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Me, me, me While we’re big fans of smartphones and the amazing capabilities they bring to the palm of your hand, it’s tough to argue that they haven’t also made it easier to indulge in some serious narcissism. Leaving out the obvious picks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, here are some of the most notables in terms of enabling you to maintain an unhealthy relationship with yourself.
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SocialCam If you’ve ever felt, for whatever reason, that Instagram just doesn’t allow you to provide a sufficiently detailed glimpse into your day-to-day activities, SocialCam is the iOS app for you. Your friends will certainly enjoy the constant stream of video diaries and blurry clips from Gotye concerts, you monster. ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: High, ranging toward insufferable.
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MySketch Have you always wanted to look like one of those goofy Wall Street Journal illustrations that they use instead of photos for some reason? With MySketch, you can add a patina of age and class to all those Facebook photos of you drinking with your buddies in college. ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: Moderate.
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Foursquare Everbody’s favorite social media service for a couple months in 2009, Foursquare’s public presence has dwindled appreciably in recent years. Still, for those who want to be the pretend-mayor of their local Chipotle and tell us all about it, Foursquare can’t be beat. ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: Minor
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Daytum Ever wanted a proportional breakdown of how you spend your time every day? Ever wanted the ability to track trends in how long it takes you to eat breakfast? Want to see a bar graph of that information? Daytum, an ostensibly tongue-in-cheek web and iPhone app, has you covered, allowing you to track any meaningless minutiae you want with scientific precision. (And it sells premium accounts for $4 per month, because of course it does.) ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: Truly obnoxious.
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Could I be a selfish narcissistic jerk? The irony here is strong – this is an iPhone app, available for $1, that puts you through a long battery of questions to determine if you’re a narcissist. Apparently, downloading an iPhone app for the purpose wasn’t a clear enough indication. ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: Like Daytum, narcissism is pretty much what this app is for.
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Museum of Me Intel’s web app (we didn’t find a native version of this for iOS or Android, but you can obviously use this from a mobile browser) is kind of like meta-narcissism, cataloguing your Facebook presence and turning it into a short film. About you. ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: 100%
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Rate my SelfPic If your narcissism craves the approval of others, you could always submit a self-shot picture to this charming and not-at-all trashy service, where others can worship your perfection the way it was meant to be worshipped. ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: More or less certain.
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Klout Speaking of craving approval, Klout will analyze your presence on social networks like Twitter and Facebook and assign you a “Klout score,” which is supposedly a rating of how influential you are. Given the current state of the marketing profession, we’re pretty sure there are people who actually make decisions based on this information. Just let that sink in for a second. ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: Potentially off-the-scale.
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TinyVox This app, which more or less duplicates the functionality of old minitape machines, is pretty useful, we’ve got to admit, particularly for us journalists. However, we can’t help but roll our eyes at the pretentious retro interface and prominent “share to Facebook/Twitter/whatever” buttons. ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: Minor
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Cloudy Facebook and Twitter are one thing – at least they’re more or less passive in most cases. But with Cloudy, you now have an automated way to nag your friends about going out for lunch, asking their opinion on articles of clothing, and generally reminding them why they don’t hang around with you that much in the first place. ANNOYANCE POTENTIAL: Extreme.
