For $9, This App Will Decide if Your Crush Likes You

Here's a Black Mirror-style thought experiment to kick off your Monday:

What if we lived in a world free of the agonizing self-doubt and crippling existential dread that comes with crushing on someone?

What if, with the click of a button, you could instantly find out if someone like likes you or just wants to be friends?

Would you push it? If you've ever been hopelessly infatuated, gotten ghosted, or swiped right for/by/on the wrong person, the answer's gotta be a "hell yes." Now, mercifully, there's an app for that.™

Mei, an AI "assistant" for "texting relationships," debuted on iOS this weekend (Androids got the app last fall).

The app is free to download, but you have to buy credits to really put it to work. Send "her" (yep) at least 1,000 words of WhatsApp text conversation, plus $9 worth of "Mei credits," and she (ugh) will judge, based on a 100-point scale, just how interested the person on the other end is at taking things to the next level, Wired reports.

Mei's website claims her (woof) technology can be used for sussing out communication patterns in many different types of relationships ("Does your daughter seem different today?"). But the casual dating scene is clearly the target market here.

When Mei founder Es Lee spoke to Mic about the technology, he compared it to "a 30-year veteran singles bar barkeep who can flawlessly recall every conversation between patrons and deduce underlying intentions therein," the news site says:

“The creepiness factor is definitely there, but the reality is, we’re overanalyzing texts anyways," " Lee says. "We’ve got plenty of people that have their phones on, scrolling through the conversations, trying to get a good read. So now we’re just making tools available to people to make this just a little easier.”