Friendship can be a tricky thing. In some cases, it's a profound bond formed between two people who share something in common and enjoy each other's company. In other cases, it's a product of circumstance or convenience, and probably shouldn't exist at all. Well a new app is going to help you which friendships are worthwhile and good for you, and which ones need to be nixed.
Pplkpr, pronounced People Keeper, is an app created by two artists-in-residence at Carnegie Mellon named Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald, who also view their project as an art project. It's kind of like Miranda July's Someboy app, a useful tool at forging connections that's also meant to reveal something perhaps more profound about ourselves.
The app, which connects through Facebook and needs a heartrate band to work, monitors your body's response when you're hanging with certain friends. If your heartrate increases every time you're around a specific person, it probably means they make you anxious—or that you're madly in love with them. If the opposite happens, that person is probably a boring dummy who needs to be dropped. Either way, it's probaby time to reevaluate that friendship.
What do you think? Is this a gimmick, or something that could actually be useful in your everyday life? The video below might help shed some more light.