own Zagat ratings. Following this business model, the famous New York restaurant, The 21 Club, changed its name to “The 26 Club,” and only admitted diners who received a PPR of 26 or over, though this play backfired when the Zagat Restaurant Guide gave the restaurant an overall 24.

  People who received low PPRs often went into depression. Those who received high ratings often flaunted it. Vanity plates such as “IMA26” were not uncommon. High PPRs began to appear on business and personal cards, Facebook and LinkedIn entries, as well as resumes. “Pragat Rated” soon became as common as “Zagat Rated”. “PPR Date” soon competed with “J Date” and virtually all-online dating services had a Pragat Personal Rating section. It was not long before schools, consultants, and slews of books, including, “Pragat Personal Ratings For Dummies,” on how to increase one’s PPR were being marketed. PPR coaches, mostly former life coaches, soon began marketing their wisdom. Not surprisingly, debates began as to the relative value of a rating. Was, for example, a 28 for a resident of San Francisco as good as a 28 for a New Yorker?

  The PPR system also modified the behavior of individuals. Since everything a person did on the Internet wended its way into the Pragat rating machinery, people began to be more judicious as to what they posted to social media sites or even the sites they visited. Internet porn sites, for example, took an enormous hit. By contrast, Internet church sites had a spike in attendance as did Internet donations, because many of the donors hoped that such activity might boost their respective ratings. It was as if a benign “Big Brother” was watching everyone.

  Not every aspect of the Pragat system, however, was benign. Because everything in the age of the Internet moves at the speed of light, literally, a dark side to the ratings developed very quickly. PPRs soon became a new instrumentality, beyond race, religion, country of origin or sexual orientation to discriminate against a defined class of people: the low PPRs. For no particular reason, people with ratings of 10 and below were identified as a new group to be scorned. Those unfortunate enough to fall into this class soon became known as “Low Lifes,” a term which the Oxford Online Dictionary and others defined as anyone with a rating of 10 or lower. Since “Low Life” also signified a person having low moral character and other odious aspects, the impact of this label was particularly devastating. Anyone within the group was by definition a creep. The consequences of being cast as a Low Life, sometimes the result of a faulty algorithm in the system or a quirky entry on a person’s website, more often than not had dire and life altering consequences. To the frustration and outrage of the Low Lifes, Pragat Corporation had no grievance procedure to correct erroneous ratings.

  Since everyone’s numbers were public, Low Lifes were “outed” electronically overnight. All this took was use of some store bought software. Pilot fish websites such as www.PPRbyclass.com, which grouped individuals by their PPRs, soon began to appear on the Internet. Possibly the most damaging website was one that organized Pragat ratings by zip codes. The site also had a special link to “Low Lifes by Address.” Towns with the highest PPRs saw their property values increase, and those with low PPRs had their property values decrease, a factor putting pressure on the “Low Lifes” in a community to move out.

  Anybody that was anybody and, for the most part, anybody that was nobody was listed in the survey. Exclusion from the survey, like not being mentioned at least once somewhere on the Internet, was a mark of non-existence. It was not long before these poor folks were called “No Lifes.” Since they had no ratings, the No Lifes were not particularly scorned or selected as an object of prejudice. They were simply viewed as non-entities, as inferior beings, people who were no longer relevant to society.

  The PPRs for most people generally moved within a fairly narrow range, for example, up a point or down a point within a year. There were, however, some glaring exceptions, as demonstrated by Goodwin’s PPR issued less than a year after he received his stellar 28.

  Philip Goodwin, Age: 55

  Separated-Divorce Pending

  Present Location-SoLo District NYC

  Unemployed PPR=0

  S L P A H

  0 0 0 0 0

  The only zero PPR in the country. Accurately dubbed by the media as, the “Most Unpopular Man in America,” his precipitous but well deserved fall from a twenty-eight to a zero in under a year reflects a national antipathy for Mr. Goodwin. “America’s national villain.” The lowest of the Low Lifes. Reflective of America’s sentiment about Goodwin are the words of his great Aunt Hilda, “Hilly:” Gluck. “Tu tu tu. I spit when I hear his name.”

