Whether Plague takes off or is relegated to the scrap heap of failed apps remains to be seen, but the idea is intriguing (if not downright revolutionary). At its core, Plague democratizes the process of determining what spreads through social media, and even what goes viral. The app bills itself as “an essentially different way to spread information.”

The idea is simple. You share something on the app—a video, a photo, an animated GIF, a link, your own thoughts—and it immediately “infects” the four people closest to you geographically who have downloaded and installed it. (You are automatically connected to all other Plague users as soon as you set up your account.) If any of those four swipe your content upward, it’s sent to another four users—close to them—who have the opportunity to continue spreading it or swiping downward, which puts a halt to the process.

Plague is about spreading content like a virus, with proximity playing the same role in the spread of information as it does in the spread of a disease, but it’s not a conventional social network. You don’t connect with or follow anybody. You can’t even send other users a message (though you can comment on any individual posts.) Users can be completely anonymous by setting up a user name nobody can use to identify them. (I didn’t; I’m shelholtz on Plague, but I have no interest in anonymity.) If you tap on a user name, you’ll just find out what that user’s “infection index” is.

For each post, you can also see how it spread. One post from Dunedin, Florida, for example, was viewed 3,577 times and 42% of its viewers spread it with an upward swipe. A heat map shows where it spread, and graphs reveal how the infection spread over time. Simple, easy-to-understand analytics are available to everyone for every post.

If nobody shares your post in seven days, it vanishes.

If Plague—or the underlying concept—takes hold, it could alter what content finds its way into your consciousness. Now, what goes viral tends to be content shared by people with a lot of followers and a hefty amount of influence. Followers of influencers may spread their content just to be seen as one of the cool kids. In any case, what gets shared isn’t necessarily the most important, useful, or interesting content.

Plague could change that, with the crowd (and even its most unknown members) assuming equal footing in the sharing of content. That means the content itself is what inspires sharing more than who originally posted it. There’s a gamification element, to be sure, since there’s a the rush of intrinsic reward for seeing just how far your post spread (and knowing others can see it, too).

There’s clearly a case for brands using Plague. Marketers can set up accounts and share all kinds of content that has to stand on its merits to get spread, since it’ll go to the four closest Plague users and not fans or followers. Employees can be enlisted as part of an ambassador program to help spread content, as well.

So far, though, I haven’t seen anything that looks like it originated with a company. In fact, most of what I see is gorgeous photography. While that’s fine, it’s not (with rare exception) what I want to spread, especially when it’s not obvious that the photo was taken by the person who posted it. In fact, there are a lot of calls among the Plague community for posting only photos you’ve taken yourself. A lot of users are also sharing ideas for improving the app.

But I see the potential for sharing original ideas and articles that wouldn’t otherwise get much attention. Heaven knows it’s compelling. I nodded in agreement when I read a post from someone who said he (or she; who knows?) had just spent three hours upswiping and downswiping without realizing how much time had passed.

Whether Plague succeeds at becoming a primary source of content and ideas that rise into the public’s consciousness will depend on growing a large enough user base and its ability to keep users coming back to the app. But ultimately, the upswipe/downswipe idea could be applied to just about any app. Consider it on Flipboard, for example, where anything you like and upswipe would be shared with the four (or 10 or 50) Flipboard users nearest you (or some other criteria, like 25 users who hail from your hometown, or 30 users who share the same line of work as you).

Plague is free in both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Give it a try and let me know what you think. In the meantime, I’m about to see what happens when I share one of my blog posts.