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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: 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?