Everyone you know will be able to rate you on the terrifying ‘Yelp for people’ — whether you want them to or not

This makes me wonder if Poes Law now applies not just to extremist ideologues, but to social media applications as well. It’s actually very difficult to tell if Peeple is a real but dangerously ill-conceieved application waiting to be launched, or if the whole thing is a very clever hoax, perhaps viral marketing for something quite different.

Fortunately, if it is real, its core functionality appears to violate UK and EU data protection and privacy laws, so there’s no way an applicaiton which can so obviously be used as a bullying platform could legally launch here in Britain.

Also, if it’s real, it raises the question of tester ethics again. As a responsible ethical tester, can you fail and entire application as not fit for purpose and potentially dangerous at a fundamental business requirement level?

It purports to be both a “fun game” and an educational tool about American history, liberry and tyranny.

This is a sample of one of the cards in the game, which gives a flavour:

That one card really does speak volumes.

The website is filled with boilerplate rightwing screeds, but gives very little away about the gameplay.  But it leaves the impression that the game is a cross between Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly, two of the very worst board games in all history.

So combne two games which put people off board games for life, then marinade the whole thing in heavy-handed ideological propaganda.

And you wonder why it looks like an elaborate parody.

A taste:

The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO’s “Girls,” light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is “catching on” is exceeded only by the ones pretending women’s basketball is fascinating.

The whole thing is either a hilarious parody worthy of The Onion, or a terrifying insight into the world-view of American conservatism. And there is absolutely no way of telling which of the two it is. Another example of Poe’s Law in action.

If there are conservatives that genuinely take her seriously, it’s proof that spending too long in any echo chamber makes your bullshit detectors stop working.

Does the same thing apply to management speak? I think it does…

Welcome to OVERBLUE, bridging the gap between strategy and execution.

OVERBLUEâ„¢ is an Operational Excellence Management System ( or OEMS ) that implements the principles of SPHIDA’s PROACTIVE THINKING to introduce a new paradigm in how people align business processes with corporate goals and how they get work done.

Reading text like this I am really unsure as to whether this site is for real, or whether the whole thing is a very clever parody.

A must have tool for any information worker and collaborative team. It ensures a flawless execution and empowers an organization to achieve the desired performance levels.

It does read as if someone fed the contents of a few Management Buzzword Bingo cards into a Markov Chain Generator, doesn’t it?

I’ve read most of the site, and I find myself with absolutely no idea as to precisely what this seemingly-magical software actually does.

Today’s process improvement methodologies and BPM systems are limited because they are designed to deal with simple, easy to automate processes.  But simple processes account for only about 10% of the any organization’s process portfolio.

… the OVERBLUEâ„¢ software can be seamlessly used to design, align and execute activities and business processes across 100% of the process spectrum.

Since the link came from the writer Charle Stross, the whole thing does sound like something from his Laundry novels, akin to CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. Is the CEO of this company called Ellis Billington?