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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.”
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Noble713 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:11PM
For some reason, I'm pretty sure a reverse of this app (where men and only men can rate women) would be lambasted as terribly sexist. I'd be surprised if any women would volunteer to have profiles created.
#FirstDateSex (is that a pro or a con? depends on the guy I guess....)
#Cooks&Cleans
#Swallows
#TitsAreReal
#GoldDigger
#VillageBicycle
#Airhead
I live on an island in Asia with a medium-sized population (~1mil) and have a LOT of players in my social network. The sexual histories of the women here would probably appall most of the "nice guys" they pretend they want to date, especially as the women age. It's normal to check a girls "HoeFax" by showing pictures of her to guys you know. Hell, it's practically mandatory for any female over the age of 22-ish, especially if she speaks English.
(Score: 5, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:17PM
Okay, I am packing my bags and pissed on my bosses desk this morning. Now, where is this island of paradise you speak of?
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:45PM
LOL!!
Bonus points if the boss is sitting at his desk at the time. ;-)
Why burn a bridge when you can nuke it!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:34PM
To be fair his boss was packing his own bags at the time of the incident.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Noble713 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:46PM
Okinawa, Japan.
Honestly, if you are going to move to Asia for the women, there are FAR better places to go than here. Tokyo, Seoul, Osaka, Hong Kong, Hell even Thailand and the Philippines. Come to Okinawa for the surfing and scuba diving, but not the women.
I find mainland Japanese women are much better educated, more open-minded, slightly more rational (they are still women, after all), but more materialistic. A lot of guys love it here but I'm not a huge fan of hip-hop culture-fetish clubrats and 30+ year old "leftover" women who have banged half the Marine Corps and Air Force.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:40PM
They must still be working on the rest. As an aside, my grandmother was from Okinawa, she was pretty awesome.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:02PM
Umm.. Phrasing?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @08:09PM
She was awesome for me too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:18PM
Japan is one such. Millions of girls in their 20's and 30's who get to leave work at 5:30 while their male peers are expected to slave away until 9:30 and then go out drinking with the guys. The girls, having a 4 hour headstart on the men, are pretty much ready to hook up by 9pm. If you are non-Japanese, especially with blond hair and blue eyes, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Be aware, though, that the window of opportunity pretty much closes by age 35. If you're older than that, you're just "tskebe" (creepy, lecherous).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:06PM
Noble713 are you a girl? Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Your list sounds like something very interesting to older men not the youth the original app is targeting. I was young once and the "hot or not" website more accurately reflects typical young man behavior than being interested in "cooks and cleans" (unless cooks and cleans is some kind of sex thing I am too sleepy to figure out right now... maybe it means "cooks and cleans while nude" or "bend her over the kitchen table" I could get into that)
This beings up an interesting problem with the original app that young girls are not very good at mate selection. Back when I worked in a field with a reasonable balance of women (retail, 20 years ago) the chicks all seemed to end up in absolute train wrecks sooner or later. Teen pregnancy, criminals, high school dropouts, one chick got beaten a bit, it was just a train wreck across the whole culture. A couple girls escaped without screwing up, but most young girls are pretty awful at mate selection. If young men select mates primarily by T+A criteria, it almost seems to work better than WTF the young women were using as a selection criteria. Anyway that's all build up to older women are probably better at providing advice to young women than other inexperienced young women. Three dumb girls aren't going to do anything smarter than one dumb girl can do while alone, outside of filming pr0n I guess. However a wise older woman who doesn't have the authoritarian parental figure negative might actually be a useful matchmaker. So you'll get older women giving advice like "this one went to prison after killing his last girlfriend in a drunken fight over getting another girl pregnant, so I know I'm an old fuddy duddy but probably not a good idea" rather than the insightful notes from young chicks like "plays digeridoo" or WTF from the article. Its right up there in logical fallacies with getting a team of nine women together to give birth to a full term baby in one month. Its just not going to be useful actionable information.
TLDR is I'm just saying it'll never sell to men because (young) men just want the T+A winner on "hot or not" and it won't be useful to (young) women because a team of twenty dumb girls isn't any smarter than one dumb girl acting alone.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 29 2015, @06:22PM
Three dumb girls aren't going to do anything smarter than one dumb girl can do while alone
A few relevant posters:
http://www.despair.com/meetings.html [despair.com]
http://www.despair.com/idiocy.html [despair.com]
http://www.despair.com/collaboration.html [despair.com]
(Score: 1) by Noble713 on Wednesday April 29 2015, @06:40PM
Noble713 are you a girl? Not that there's anything wrong with that. Your list sounds like something very interesting to older men not the youth the original app is targeting. I was young once and the "hot or not" website more accurately reflects typical young man behavior than being interested in "cooks and cleans"
I'm a 32yo unmarried male. I mostly date 19-22yo's locally, but 25+yo's from the mainland (they tend to have their own apartments, so when I travel to the mainland I can stay at their place, saves on hotel expenses). I enjoy cooking but hate washing dishes, so I have a standing rule of "If you come to my place, you wash the dishes." Sometimes they will go and clean my entire apartment of their own volition. I consider it a demonstration of their affection and satisfaction. Any female can drain your testicles but only a good, selfless one will fold up all of your laundry.
Anyway that's all build up to older women are probably better at providing advice to young women than other inexperienced young women. Three dumb girls aren't going to do anything smarter than one dumb girl can do while alone,
You touch on an important point about social/family structures and the influence of social media in the modern age. Women are getting too much of their "advice" from questionable and inexperienced sources such as their peers, the Internet, pop stars, etc.
