There's an app for THAT?

Let's play a game.

First, watch this video:



Now sit for a while. Contemplate humanity. Try not to cry, hard as it is, and we'll dive in together to see what exactly just happened to you.

No, it wasn't the apocalypse, though it was pretty close. Nope, it was just Pepsi Co.'s newest attempt to corner the you-youngins-and-your-interwebs market using the latest technology in an NC-17 app for your iPhone, called "AMP Up Before You Score". And what does the AMP Energy drink app do? It helps you do some shallow research about a certain type of girl that leads directly to you hooking up with said girl, then bragging about it to all your friends, all on your handy-dandy iPhone. To make identifying the perfect pick-up lines and hangouts best for that not-too-special somebody easy, the app breaks girls down into twenty-four neato little categories. They're fun things like Cougar, Sorority Girl, Goth Girl, Nerd, Married, Princess, Treehugger, and my personal favorite, Women's Studies Major.

It's almost worth getting the app just to find out exactly what killer lines it suggests you read awkwardly off of your iPhone to start these promising conversations, and what it suggests you do once the lucky lady learns you've categorized her based on an iPhone app's illustration and plan on tweeting all about her after you've done the deed.

So what's the problem here? There's the complete awkward mental-visual I now have of some unlucky boy coming up to me, red cup in hand, to read lines out of his iPhone and then suggest we take this conversation to my favorite organic food store or local black box theatre or whatever it is they recommend for whatever he's deemed my type to be. And of course, everybody knows what you're drinking at those killer parties on fraternity row...Pepsi products. Hells yeah.

But besides the obvious lack of practicality, what's the main issue? The categorizing of women into stereotypical categories? The way the app views sleeping with a woman as conquest? The need to brag about sexual conquest to friends via tweet or status update? The inane move of a company to target its product at only the male portion of the population? That Pepsi Co. also creates a bro-stereotype of men as seeking only to sleep with as many women as possible, which excludes even more consumers from feeling like they're part of the target audience?

Honestly, I don't know what the worst part of this app is. I couldn't tell you. I can just tell you that I find it disturbing, laughably disturbing. It's almost a farce. Hilarious if looked at in a certain light. So much so that...is it? Is it a joke?

Well, that's the main discussion going on about this app, besides initial understandable outrage. But it makes me wonder if it matters. So what if it is a joke? It's a joke in bad taste. Who would find this so funny that it would make them buy Pepsi products? Apparently there's been a lot of chatter about how this is just a joke and how people should lighten up and stop being offended. While I find it funny that people would think that making an app like this would get them anything but bad publicity, apparently people elsewhere (in the scariest of comment conversations) find it funny in a non-heartbreaking way. To me, that's the most disturbing part. Not that such a thing was even made, but that people are defending its creation and cannot see the offensive nature of the product. I mean, you see it, right?

Luckily the good folks over at Jezebel have also noticed this and their comment section is actually brimming with brilliancy instead of mourn-inducing shouting matches. One commenter provided this link to the Mountain Dew website where you can complain about the AMP Energy drink app, and which I would highly encourage. One of my favorite comments was "You'd never see RC Cola pulling this shit."

Well, after a hard day's blogging I'm just dying for a cold drink. Coke, anyone?