China plans to rank all its citizens by a Social Credit Score by 2020. Which sort of feels like a human Pokémon system. By 2025, they plan to keep all citizens in Pokéballs and make them battle until they faint.
It’s a strange phenomenon, and it has resulted in many Chinese people feeling a crippling pressure to be as ‘nice’ as possible. I don’t think I’d do too well. I’d rank around the 1,385,999,999 mark, and yes, I totally just googled China’s population.
In the online world, much is made of internet trolling, and online abuse… But, in the slightly uneasy zone which combines the online world with the real world, there’s an endless fight to be as Nice As Possible. Online auction sites, online cab companies, oh, let’s not be coy, Ebay and Uber, have customer ranking, as well as merchant ranking, and everyone is so darned nice. And nowhere is the fight to be Seen To Be Unimpeachably Lovely so dogged as in the world of online accommodation rentals.