Whatsapp and Kik are so 2014. Groupme has taken a stronghold amongst the groupchat apps. Groupme's unique features, such as an in-app meme generator, the ability to find GIFs and images on demand, and the addition of security bots have made the app wildly popular among millennials who connect through social media or are limited on monthly texts.
I enjoy GIFs and memes just as much as the next guy. However, the last feature I mentioned, the security bots, can be troublesome. The most popular one of these, GORT, is named after a humanoid from the film The Day The Earth Stood Still who shoots lasers out of his visor to vaporize people and objects.
GORT has two main functions in Groupme. The first is to restrict and allow certain actions within a group. This includes changing the group name, topic, and avatar (icon), adding people, allowing others to join or rejoin, and allowing members to kick one another out of the group. This at times might be ridiculous, but makes sense. The second function is to establish a hierarchy of administrators (formally called Co-Owners, Admins, and Powerusers) who can circumvent the restricted actions that the plebians cannot do. And this is where the problems start.
In Groupme, or any groupchat, there's always chaos and drama, but far too often I see GORT introduced into a group at the first minor squabble. By doing so, we automatically indicate that we don't have trust in each other, but rather need to blindly put our trust in a leader (which GORT delegates to the creator of the chat). We trust this leader to enact a set of "laws" upon us of what we can or cannot do. GORT only allows an unregulated leader, so this leader is given free reign to do whatever s/he wants, and is not held back by any sort of committee like our president is.
This can easily turn into an oligarchy, when the owner's most favored members and friends are promoted to a near-identical position of power. This elite group is given the power to unleash tyranny on the group. If the "kick" feature is restricted (the most common reason GORT is installed), the so-called oligarchy can still kick people. Although the group's promoted users are almost always long-time, all-around trusted members of the chat and I've never personally seen an abuse of power from someone trusted with that responsibility, their unregulated power still sets a poor example for us.
We've seen how unregulated power has hurt communities, from as large as entire countries (North Korea is a stellar example) to as small as broken households. Is a group chat of a comparable level to this? Maybe not so, but the principle remains. If we accept any sort of unregulated authority more, it only sets a precedent that harms our community and society more.
GORT is not entirely bad, and the intentions of installing it are almost always good. But using and changing GORT's settings should only be done as a necessity, not as a toy. Otherwise, the impressionable example set for us might have dire consequences.
