Silicon Valley's Social App and Teen Obsession

Do you remember Dispo? Apparently it was going to be the Future Of Tech, and the Future of Photo Sharing as recently as February. In March, everybody was talking about it. Their CEO (vlogger David Dobrik) was forced to step down among massive allegations of sexual assault against a member of his “vlog squad” in March, which led to people piling on the app in the reviews, and one might say led to a slide in ratings, if of course you want to ignore reality. The app that was supposedly redefining the way in which we take photos by making them take 24 hours to appear had its best day on the app store on March 1 according to data from AppAnnie, when it was 46 in all free apps on the App Store, and 5 in all Photo & Video apps. It hasn’t even charted in all free apps since Apr 4 2021, when it was at 1366 in free apps. Nevertheless, investors rushed in to fund it with mediocre due diligence because they were afraid of being left behind.

The latest frothy app to receive the “next big thing” treatment is Poparazzi, an app that allegedly is blowing up because it doesn’t let you use the front-facing camera on your phone. It’s a social network that doesn’t show you follower counts, doesn’t let you edit pictures, it automatically follows everyone in your phone book, and I dunno, it’s an app. Josh Constine wrote about it with his trademark froth, suggesting that “the future of social is multiplayer,” a statement that - and I say this respecting Josh otherwise - means absolutely nothing and only serves to promote a trend he’s suggesting about how various startups that he likes are “multiplayer experiences,” as in you do them with your friends, which is like…I’m tired, man, I get it, people want to use tech to hang out, just write that.

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