Sarahah is such a delightful app...but mostly for trolls

Anonymous apps, while useful and well-intentioned, never end well for many of their users. Children have been bullied literally to death by apps like these. It always degenerates, especially when it gets popular. So this begs the question - why do they keep making them then? FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • t was initially supposed to be an app that allowed employers and companies to hear constructive criticism about what their employees and customers really think about them - anonymously.
  • That rapidly degenerated because if there's anything that social media likes, it is the allure of anonymity - hence the several and multiple fake accounts, robots and people hiding behind their screens, typing wearing words across servers that serve as their masks.
  • Got feedback on this article? E-mail: [email protected]

Let's talk about Sarahah for a quick second.

This app took over social media this week in a wave that must have been delightful for trolls to see. It was initially supposed to be an app that allowed employers and companies to hear constructive criticism about what their employees and customers really think about them - anonymously. That rapidly degenerated because if there's anything that social media likes, it is the allure of anonymity - hence the several and multiple fake accounts, robots and people hiding behind their screens, typing wearing words across servers that serve as their masks. No one even cared about the companies anymore. It was all about individual hatred spewing into inboxes so fast, the app was hanging several times post inception.

It's an old tale if you were born in the last 20 or 30 years. Anonymous apps, while useful and well-intentioned, never end well for many of their users. Children have been bullied literally to death by apps like these. It always degenerates, especially when it gets popular. So this begs the question - why do they keep making them then?

There are people who create apps for good, and for what they're meant to be used for. It's not like they set out saying 'Let's make something to destroy people with already plunging levels of self esteem!' Or maybe they did. You never know. And there are those it doesn't bother. Duh. But surely the rates of suicide would prompt people to stop - and surely people see others dying, whether literally or figuratively, and check themselves?

Unless it is something misguidedly noble like it isn't mean if it's true,' or, the inventors thought this was something the world really needed: Honesty.

Which is actually what sarahah means in Arabic. Honesty. People need to be more honest with each other, is the premise. And it is true. But the temptation to be brutal whenever the chance is offered up speaks to and produces unimaginably suppressed levels of vitriol. Why not just tell a person you think they're ugly (which is a comment I got, fun)? Because society will condemn you, or because you know, in your heart of hearts, that - surprise surprise - this isn't particularly useful information?

MAYBE THIS APP IS NOT SUCH A GOOD IDEA

Honesty is a good idea, but maybe this app isn't. Not because everyone will get hate, but because humanity has not reached the place where we can not be unkind when given the chance. In short - everyone is a terrible person who just needs a chance to prove it, or a level to be pushed to. If you've read about Miligram's experiment, you know what I mean - the one where people are told to torture others and do it because they are told by an authority that it's OK; or another scenario where two groups of people, one, wardens, the other, prisoners, are told that they have free reign to do whatever they want to the other group because they are wardens. After a week of unspeakable, inhuman acts, the groups are switched. Does the other group show mercy, remembering their tribulations?

Of course not.

What hope is there?

That's an excellent question. There are people who can curb their originally sinful ways, or are never pushed to the levels where they morph into these creatures of Hades. Are they the hope, then - to call things like this out?

Maybe, in fact, they are the only hope. Because the only difference between you and a troll, if you think about it, is circumstance. And if you're not helping to stop this other side, then you're probably the one typing away furiously on a smartphone trying to fit in as many unnecessary cuss words as you possibly can...

Got feedback on this article? E-mail: [email protected]