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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:24PM (#176735)

    > And then what is he going to do? Abandon his facebook account and create a new one? That won't look suspicious.
    More likely he'll maintain two accounts - a "real" one with his friends and family on it, and a "playa" (ugh) account, with a bunch of male and fake-female friends on it to make it look convincing. Maybe even fake parents. If it gets bad reviews, just burn it and start again. He can recreate the network of fake friends easily enough, because it is made up of other guys like him all pulling the same scam on a reciprocal basis. Properly organised, I can see the system being quite easy to maintain.

    This looks like the synopsis of a movie script you are pitching. Perhaps a romantic comedy?

  • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:07PM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:07PM (#176782) Journal

    > Perhaps a romantic comedy?

    You joke, but I always thought Sleepless in Seattle (regarded by many people as the height of romance, apparently) should have been called "it's OK to be a stalker if you're as hot as Meg Ryan"