Ranking With Friends: Follow, Tag, Compare and Compete

A horror film watched alone is an experience. A horror film watched with friends is an argument, and the argument is the good part. Gasper is built so the argument has evidence. You follow people, tag who was on the couch, see each other's scare scores land, and settle who in the group is the coward with a number instead of a shrug. This guide covers the social features: following, tagging, the feed, the leaderboard, collaborative lists, and how to compare taste without turning it into a fight.

Why horror is better argued about

Every genre has fans who disagree. Horror has fans who disagree about something measurable. Whether a film was good is a matter of taste, forever. Whether it scared you is a fact about your evening, and when two people compare that fact, they learn something about each other.

That is why Gasper ranks only the scare and keeps the heart separate from it, and why the social layer is built around the scare. "You gave Smile (2022) a 4.1?" is the start of a real conversation. "You gave it three stars" is the end of one. Why "which was scarier" beats a typed rating goes deeper on this, but the short version is that a score built from head-to-heads is a score worth arguing with.

Finding and following people

Two ways to find people you know. The first is contacts: allow access and Gasper hashes the emails and phone numbers in your address book on your device, then matches those SHA-256 hashes against members who signed up. Your raw contacts never leave your phone, and you can revoke access any time in iOS Settings. The help page on contacts has the full detail.

The second is in person. Everyone has a profile code, a QR you can show on your phone. Scan a friend's and you are following them before the trailers finish. This is the right way to do it at a marathon.

Following is one-directional. You see their posts in your feed; yours reach their feed only if they follow you back. If your account is private, new followers need your approval first. Trending, the feed's second filter, shows posts from the wider membership, which is where you find people you do not know yet whose scores you agree with.

Tag who you watched with

When you rank a film, you can tag the people you watched it with. This is a small feature that does a lot. The post shows who was on the couch, and the friend gets a notification that you tagged them. And months later, when you scroll your list, the tag tells you which films were a Friday night with people and which were a Tuesday alone.

It also sets up the comparison. If you and a friend both rank the same film the night you watched it together, you have two scare scores from the same room, the same screen, the same jump scares, and different numbers. That is the purest data the app produces. The film is held constant; the only variable is the person.

Make tagging a habit. It costs a tap and it is the difference between a log and a memory.

The feed: what friends ranked and want to watch

The feed is where the people you follow show up. Each post has the film, their scare score, and a note if they wrote one. You also see what they added to their watchlist, which is a quiet way of saying "I want to see this, who is in?". Like, comment, share.

Comments are where the argument lives. Someone scores a film you found tame at 8.9 and you ask them, politely, what happened. They explain that it was the sound design and that they watched it alone at midnight. Now you know something about how they watch, and their next score means more to you.

A good note is worth more than a number. "Scary until the third act explains everything" tells your friends exactly what they are in for. The feed and friends page covers the rest.

The leaderboard

The leaderboards have two boards on one switch. Films ranks the scariest films on Gasper by Community Scare, and a film needs two rankings to chart. Fans ranks members by films watched. The top three on either board wear gold, silver and bronze.

The Fans board is a running scoreboard of who has watched the most horror, and among a group that ranks together it turns petty fast. It is also extremely motivating, and more than one person has put on a film at eleven at night because a friend was one rank ahead.

There is no switch to narrow either board to the people you follow. For the scariest films according to your friends, their rankings are in your feed and on their profiles, and if you trust their nerves, that is a better watchlist than any critic's.

Collaborative lists

Lists are curated collections, and you can add friends as collaborators. Everyone on the list can add films and argue about them. Use this for the marathon you are planning, the films-that-ruined-us compilation, the running list of things one friend swears are scary and the rest of you need to check.

A few patterns that work. The watch-together list: everyone adds what they want to see, and the group picks from it. The dare list: each person adds the film they think will break the others. The year list: every film the group watched together, added as you go, which by December is a better record of the year than anything else you keep.

Lists can be private, shared with a link, or saved by other members. Featured lists are a small set Gasper highlights on the Featured lists shelf in Discover. If your group makes a good one, people you have never met will save it.

Comparing taste, politely

Your Profile's Taste tab holds Scare Tolerance and the rest of your fear stats, and this is where comparison gets interesting. Scare Tolerance compares your scores against the community's on the same films and names where you land. Put two friends' readings side by side and you have the answer to the oldest argument in the group.

Then the Hottest Take: the film where each of you differs most from the community. These are the films to watch together, because one of you will be baffled and the other will be vindicated. And the Deepest Cut, the film in a friend's rankings that the fewest other members have ranked, is a recommendation with a built-in reason to trust it.

A note on politeness. Scaring easily is not a failing and the app is clear about that, even when it is being dry about it. If a friend's Scare Tolerance says they scare more easily than most, they got more out of the film than you did. Say so. The point of comparing taste is to understand how the people you watch with experience the thing you all love, not to establish a pecking order. The pecking order is what the Fans leaderboard is for, and it only counts how much you have watched.

Keeping it civil: visibility, blocks and reports

Every rank can go into Stealth mode. Leave it off and the rank reaches your followers' feeds and is eligible for Trending. Turn it on and the rank stays off the feed, though the film is still in your rankings on your profile. So you can rank a film in Stealth mode and the rest of your followers will not hear about your Barely flinched on their favorite film.

Private account means new followers must be approved. Block any account and they are not told. Report any post, review, comment, list or profile and it is reviewed within 24 hours. The privacy controls page has all of it. Horror fandom at its best is a group of people being scared together on purpose. The tools exist so it stays that.