Pic Nix Lets You Anonymously Make Fun of Your Instagram Friends… Using a Robot

We all have those friends. The ones that post ridiculous amounts of the most cliché Instagram photos. If only there was a way you could somehow point this out to them, anonymously and with a healthy dose of passive aggression… Well, now there is (or rather was… see update) thanks to a service called Pic Nix.

Pic Nix is a free online service that allows you to subtly and anonymously call out your friends for committing the most heinous of Instagram crimes. Created by ad agency Allen & Gerritsen, using Pic Nix is simple: just enter the name of the offender, choose from their list of 16 offenses, select one of the pre-written captions and submit your request.

The actual creation of the message is only half of it though. The most interesting part of the process is what happens behind the scenes, after you submit your request. Once submitted, your message goes into a queue, ready to be created. Why a queue though? Because every message is sent out by a robot the ad group has called Silent B.O.B.

PicNix

This machine uses a stylus attached to an Arduino-powered motor setup to interact with Instagram the same way your or I would. Once the photo has been set up, a bluetooth keyboard emulator types out the caption you selected and Silent B.O.B. makes a final tap of the screen to post the shaming Instagram.

Within a few minutes, the victim(s) of your choosing will receive a notification showing they’ve been tagged in an Instagram post — a passive aggressive Instagram post created by Pic Nix at your behest. And since it’s posted through Pic Nix’s own Instagram, your name is nowhere to be found, keeping your assertive insults anonymous as can be.

Considering how much coverage Pic Nix has gotten over the past few days, you might have to wait a while for your request to be posted, but hopefully it’s worth it if that friend stops posting so many darn cat photos.

(via The Verge)


Update: After the amount of publicity the app received, Pic Nix has been taken offline by Instagram. Click here for a breakdown of the types of photos that were ‘nixed’ before Pic Nix got… well… nixed.

Discussion