This article was published on January 22, 2013

Try Soul Compare to assess the value of your soul and maybe even trade it for something questionable


Try Soul Compare to assess the value of your soul and maybe even trade it for something questionable

Internet trickster Tom Scott has created a site called ‘Soul Compare‘ that has a little message in the madness.

Never one to miss a punchline, Scott described Soul Compare as “…a new startup that’ll disrupt the old and slow soul-selling industry. No more midnight meetings at deserted crossroads; instead, your soul is instantly valued using Facebook, and you receive comparison offers from all the major soul-trading supernatural entities.”

Who wouldn’t want to shed the requirement for ancient rituals when you can process your needs via a social network?

soul compare screen

The joke uses the Facebook Graph API. Scott says, “For anyone who has qualms about signing into sites with Facebook – that includes me! – all the processing is done in the user’s browser; their details don’t even hit my server. There’s a sort-of director’s commentary in the source code, if anyone wants to check that!”

The idea came from Scott’s experience shopping at an online store which offered a $1 discount in exchange for a Facebook ‘Like’. “That led me to the question: How far would people compromise their social profiles, and ultimately their morals, in exchange for a discount? Could you get someone to change their profile picture for a free sandwich? How about spamming their friends for a beer? And ultimately, how about selling their soul for… something? The jump from there to automatically “weighing souls”, and making a parody of insurance comparison sites, wasn’t too big! ”

Faust would probably agree. Automated soul exchange would definitely speed along he process and maybe even provide a little sympathy for the Devil.

Explaining the site a little further, Scott told The Next Web, “The weighing algorithm is utterly arbitrary and meaningless, in the same way as my old site Klouchebag — and, I’d argue, pretty much all of the social-metric sites. The idea that you can judge someone’s “value” by what they do online is so ridiculous that I had to take the mickey out of it again!”

jk soul

I tried the site myself and the results were intriguing. My soul is worth 100.1 gigaMorgans (One Morgan being the value of Piers Morgan’s soul).

I was made many interesting offers from $2 off a Whopper burger to vengeance over my enemies thanks to Anubis (although upon death my soul would be devoured by Ammit the crocodile-lion-hippopotamus) or a warm Welsh baritone from Tom Jones. I can only hope that is not a euphemism.

Try it yourself, what is your soul worth and would you give it up for a few ‘Like’s on Facebook?

Well played Mr Scott.

 

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