Did you know there is an app that tells you which political party your favorite grocery products support? I wish I were joking. I wish this was a B movie plot. But unfortunately, it’s real life.
Yes there is an app called Buy Partisan. All one has to do is scan your favorite food or toiletry with this app. The app will tell you which political party the brand supports. For example, General Mills, the cereal company that gives us Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Wheaties and Lucky Charms gave 63.5 percent of it’s political funding to the Republican party and 24 percent to Democrats. And you can find that out with just one scan of this app. Then there’s Seventh Generation, the maker of environmentally conscious? household products from laundry detergent to diapers. That company gives 67% of it’s political funding to the Democrats. Not only that, their CEO gives 100% of political funding to the Democratic Party. Georgia Pacific’s Quilted Northern toilet paper sends 95% of it’s support to Republicans.
You can thank Matt Colbert for creating this app. And he knows not everyone will love it. But I regret to tell you many people are. Buy Partisan has only been out a few weeks, but it’s attracted over 100,000 users and is on iTunes Top 20 App list. The information is provided by a non-profit group called Sunlight Foundation. Now some people are so politically involved that they’ll really going to not buy certain things because of political parties. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Isn’t the political world divided enough? Do we really need technology to divide it some more? I can see multitudes of people snapping their smartphone in grocery aisles not because of price, but because of political party. It’s getting so bad people are changing their eating habits not because of health or financial reasons, but simply because they want to preserve some ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ image. I don’t get it.? Couldn’t apps be used to…I don’t know…bring Americans together?