Edward C. Baig

USA TODAY

Is South by Southwest too mobbed? The Interactive, Film and Music festival that kicks off Friday in Austin is all about spreading ideas, pressing the flesh, and mingling like you've never mingled before. Ah, but there's a flip-side to all this sociability: Crowds, congestion, noise.

Can you make a quiet phone call somewhere? Where to refuel without waiting on an endless line? What if you just need to veg out for a few minutes and don't want to retreat to your hotel? Is there an Austin equivalent of Maxwell Smart's Cone of Silence?

There's hope for those of you would-be isolationists (and what the heck are you doing at SXSW anyway?) It's the Avoid Human web app that was created by the Austin-based GSD&M advertising agency to provide temporary respite from the SXSW masses.

Click on the "start avoiding" button at avoidhumans.com to pull up lists of local eateries, coffeehouses, and (quiet) nightspots that are not crowded. The app is divided into four categories — nightlife, food, coffee and refuge — with color-coded listings to clue you in on just how many of your fellow homo-sapiens are present. If a site is green, it is said to be "comparable to the number of vegans at the Franklin Barbecue." If yellow, the place is "like a 3:00 AM food burrito, proceed with caution." And if red, it is "more crowded than a UT football game when the UT football team was good."

GSD&M combed Foursquare check-in data (or lack thereof) and combined it with its own curated list to come up with the suggestions. The agency launched the app specifically for SXSW, but if it proves popular could be applied at other events in other locations.

Of course, it's natural to question whether there's good reason why folks are steering clear of these joints. Is the food (or ambience) that awful? Have creepy crawlers been spotted? What do the avoiders know that you and I don't? Then again, if everyone goes to Avoid Humans places to, well, avoid humans, you may as well go back with the in crowd.

All of this brings to mind the inevitable wisdom of Groucho Marx's line about not wanting to be a member of a club that would have me for a member.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter.