#never judge a man till you've scrolled a mile in his status updates

[maculategiraffe]

what if it was like in that black mirror episode where you all rate each other all the time and people with less than a 3 star rating are scary hobos EXCEPT instead of a rating system it was a self reported mood indicator or brief status update. something like "aced the GREs!! 🤸" or "just heard my dad is in the hospital 😟" that just flashed up quickly whenever you focused your attention on a person? and you could engage with it or not, just like you can currently engage with a mood that a person chooses to indicate with facial expressions and body language and voice tone, but it would inform our interactions with each other?

I think that could be cool. like how you used to be able to indicate to strangers on the street that you were really sad and they should cut you a break by wearing mourning, except more easily updated and personalized and not just for the very specific emotion of recent bereavement. and if you didn't participate then that would also be fine, it would just mean you didn't want anybody to treat you differently because of what was going on with you. and people would be like "is she okay?" and other people would be like "who knows. I've literally never seen her with a status update active." that kind of thing. I think it would be fun

you could also use it in traffic. like if someone aggressively overtakes you and then you end up sitting next to them at the next red light you could change your status update to "Funny how we all end up in the same place in the end :)" and all your friends would be commenting like "jennifer what the fuck are you talking about" except your platonic soulmate who would be like "jennifer stop bullying the road warriors"