Let me be frank — increasingly, the phrase, “I’m too old for this” has started entering my mind. Now, I’m no spring chicken, but I’m definitely not on the wrong side of the ‘Woke’ Generation either. I find myself in the uncomfortable ‘in between’ zone, where I’m young enough to get pop culture, yet old enough to feel a vein in my temple throb, every time I read things like ‘ngl’, ‘rn’, and ‘on fleek’. That said, nothing in recent memory has nudged me towards the ‘Old Man Yells At Cloud’ camp harder than Treeo.
What is Treeo, you ask? Well, put simply, it’s a new kind of social network, disguised as a polling game. At its most basic level, the app throws up three images/GIFs, and asks you to rate them into ‘Great’, ‘Okay’, and ‘Bad’. Unlike other similar games, however, Treeo also puts everything in your hands, which means that if the default categories don’t appeal to you, you can also set them to be ‘w00t’, ‘On Point’, and ‘Meh’. The entire experience is completely customizable. If you can’t be bothered, you can, of course, indulge in the content already available in the app, which is divided into categories like Home, Fashion, Movies, Food, Music, Sports, and Politics. Simply drag the image to the emoji that corresponds to how you feel about it, and you’re good to go. Once you’ve sorted the images, you get the results, which shows how many people agreed with your rating.
If, like me, your first reaction is, “What?”, followed by a “Why?”, accompanied by googly eyes, there is actual social science involved. The need to stay informed is a basic human urge, and apps like Treeo work like social barometers – clearly displaying what their peers find ‘Hot’ and/or ‘Not’. Imagine a Gallup poll for everyday things, and you have Treeo. It really is a very interesting concept, despite all my misgivings about condensing social acceptability down to three emojified ratings. In Treeo cofounder Mike Rundle’s words:
“We found that the core reason it’s popular is for two reasons: the first is because it’s satisfying for humans to classify things into buckets, the second is because it forces people to make slightly uncomfortable choices – which makes it a whole lot more fun, sort of a mental challenge or a brain teaser in many ways.”
Treeo is also a social network, after all, so the app bakes in the ability to see how your friends voted, as well as the ability to comment on their votes. Because the app is almost fully customizable, the developers hope that it won’t appeal just to its youngest audience.
Treeo is free, and an intersting social experience. Of course, you might not find many people on the app itself right now, but with time, the categories and polls should grow.
Treeo is available for Free on the App Store, and is iPhone-only, for now.