The Anti-Tinder Is Coming With Pplkpr

The artist-created pplkpr (shorthand for People Keeper) may have its conceptual roots in satire, but it's still a very real candidate to outpace (or accompany) online dating platforms like Tinder. The app cooperates with a heart-monitor wristband to chart its user's emotional levels, correlates that data with who they happen to be hanging out with, and synthesizes this information to see who stresses you out and who makes you happy, eventually suggesting you block certain friends on social media or ask others on dates.

Pplkpr's creators, Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald, have already put the app through a year of research and experimentation, culminating in a test run at Carnegie Mellon university. If you're wondering whether this is a joke—you're not alone. "Is this a real app or an art project?" is one of the questions that appears on the official site's FAQ. "It's both," McCarthy and McDonald say. "It is a fully functioning app based on scientific research. We are two artists that created it as a provocation, a taste of where we may be heading with our quantified living and algorithmic decision making. We hope that seeing and trying the app will enable people to think critically about this future and speak out about what we do and don't want to manifest." For more information, watch the video below—and visit the official pplkpr site here.