Love In The Time Of Apps Read Free Page B

screens of television news programs directly below the stock market ticker tape. “Young starlet du jour gets married again +2. Young starlet du jour divorces in ten days -3. Young starlet du jour marries and divorces twelve times in one year in effort to break Guinness Book of Records +6.”
    Major declines often made headlines, sometimes in the national press, but more often in regional or local papers if a non-celebritytype was involved in a scandal. In one case, for example, a local New Jersey paper ran the headline: “Rabbi Greenburg arrested for soliciting prostitute, PPR drops by 10 points.” The Rabbi was later dismissed by his congregation, not because of his indiscretion, but because his PPR had fallen to a 14. “We simply can’t have a Rabbi with a reputation equivalent to that of a Denny’s,” one congregant stated.
    The PPR survey also paralleled the published Zagat Restaurant Guide since it contained, numerous lists including: “Twenty Five Top Rated People in America,” as well as “Top Twenty Five by Ethnicity” and “Top Rated People by Locale,” for example the Top Twenty Five New Yorkers. The dark side of this, for those at the bottom of the rating totem pole, was that they could also be grouped together. Websites carrying the title “Worst People in America” and others of a similar ilk were soon appearing on the Internet.
    “These were pretty heady and dramatic times at my company,” Pragat told a reporter from Wired Magazine who, years later, was writing an article on the Pragat System and its aftermath (
Philip Goodwin, The Man America Loved To Hate
). “We all realized that we had created something very special. What shocked and delighted us was how quickly the ratings were accepted and relied upon by the public.”
    Pragat’s observation was completely accurate. Within months of the website’s launch, an individual’s PPR came to define for one and all the worth of an individual to society, no questions asked and no explanations accepted. Pragat later admitted that when the system was launched neither he, nor any member of his team, could have really anticipated the profound sociological impact of the new survey.
    Long-standing and solid social and marital relationships were decimated by incompatible PPRs. In several states, a ground for divorce, in addition to irreconcilable differences, was “irreconcilable PPRs.” Coop boards changed their application forms to include a PPR section, followed by the instruction, “Please include a complete explanation if you do not have a PPR.” Some power restaurants in Manhattan would only allow reservations for people who had PPRs equal to or greater than their own Zagat ratings. Following this business model,the famous New York restaurant, The 21 Club, changed its name to “The 26 Club,” and only admitted diners who received a PPR of 26 or over, though this play backfired when the Zagat Restaurant Guide gave the restaurant an overall 24.
    People who received low PPRs often went into depression. Those who received high ratings often flaunted it. Vanity plates such as “IMA26” were not uncommon. High PPRs began to appear on business and personal cards, Facebook and LinkedIn entries, as well as resumes. “Pragat Rated” soon became as common as “Zagat Rated”. “PPR Date” soon competed with “J Date” and virtually all-online dating services had a Pragat Personal Rating section. It was not long before schools, consultants, and slews of books, including,
“Pragat Personal Ratings For Dummies,”
on how to increase one’s PPR were being marketed. PPR coaches, mostly former life coaches, soon began marketing their wisdom. Not surprisingly, debates began as to the relative value of a rating. Was, for example, a 28 for a resident of San Francisco as good as a 28 for a New Yorker?
    The PPR system also modified the behavior of individuals. Since everything a person did on the Internet wended its way into the Pragat rating