My idea is for a social app that allows users to anonymously share their personal shames, doubts, and flaws. The app would then tell them how many other users share those flaws, and allow them to comment on other’s problems with solutions, affirmations, or just empathy. This has some analogs today in groups like AA, and in anonymous discussion boards, which are already effective in helping people with their problems.
This app is targeted at Social Reasoning and Group Dynamics, with potential benefits in Sensemaking. The app would provide a clearer sense of the problems other people have, in contrast to the curated personas and filtered news available through mainstream sources. This would allow both a better sense of your own problems, by showing that you are not a lone, freaky outlier, as well as encouraging understanding of and connection with others through the knowledge that everyone has their own issues underneath their exterior.
This app would not need many changes to the world to effectively exist. The only major change might be the enforced reporting of certain crimes by otherwise confidential services, as is the case with therapists. This means that people are wary of sharing their darkest secrets with anyone, even those who are supposed to help them. While I understand the rational, this means that those secrets can fester with no outlet, causing more and more problems if left unchecked.
Unfortunately, outside of a perfect world, this app is rife with potential problems. As with any privacy-based service, leaks, hacking, and corrupt use of private data are always risks, even more so if the data in question is deeply private. Even if the user’s private data is never spread beyond the app, by exposing vulnerabilities, even anonymously, users would leave themselves open to online abuse, trolling, or manipulation, as is shown on any forum or chat site you can name. These problems can be managed; the service could be hosted in a high-security country with rigorous privacy laws, the app could require a lot of verification to log in. Users could report abusive posts, leading to bans on trolls and abusers. But again, even these solutions cannot completely thwart darker human nature, as the previously mentioned forums and sites have shown. But so long as we’re dreaming big, I can ignore little quibbles like psychology and basic human nature.
The logo is designed to combine the words ‘Share’ and ‘Shame’, with the highlighted letters forming ‘re:’, as in response.
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