There are now over 1,300,000 apps on the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store is home to around the same number of Android apps right now. What we're trying to say is - there are a lot of apps out there, and unsurprisingly, a lot of them are crap.
We're sure you've stumbled on some stinkers yourself, but we hope you've not come across any as bad of these. You see, at TechRadar we're making it our mission to scour the underbelly of both app stores to find the truly terrible, the truly disgusting, and the truly WTF, all in the name of technology.
Each week we'll be nominating an app that deserves the crown of "worst of the worst", with an aim to complete a list of the ten truly most terrible apps we've ever seen.
So let us begin our dangerous journey through the bowels of humanity's ideas. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
1. I Am Important
Platform: iOS
Price: Free
"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." - Vince Lombardi
The price of success in 2014 is jack all. All you need is an iPhone and a sense of deep, penetrating loneliness.
I Am Important is a fake diary organiser designed to make you look like, in the words of the app itself, a "top-flying shaker". For example, it'll generate made-up contacts in the app and put them in your address book. Those contacts aren't just low-life nobodies though - they're "highly important and highly paid business people". You know, better people.
Even more deplorably, the app will create fake events and insert them into your calendar. This is "to make you look busy and important as important people are involved in many events", as the app helpfully informs us. These important people sound really busy and interesting.
But of course, none of this is any good if no one is checking your phone, and as you're so "unimportant", chances are that they won't be. That's why the app lets you post your "success" to Facebook to make your friends green with envy. That's assuming you have any friends, which is unlikely if it's reached this point.
"Sometimes, when you feel like nobody cares, I Am Important will ask you about your day and what happened that day," notes the app description. Sure enough, there's a box at the bottom for you to write how you're feeling. Appropriately, ours suggested "self-condemning".
That last part might not quite match the criteria of the app's mission statement: "I Am Important does two things: 1. Shows the world how important you are. 2. Makes you feel more important."
But here's the best bit: you can pay to remove the app's adverts using a three-tier pricing system dependant on how "Important" you think you are. By clicking "Kind of important" and paying a minimal 69p, you'll get the ads removed but nothing else, while paying more will earn you bonus features, such as a colourful background. And if you fancy coughing up £6.99 for "Head of State/CEO" - importance then: "You're important - big time. You need a crazy, moving background to show everyone that your level of importance is [something undisclosed]."
There's a scene in the The Office (US version) where boss Michael Scott finds a video-recorded TV appearance from when he was a child. In it, a cat puppet asks Michael what he wants to be when he grows up. Michael replies: "I want to be married and have 100 kids so I can have 100 friends. And no one can say no to being my friend." It's a surprisingly sad moment in an otherwise funny scene. I Am Important is that moment embodied in an app. In a word: tragic.
