Miranda July can be a polarizing character. Love it or hate it, a certain twee earnestness pervades her many roles: author, actor, director, and, now, app developer.
Somebody – the messaging app that July released last August in collaboration with Miu Miu – promised to subvert the alienating aspects of technology by recruiting strangers to deliver messages in person, acting as stand-ins for friends communicating with each other.
The app launched at the Venice Film Festival along with a short promotional video that is simultaneously funny, strange, and heartbreaking, in typical July fashion. The video’s signature charm garnered over 100,000 downloads for the app in the very first day of its existence.
Unfortunately the app was beset with technical issues from the get-go. As an early adopter, I was never able to get it to work. Error messages popped up constantly and my contact list was inexplicably populated with people I didn’t even know, despite my successful campaigning to get friends to sign up.
This past April Somebody relaunched, claiming to “stay under the radar” for few months as its users sent in feedback. I’m still getting error messages.
The concept is perfectly compelling – turning technology against itself, getting strangers to interact with each other in a world where we can scarcely peel our eyes off our handheld screens. But Somebody is ironically still at a buggy impasse. The question is, when or if Somebody works out its kinks, will people actually use it? Or is this just another weird entry in the annals of social experimentation?
Curious about the Somebody app? Click here to download it for yourself, or Click here to read updated user reviews of their experiences.
