• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, December 6, 2013

One of the great character traits of the British, in my humble opinion, is their calm acceptance of the fact that the world is largely obnoxious and there’s really nothing to be done about it -- yet some measures may be taken to afford oneself a modicum of sanity.

That’s the civilized thinking behind a new British startup called Rather, which allows you to replace tiresome or repellant content on your social media feeds with content you like, allowing you to avoid the “seen it 100 times already, thanks” ubiquity of popular memes that everyone seems to post simultaneously. Out goes Miley Cyrus with her Satanic tongue, to be replaced by pictures of cats or Catherine Deneuve or Colin Firth or tropical fish or whatever it is you would rather look at.

According to the Guardian, Rather is the latest version of an app originally called unbaby.me, which started as a joke but gained a following by allowing users who are sick of endless baby photos on social media to replace them with pictures of cats, etc. In addition to allowing you to choose content to block, Rather suggests content you might want to block based on data about popular memes and social sharing trends -- the Tea Party and Amazon’s drones, for example.

Of course you can always opt for the more sweeping, decisive version of Rather: delete all your social media profiles, go outside, get some fresh air, maybe take up a hobby.  Too extreme?