areyouafatchud.com<\/a> and created by UC Berkeley students Ayush Paul and Oleg Viatkin, utilized public gift transaction data from the Snackpass app for its rankings, according to Paul. Paul worked closely with Viatkin, founder of money-management platform Flip, who designed the site\u2019s user interface with data Paul collected.<\/p>\nPaul said in an interview that he and Viatkin launched the site in August. On Tuesday, they took it down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw this as an experiment in how many interesting things could be created from data around a consumer product, and we pushed that experiment pretty far,\u201d Paul said in a text message after the site went down. \u201cUnsurprisingly, Snackpass wasn\u2019t thrilled with the result. We\u2019ve taken the site down temporarily while we sort things out, and I\u2019m hopeful we can find an approved path to bring it back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snackpass did not reply to repeated requests for comment on the site and its takedown.<\/p>\n
Paul said he created the website, which references Spotify\u2019s year-in-review Wrapped feature, after realizing the narrative potential of Snackpass\u2019 publicly accessible data.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe realized there\u2019s so many small patterns we can pick up on,\u201d Paul said. \u201cLike if you send gifts to one friend over and over again and then you suddenly stop, there\u2019s probably something deeper going on here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rankings were visualized on a leaderboard, and users were able to view the top 100 Snackpass profiles and their stats as well as search for other users\u2019 profiles.<\/p>\n
In an interview, Viatkin said the name of the site is meant to \u201cbe a little more polarizing and show people that they might be spending a lot on something they thought they weren\u2019t spending a lot on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every time a user makes a purchase through Snackpass, they can gift points to their Snackpass friends to use at the same restaurant from which they bought. Profiles were ranked based on the number of gifts that users had sent and received in the past year. Users on the site also received awards based on their stats and food preferences.<\/p>\n
Harley Ao, a UC Berkeley alumnus who ranked first on the leaderboard, received the title \u201cD1 Ball Eater.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pretty surprising,\u201d Ao said. \u201cOther than that, I thought it was a little funny to see my friends on there too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing #1 in terms of both sending and receiving snackpass gifts really made me appreciate how close of a community I had last year,\u201d Ao added in a later text message.<\/p>\n
According to Paul, award titles were based on \u201cwhatever niche references you can make.\u201d<\/p>\n
UC Berkeley student Cy Luu, who held the No. 7 ranking on the leaderboard, said he has received a total of 461 gifts on Snackpass.<\/p>\n
Luu said he saw the site as something he could laugh at, but was surprised when he first saw his name on the leaderboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not gonna lie \u2014 it\u2019s a little embarrassing, but it\u2019s funny. I feel like I can laugh at myself about it, which makes me feel better,\u201d Luu said. \u201cI was a little shocked to see that I had been contributing to a hidden statistic my entire time here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viatkin and Paul said they are working to bring the site back.<\/p>\n
As of press time, the site displays a message reading \u201cAre you a fat chud? Maybe. Likely, in fact. Unfortunately, you\u2019ll have to wait to find out. We\u2019re temporarily paused while we sort a few things out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The message is signed, \u201cYours truly, Ayush & Flip.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley students developed a website that ranked about 42,000 Berkeley residents based on their activity on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[188902,188907,188903,188908,143,145,144,188906,188904,188905,149],"class_list":["post-481916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-ayush-paul","tag-cy-luu","tag-fliptext","tag-harley-ao","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oleg-viatkin","tag-snackpass","tag-snackpass-wrapped","tag-uc-berkeley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}