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SoylentNews is people

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: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday April 30 2015, @04:27PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Thursday April 30 2015, @04:27PM (#177147)

    I assume he uses this as a marketing platform for his own blog, but I have no idea if he has ads, because I would rather stab my eyes out than read it. I, too, think the Editors are doing a good job here, they just accept way too many Hugh Pickens stories. Also, if you look at Pickens original submissions, they are usually one giant run-on paragraph. The editors are doing him a giant favor in actually reading and fixing his submissions. I wish they would just reject them outright.

    If I had a way to block Hugh Pickens, I would stop bitching about him on every story.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @02:34AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @02:34AM (#177350)

    > If I had a way to block Hugh Pickens,

    His name is AT THE TOP OF EVERY FUCKING ARTICLE!
    Just fucking ignore them!
    HOW FUCKING HARD IS THAT?