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posted by martyb on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the APPropriate-measures dept.

Andrew Marantz has an interesting read in The New Yorker about Lulu, a mobile app already downloaded five million times that allows female users of Facebook to make positive and negative evaluations of male users on the basis of their romantic, personal, and sexual appeal. Lulu is rigidly heteronormative—only women can rate men—and women tend to use Lulu the way someone investigating a potential mate a generation ago might have sought out the town busybody.

“It’s one of these rare products that evokes only strong reactions,” says Sam Altman. “No one feels ambivalent about it.” To rate a man on Lulu, a woman selects from a battery of pre-written hashtags—some positive (#LifeOfTheParty, #DoesDishes), some negative (#Boring, #DeathBreath), and some ambiguous (#DrivesMeCrazy, #CharmedMyPantsOff, #PlaysDidgeridoo). Those responses are distilled into a harshly precise numerical score. Alexandra Chong calls her startup “a community where women can talk honestly about what matters to them.” Others have called it Yelp for men. “Of course people on Lulu talk about sex,” says Chong. “Sex is part of what women talk about.”

A man must grant his permission for a Lulu profile to be created on his behalf, and, perhaps surprisingly, most men consent, says Chong. “We try to tell men, ‘Women on Lulu are building men up, not just tearing them down.'” Many women use Lulu for caveat-emptor purposes, such as managing expectations before a date. “One guy I went out with had a lot of hashtags like #OneTrackMind," says Sarah Burns, "so I dressed conservatively, didn’t drink too much—I tried to send the message, I’m not going home with you tonight. Which I didn’t.”

 
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  • (Score: 5, Touché) by ikanreed on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:18PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:18PM (#176643) Journal

    And who wants to be judged on the opinions of their exes? Just in general.

    Even honest ratings will be a measure of number of clean breaks to messy breaks, which doesn't necessarily say anything meaningful.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:05PM (#176688)

    If you're a reasonably decent human being, there's more upside than downside there.

    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:24PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:24PM (#176702) Journal

      I'd love to think I'm a reasonably decent human being, but I do not want my private life publicly tracked by other people.

      Not that it matters, but I have exactly zero bad breaks in my own history; I've just seen enough people break up on bad terms to know it has little to do with who they are. Like that person who decided they hated the entire state of California because their ex moved there. It's not rational.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:46PM

        by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:46PM (#176750)

        > I do not want my private life publicly tracked by other people.

        Not being on Facebook seems a good start to that.

    • (Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:49PM

      by dyingtolive (952) on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:49PM (#176717)

      You mean: "If the ex is a reasonably decent human being..."

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!