I'm just saying it'll never sell to men because (young) men just want the T+A winner on "hot or not" and it won't be useful to (young) women because a team of twenty dumb girls isn't any smarter than one dumb girl acting alone.
1. The concept could appeal to young men who also screen women for sexual skills/interests/history/STDs etc. Even young, desperate men tighten up their standards in the face of amplifying information (do you want the hot 20yo rated #Inexperienced by 2 guys or the hot 20yo rated #CavernousVagina by 35 guys?).
2. Agreed re: young dumb girls. Sadly.....the young dumb girls don't realize this, so they'll still use the app anyway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:17PM
getting too much of their "advice" from questionable and inexperienced sources such as their peers, the Internet, pop stars
An interesting old person observation is the linear decline in usefullness and/or IQ in online advice.
In the old days in 80s BBS and usenet and very early 90s usenet you actually got good advice from the "social media" of the day. Compuserv forums had fairly intelligent participants in '83 ish timeframe. Even the dumbest BBS warez kiddies in the late 80s were actually pretty smart even if sometimes somewhat socially retarded.
Since then its been linear downward decline to almost sub-television level of intelligence such as the articles #Digeridoo social media app.
This trend must stop some day... otherwise in 20 years the internet social media of that day will primarily be used by dogs sniffing each others butts and similar level of intelligence. I mean, its gotta stop, doesn't it? Is idiocracy inevitable? So far, yes, unfortunately. But at some point the race to the bottom has to stop when houseplants can't figure out how to click "Submit" or something?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:51PM
And there's that usual sexism, where women who enjoy sex are nothing but dirty, filthy whores who should be ridiculed and shamed, but left unsaid is the similar disgust for the men that are banging all of these women (if every woman has banged every man on the island, then every man has banged every woman on the island). A slut is a slut, regardless of gender. You do not get to condemn one gender of sluts alone, or condemn one while praising the other. If sluts disgust you, then all sluts must disgust you, otherwise you're just another dumbass misogynist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @03:54PM
If you don't like it use a different hashtag like #SexuallyExperienced
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:38PM
every woman on the island
has a typo, by old people standards
every woman on the island that weekend
Its impossible to study the present without studying the past and in the 80s/90s that term almost exclusively (to males) meant she was doing multiple guys per day or per weekend at least. It had nothing to do with if she enjoyed it. So the problem isn't that she enjoyed it or she did it with you on your first date on Sunday afternoon, the problem is she also did some dude saturday night and yet another dude friday night. Thus the disgust makes sense, unless you enjoy disease and strange burning sensations when you pee. The chicks of that era used the same term to complain about fellow chicks that did things in bed they didn't like, such as swallow or "going to fast" on the first date or he talked her into wearing a harry potter costume while they did it or whatever. They also didn't care if she enjoyed it (although presumably she was at least not forced to participate?) or if she swallowed one guy or twenty that weekend, all they cared is someone is contaminating her carefully standardized (well, standardized by her standards) supply/demand marketplace. So if she doesn't like D+D cosplay but gossip is some other chick really likes it, then she's going to be pretty pissed off at that other chick for encouraging her boyfriend to pester her endlessly to wear the full chainmail and wizard hat outfit or whatever.
Today among young people it seems to mean something totally different, like it should have a completely different word attached. Meaning something like she enjoys it or is not passive. In the old days that would have meant she was "normal" or "not frigid" but apparently its a badge of shame to have fun in the 2010s which is really weird and a shame. And in an era of universal condom use and AIDS nobody seems to care one way or another if someone does it with two people per day or per weekend or twenty, I mean thats what condoms are for right?
So there's at least three separate and unrelated definitions of the same term, what us guys meant in the 80s, what other women meant in the 80s, and WTF people are trying to say in 2010, all using the same word.
So that is an interesting aspect of app design. MILF age chicks and young hotties are not going to be able to use the same app and same social media because they're just not going to be able to understand each other, two cultures separated by a common language, like US and UK.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @10:10PM
Actually, I would care. Call me weird but, if she's doing 20 over the weekend (or even just two) I would be worried about more than just the STDs that I might get exposed to. If she's doing 2 to 20 guys over the weekend, she is not your girlfriend, she's your hooker. Of course, if that's what you are into...well to each his own, I guess. Personally, I want something more in my relationship with a woman than a connection that is exclusively below the waist. Yeah, I know; I'm probably an old-fashioned fossil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @12:28AM
And if a man is doing 2 to 20 girls over the weekend, he's a playa! High five dawg! The only thing more important to guys than dick size is how many women that dick has been in. And this is somehow seen as a good thing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @08:54AM
If you think that attitude is as universal as your comment suggests, then you need to get out and talk to some real people, and not just those in rap videos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @04:00PM
"I'd be surprised if any women would volunteer to have profiles created."
exactly. only men are stupid enough to opt into this crap. there's a reason why the ancients made women subservient to men. it creates balance and order. we men are women's lap-dogs no matter what.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @12:40AM
Like it or not, pussy will always control the world. Its genetics. Objectively, the entire point of being alive is to pass on your genes, and the women are the ones with control over that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2015, @05:36PM
I seem to recall that this was the initial premise of Facebook. Can anyone confirm this or is my memory faulty? But I do take your point: if an app were created today where men, and only men, could rate women the creator would be hounded off the interwebs for eternity. The mental gymnastics that women will need to go through to justify this are going to be astounding, I'm sure.