What with everyone being connected to their family members, friends, work colleagues, and sometimes even clients and bosses on social media sites like Facebook, it’s become increasingly difficult for people to “let off some steam” online.

In fact, these days it’s pretty fair to say that we have to be damn careful about what we say – there have been dozens of cases in the media lately where employees have been sacked for the things they’ve said on Facebook, and of course if one goes too far, they could very well end up attracting the attention of the authorities as well.

So what can you when you’re so p*ssed off that you just have to take it out on someone? Why, you do it anonymously of course.

At least, this is what people seem to be doing in Japan, where a new microblogging service has picked up a lot of steam lately by allowing people express themselves every which way they please, with absolutely no come-backs whatsoever. Called Arrow and available as an app on Android and iOS, the idea is that you get to “shoot off” whatever is on your chest totally anonymously, directing your anger at random strangers who also retain their anonymity. What’s more, you’re guaranteed to get a reply as well – the way it works is that your ‘Arrow’ is shot at one online user at random, and if that person fails to reply within a set time frame, it’s then fired at someone else, until eventually someone shoots one back.

If this all sounds a bit weird, that’s because, well, it’s Japanese. And being Japan, Arrow has quickly caught on among its stressed out legions of workers, picking up more than 70,000 users over the last few months, with more than seven million messages sent and counting.

Kazuki Masuda of Green Romp, the company behind Arrow, told Startup-Dating.com that the reason for its success was due to a unique aspect of Japanese culture called “Honne to Tatemae”, in which people often hide their true feelings beneath the surface so as to avoid a ‘loss of face’, which is completely unacceptable in public situations. The result of this is that while people are guaranteed to be nice and polite to each other at all times, there’s every chance that your smiling colleague who greets you each morning actually wants to wring your neck. People have no opportunity to vent their real feelings, hence Arrow’s popularity.

Here’s how Masuda describes it:

“Arrow is different in that users register themselves anonymously and they can never connect to each other. They are free from the stress and attachments of being connected with their boss or clients and can simply be who they are. And whatever they post, they will always get a response from someone. People will never feel fatigue over using our service.”

And here’s a screenshot of the app’s interface:

In actual fact, users posts all kinds of things on Arrow besides just swearing at each other – for example, someone might suddenly announce that “they’re having dinner with their wife”, or they could be asking for help with a problem they have. It’s safe to assume that plenty of random flirting goes on to.

For now, Arrow is only available in Japanese. Feel free to download if you wish, but you may need the help of Google Translate to get started – before registering, users are asked a series of questions, like “can you take a joke?”, “do you use drugs” etc., with only those whose answers satisfy Arrow being accepted.

A bit stingy perhaps, but nevertheless Arrow is an extremely unique and very clever little service that would likely do just as well, if not better, over here. Fingers crossed that Kazuki Masuda feels the same way as I do   :-)

{UPDATE}

I have been in touch with Takahiro Noda, CEO of Green Romp, who informs me there is an English language version of Arrow already. However, the app is only available in Japan at present, until the company is in a position to invest in a server that can support Arrow on a global scale.