• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 19, 2014

Do you ever feel like the world is a vale of social awkwardness, filled with tiresome people you’d really rather avoid? Do you regret ever meeting some of your “friends” on social media? Then there’s an app for you! Cloak is a new “antisocial” anti-network that alerts you if any of your social network connections are in the vicinity, so you can avoid them.

The app allows scrapes of location data from Instagram and Foursquare and displays your contacts on a map relative to your current location, so you can “Avoid exes, co-workers, that guy who likes to stop and chat -- anyone you'd rather not run into.” The app describes itself as the “real life” version of the private “incognito” mode for Web browsers: “Cloak lets you know where all your friends, ‘friends,’ and nonfriends are at all times so you never have to run into that special someone.”

The app is a typical product from Chris Baker, former creative director at Buzzfeed, who seems to specialize in antisocial media. The Washington Post quoted Baker: “Personally, I think we’ve seen the crest of the big social network. Things like Twitter and Facebook are packed elevators where we’re all crammed in together …  anti-social stuff is on the rise. You’ll be seeing more and more of these types of projects.”

The idea is broadly similar to another app that launched last year, “Hell Is Other People.” (Baker said he thought of the idea independently.)

Baker’s previous cantankerous creations include “Rather” (originally “unbaby.me”), which allows you to replace tedious social media content from your friends -- say, endless pictures of babies, or weddings or annoying memes -- with content you’d rather see, like pictures of cats.

Another Baker project, “Hate With Friends,” reversed the spin on “bangwithfriends” by telling you which of your Facebook friends actually hate you, and vice versa. If both parties signal their hatred of each other, the app informs them of their mutual animosity.