My new startup idea: Rate My Parents

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You’ve probably heard of Rate My Professors and Rate My Teachers.

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I’m thinking of launching a new startup:

Rate My Parents

Go online and rate you parents in a number of pertinent categories. Rate My Professors and Rate My Teachers use the following three criteria:

  • Helpfulness
  • Clarity
  • Easiness

These are fine criteria, but I would be inclined to add the following:

  • Ability to mind their own business
  • Amount of meddling in personal affairs
  • Level of general disappoint in my life choices
  • Availability to babysit on a moment’s notice
  • Degree of passive-aggressiveness
  • Number of phone calls required per month

The weakness of this idea, I will admit, is its utility. Rate My Teachers and Rate My Professors offer value. If I’m trying to decide if I should take a specific class, information about the teacher or professor would be helpful, but it’s difficult to imagine many scenarios in which you would need information on someone else’s parents.

Maybe if you’re looking to date someone, you might want to know if his or her parents would make good in-laws.

Or if you’re an orphan about to be adopted by a couple who already has children, a parental rating might help you decide if you should act like a little monster during the first home visit.

But in the case of prospective in-laws, a savvy user would always rate his or her parents high in order to present the perception of positive future in-laws.

And the orphan market seems a little thin to support an actual business plan.

So why create a website like Rate My Parent?

Spite.

While Rate My Teacher and Rate My Professor provide a useful service, they also exist to allow students to enact a small measure of revenge upon educators who have made their lives difficult.

I say that it’s time to do the same with parents.

  • Let the world know how your parents still don’t approve of our choice of spouse even after ten years of blissful marriage.
  • Describe their attempts to make you feel guilty for skipping a second cousin’s wedding or choosing to spend Thanksgiving with friends instead of them.
  • Post about their ludicrous and inane attempts to influence your choice of baby name.
  • Discuss their insistence that you marry within the faith or choose a pre-approved career path.
  • Discuss the pressure that they are applying in the realm of reproduction
  • Describe their closeted racism or homophobia in detail.

Your efforts are unlikely to assist anyone in better decision making or make my startup successful enough for me to retire, but sometimes mouthing off just feels good.

Sometimes spite is the best reason to do anything.