<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Photo: Courtesy of Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection Earlier this week a new app called Rumr launched, canon-balling into a crowded pool of similar social tools (Secret, Confide, Whisper, Yik Yak, Wut, Sneeky) that I despise for their anonymous, shady-behavior-enabling backbones. I just don&amp;#039;t get how people can download these things, or how investors can put $20 million behind them, without realizing they&amp;#039;re contributing to a serious societal problem. Unless they are aware, and it just doesn&amp;#039;t matter enough to stop them. I know, I know. I&amp;#039;ve heard the defense before: Just because these apps can lend themselves to bullying and morally murky messaging doesn&amp;#039;t mean people always use them that way. Confide was quick to point out that their app\u2014which reveals text messages word by word so no one can screen shot them, then dissolves them afterwards\u2014wouldn&amp;#039;t just help cheaters sext each other on the downlow. It&amp;#039;d also let co-workers text confidential information, so they wouldn&amp;#039;t have to carve out time for a phone call on their busy days.  Photo: Confide App Likewise, the founders of Rumr argue that their app, which connects people in the same social circle to an anonymous group text (the organizer knows who&amp;#039;s in the group, but no one, organizer included, knows who&amp;#039;s saying what) can help colleagues &amp;quot;have conversations about work culture and provide feedback, openly, but also anonymously.&amp;quot; But, you know, it&amp;#039;s called Rumr, not Workplace Evaluation Forum. Let&amp;#039;s be real here.  Photo: Rumr More often, Rumr and the rest of these apps are used for gossiping, bullying, and lying, which are all the more tempting in an identity-free, record-vanishing environment. There&amp;#039;s science to it, which we&amp;#039;ve known for years (and no doubt the app founders knew too). People are meaner when they&amp;#039;re commenting anonymously, and they tend to lie the most when they&amp;#039;re texting versus any other form of communication. So can we really expect this new onslaught of apps, which couple anonymity and written exchanges, to breed anything but lies and vitriol? Should we really be shocked when we hear about the anonymous bomb threats on Yik Yak, the dirty laundry aired on Whisper (even Gwyneth&amp;#039;s marriage got roped into it), or the cyber-bullying on, well, all of them?  Photo: Secret App The headlines seem to suggest so. Parents are freaking out! Schools are policing cell phones! App developers are going back to the drawing board! Hysteria everywhere. And yet, while much is being said about the repercussions these apps have for young people, it seems like the world thinks this is a self-contained issue within a certain younger generation. That it&amp;#039;s Mean Girls problem, not an adult woman one\u2014and I&amp;#039;m not so sure we should see it that way. Right now, the users of these apps are young, yes, mostly under 24 years old. But if young women are adopting these apps now, and they&amp;#039;re growing up considering the behavior they enable to be common practice, what does that mean for the future? To me, it&amp;#039;s a harrowing thought, that the next wave of women, girls just a few years away from entering the real world\u2014dating my friends, sitting in my meetings\u2014will be ones who were weaned on both Seamless Web and Secret. And Sneeky, Wut, and Rumr. Of course, this isn&amp;#039;t to say that I think less-than-Taylor-Swiftian behavior was born the day these apps landed on iTunes\u2014especially among females. We&amp;#039;ve spilled each others&amp;#039; crushes over AIM, called each other bitches on Gchat, and plied salacious stories from the oblivious one on the three-way phone call. But these new apps aren&amp;#039;t too far away from, say, Uber-ing a driver on command or Venmo-ing instead of writing a paper check. They make an objective easier, more accessible\u2014 instead of just condoning it, they encourage it. And it&amp;#039;s a problem; everyone&amp;#039;s problem. Sure, this first wave of anonymous apps may be replaced with new ones, and the girls using them now will grow up. But when they do, they&amp;#039;ll likely be women with a scary knowledge of how to backstab, lie, and bully with little more than a swipe of the thumb\u2014or a scarring story about how it happened to them. Thanks, guys, but I really don&amp;#039;t think we need an app (or 20) for that, do we? Related: Introducing the Perfect App for Cheaters Related: The Women&amp;#039;s Health App That Changed My Life "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/tech/news/a19101/secret-anonymous-apps-rumr-confide-yik-yak/>