What Happened When I Asked My Friends To Rate Me

Were all constantly being judged and rated these days. It can make a person feel s#!%ty. But what if we tried to find out what all these ratings really say about us?

• MY EXISTENTIAL SPIRAL BEGAN WITH UBER. It recently made its passenger ratings more easily accessible. Naturally, I couldn’t help myself. I opened the app as fast as I could, clicked the three bars in the corner, and voilà: 4.74.

Which, out of 5, should be pretty good! But considering I’ve taken more than 320 rides, this meant I’d received more than my fair share of 4s – maybe even a few 3s. I’ve never made a driver wait (that long) or slammed a door (that hard). I wasn’t a 4-out-of-5 human. I decided I would prove Uber’s algorithm had made a mistake by tracking down other forms of affirmation.

They weren’t hard to find. Now ubiquitous, ratings were adopted to solve stranger danger in the era of the share economy – without them you would never get into a rando’s car or buy their ‘lightly used’ copy of 50 Shades of Grey. Everywhere we go, our value is reflected back at us. When you crash at an Airbnb, you get reviewed; you even have a ‘desirability score’ on Tinder.