  To put Goodwin’s fall from rating grace in perspective, if he were a restaurant and was rated in Zagat’s restaurant guide, he would have gone from the likes of Gary Danko, French Laundry, Per Se, or Le Bernadin to the equivalent of the prisoners’ chow line at Abu Ghraib prison.

  The Human Cliché

  When Goodwin first saw his PPR, published two months prior to the Sheila Bolt, his immediate reaction was to shake his head and laugh. Notwithstanding Pragat’s aggressive marketing campaign and the hoopla surrounding the PPR website, he thought the whole concept was ludicrous. Unlike the vast majority of people who took the system at face value he understood its many fallacies. Most importantly, Goodwin knew that the system did not take into account critical aspects of a person, both positive and negative, that were not revealed in the data mined from the Internet. Goodwin himself illustrated his viewpoint.

  From an early age on, he struggled with what he called his “character defect” and attempted to control it, but more often than not it controlled him. Whenever stress and anger reached a certain level in his psyche he would totally lose control over his emotions and do or say things that were well past any levels of rationality. He would later say of his outbursts, “It was as if I was suddenly possessed, not by an evil spirit, more like a feeble spirit, by some form of illiterate moron, a Dybbuk without a high school diploma.” And, then putting a humorous spin on it, “And if I was possessed by an illiterate moron, how would an exorcism be performed? Would a Priest or Rabbi stand over me and chant the lyrics from Cole Porter songs?”

  What Goodwin could not know was that on this particular day, his flaw, his loss of control, would manifest itself in a grievous and unexpected way and come back to bite him, not in the usual place, his ass, but given its serious consequences, in his carotid artery.

  Goodwin put such little credence in the PPR system that he discouraged his friends from completing questionnaires about him. At the time, his name and reputation did not extend much further than the limited bounds of his social and business communities. That was by design. Privacy for himself and his wife were of paramount importance to Goodwin. To accomplish this goal, he steadfastly followed three rules: keep a low profile, with a sub-rule, never get involved in unpopular public causes, keep the details about your life, such as finances, as secret as possible and never ever air your dirty laundry in public. Those rules worked well for Goodwin and for virtually his entire adult life, he lived exceptionally well in a cocoon of affluent anonymity.

  While it was true, as stated in the initial PPR comments for him, that Goodwin was in fact a man of vision, he was not prescient. Thus, there was no way he could have predicted that in less than a year his PPR would be a zero, his dirty laundry would be aired on national television, he wo
uld be leading the charge for a very unpopular cause, and the privacy that was so important to him would be a thing of the past.

  Unaware of what the future held in store for him, Goodwin’s spirits were up. He was enroute to small birthday luncheon in Manhattan organized for him by his closest friends. As he drove from his house in Grace Harbor, a lovely little enclave for the very rich situated on the North Shore of Long Island, to his rendezvous in Manhattan, he was in a contemplative mood. Notwithstanding his dim view of the whole PPR concept, he had to admit that when he saw his 28 rating he was pleased. If nothing else, the high PPR gave him a platform for some self-effacing, sarcastic, bragging rights at his luncheon, an event that would be more of a roast than a celebration, one filled with good-natured banter heightened in this case by humorous comparisons of each other’s PPRs. That orientation suited Goodwin just fine. The last thing he wanted was a party built on heaps of praise. When he received an Evite to his party with the notation, “Looking forward to ripping you apart…figuratively speaking, of course,” he replied gleefully, “Let the barbs fly.”

  He thought about what turning 54 meant to him. While many of his peers longed to be younger and some even took steps via face lifts, Botox, testosterone injections, hair plugs, or capped teeth to give themselves the patina of youth or even worse, had Viagra-supplemented affairs with women half their age to convince themselves that they were in fact actually young, Goodwin had no difficulty marching towards senior status. He believed that his developing facial cragginess and the beginnings of an ever so slight paunch, which he could not get rid of no matter how many daily core exercises he did, came with the territory. “All of these folks,” he thought, “suppressed the reality that their genetic life-expectancy clocks continued to tick,” though he sometimes joked that it would be more accurate to say “life expectancy clocks continued to hum” because most clocks were now digital, and that gravity was still tugging at them.