I’m not a fan of most main social platforms. Reddit’s at all times been too militaristic about free speech for my style; TikTok is filled with stomach-churning viral traits, Twitter’s riddled with hate speech, and Facebook is, effectively, Facebook. So after I first heard about PlantLife—a plant-centric social platform that rolled into the iOS app retailer on Wednesday—my first response was skepticism; in any case, any social community (even one devoted to cacti and succulents) should carry some kind of nightmarish aspect.

Well, after poking round on the app for a bit, it appears like I used to be fallacious. PlantLife incorporates a TikTok-y sort of really feel, the place you vertically scroll by means of a feed of full-screen clips and pics that includes crops of all sizes and styles and numerous shades of inexperienced. In different phrases—a minimum of in the event you’re a plant father or mother like me—it feels… very healthful.

After doing the standard sign-up jig that comes with each new platform (like selecting a display screen identify and an appropriately plant-themed image), the very first thing that PlantLife asks is what sort of plant lover you might be. Are your crops indoor or out of doors? Are you a newbie to the world of horticulture, or are you a complicated plant dad? The app additionally asks new customers what sort of plant-y content material they wish to see as they scroll by means of their feed—are they into gardening and sustainability? Hiking and tenting? CBD? Landscaping? “Foraging?” All of the above?

The app can also be seemingly meant to perform as a group discussion board of types. When you submit an image of your plant infants, you’re allowed to make a remark of what sort of plant you’re posting (a golden barrel cactus in my case), how outdated the plant is (three years), and its description (prickly). Based on what you’re asking about your little inexperienced youngster (or, uh, cactus), your fellow plant-obsessed followers can give you recommendation about watering, soil, or no matter planty questions your planty mind can consider. Got a bizarre fungus rising in your Monstera that you could’t establish? Upload an image to the platform and undoubtedly, somebody within the green-thumbed throngs can supply some phrases of recommendation.

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There are advertisements, after all. While scrolling previous folks’s footage of leafy cast-iron crops and mini bonsai timber, I bought advertisements for a minimum of two totally different plant-delivery companies. If you’ve ever delved into the plant-centric side of Instagram, the advertisements really feel fairly comparable: fairly, overpriced, and designed to be snapped to your social media platform of selection, be it Instagram, or Snapchat, or PlantLife.

And in the event you discuss to the corporate’s founders, they make it clear that plant-centric commerce goes to be core to the corporate’s plan to uh, develop. “There are a lot of these small nurseries out there that don’t have e-commerce,” PlantLife CEO Leslie Mullins told Fast Company concerning the app. “So we want to make sure we’re also using [PlantLife] as a component to reduce the digital divide within this industry.”

Is there a digital divide within the plant world? Are there that many on-line plant shops struggling to succeed in that many shoppers? Who is aware of! But the extra PlantLife’s creators attempt to flip the app into simply one other ad-riddled social platform, the extra it’ll really feel as shitty to make use of as those self same platforms—even when this one occurs to have a couple of extra crops.