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World's Creepiest iPhone App Pulled After Outcry
Hugh Pickens writes "Ben Grubb reports that an iPhone app that essentially allowed users to stalk women nearby using a location-based social networking service has been pulled from the iTunes app store by its developer after an outcry of criticism including a comment by Gizmodo labelling the 'Girls Around Me' app as the 'world's creepiest' app and a comment in The New York Times Bits blog, which said it 'definitely' won the prize for being 'too creepy'. The 'Girls Around Me' app utilized publicly available data to show a map with women who had checked-in to locations nearby using Foursquare and let users view Facebook information of those ladies if they had tied their Facebook account to their Foursquare account and if their Facebook account privacy settings were lax enough to allow any user to access it. The promotional website used for marketing the app states that the service 'helps you see where nearby girls are checking in, and shows you what they look like and how to get in touch, adding 'In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control! Reveal the hottest nightspots, who's in them, and how to reach them.' Foursquare yanked the Girls Around Me app's access to its data, which in turn led to the app's developer removing it from iTunes as it didn't work properly. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the company behind the app defended its creation: 'Since the app's launch till last Friday nobody ever raised a privacy concern because, again, it is clearly stated that Girls Around Me cannot show the user more data than [what Foursqure or Facebook] already does.'"
I bet it honestly never occured to the guys who did this thing that someone might use it for creepy stuff. Sometimes you can do something with innocent enough intentions only to realize later "Holy shit, someone could use this for some pretty bad purposes!" So it may be best to cut them some slack and assume that they honestly did just mean this as a way for willing/non-creepy people to meet up in meatspace. I bet there are a lot of similar apps out there being used for stuff that they were never designed for, particularly in an age where way too many young people think nothing of posting every detail of their life and personal musing online for the world to see.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Girls Around Me cannot show the user more data than [what Foursqure or Facebook] already does.
Seriously, if you're concerned about creepy bastards knowing where you are, don't tell the entire bloody internet
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Funny thing is, the "outcry" of the users affected should be either directed at FB/4square, or, more appropriately, at the users themselves. It's your own damn fault that you have made so much data publicly available that this is possible. Get your head out of your ass, you're the only one you have to blame...
weinersmith
Pulling the app is a classic case of denial. It's fairly easy to create an app like this, the information is all publicly available. If people are honestly concerned about their privacy they should either stop posting the details of their lives on-line or they should lobby the companies involved to provide better privacy controls. Pulling the app is a typical case of shooting the messenger.
But so's the internet
This is a most beautiful example of what people expose to the social networking services really does.
What people think they're sharing is not what they are actually sharing and the impact goes way beyond their friends.
It was just a matter of time before this kind of stuff (linking publicly available data from multiple sources) moved from the domain of the targeted advertisers into the hands of mobile device market places. Is anyone really surprised by this? I guess the creep-factor comes into play when it's individuals who can stalk you, rather than corporations...
--Udo.
If the app was billed as "Find out who's around you!" instead of "Find the girls around you!", it'd do exactly the same thing, and continue to be sold.
Of course, anyone could still write this app very easily because people are publicly publishing their location information. (Duh). The story should have been "Look what people can do when you tell literally everyone in the world where you are" instead of "person makes creepy app".
AccountKiller
A " girl " is like "your mom", but younger and not genetically related to you.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I guess this means that only people with the skills necessary to scrape this information themselves are allowed to be creepy stalkers.
Go nerd stereotypes!!!
It seems to me that, if it's showing you people around you, that's the opposite of stalking. You're not tracking any particular person, you're looking at the publicly available info of people near you. Traditional Twitter and Facebook usage is closer to stalking than this is, since they're used for following the activities of specific people.
The similar apps are most likely related strictly to "friends" or at least women who are actively interested in providing their information with the intention of hooking up. Why the hell do you need an app to tell you there are women somewhere? Couldn't you just go to the bar and see a woman there? Do people really need to break the ice with a random text message from a stranger? That IS creepy...
At least with Facebook/Foursquare check-ins it's assumed that you're actually friends with the person. Even in that case it'd be nice to have a little correspondence and plan to meet up before hand.
None of us know everything. Therefore we're all naïve.
No, not because I want to stalk women. But maybe it will eventually make people aware that their privacy is something that should be kept, well, private.
Yes, I'm aware of the implications. Then again, I have zero sympathy for stupid people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
way too many young people think nothing of posting every detail of their life and personal musing online for the world to see.
Exactly, that is the problem. Not the app itself, it just makes it more convenient to browse the available information.
If those women find that their personal information is out there on the street, including where they are *right now*, and that people are using that to find dates or for whatever purpose - then they have only themselves to blame for putting it out on the street to begin with! But then maybe that's what they are actually after. You never know.
For my part i think we should thank that developer. He show to everyone how data protection laws are too lax or inexistant. He show how some people doesn't understand how a little bit of what seems to them innocuous data can bit them in the ass very hard. And perhaps when a certain number of problem will show up in the news and courtrooms due to the availability of these datas, perhaps then the legislator will do something about it under the pressure of the frightened populace.
Its going this way anyway. Change the app to show everyone and add all sorts of filters like distance, type of establishments shown, by birthday, by sex, interests, etc and this would have snuck past them all. This is what ambient social networking is all about. Giving you a way to find people locally with the same interests and equally willing to share those interests with the world. Already happening within a slightly more limited scope http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=4260730&trk=anet_ug_grppro
Any bets on whether a "guy around me" app would have raised any inkling of similar outcry?
It's not as if the app is accessing information that isn't already publicly available. Newsflash, ladies: if you're checking in to every shop you visit on foursquare, your stalker (the real one, not the guy in the office building across the street looking for a date) already knows. No app needed.
Creepy to me would be, say, an app that is secretly installed on your phone, cannot be removed or turned off, that transmits all sorts of private usage data to clandestine third-party servers without the user's permission.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The bonus is that you can find airheads. Just looking around you will only tell you that they are women, not that they're also careless about their personal safety.
To all the people who say you don't need privacy if you've got nothing to hide, fuck you. While this app has no business in the app store anyway, hopefully the masses will wake up and STOP BROADCASTING their entire life on the Internet.
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
Automatic hot nightclub recognition would be fun. Crunch on Facebook data to see who's popular. Use Face Beaury Rank (see "Automatic Classification of Chinese Female Facial Beauty using Support Vector Machine" for the theory) to see who's good looking. Use Foursquare data to see what places fill up with hot women. Compute the male/female ratio for locations. Discard places which are almost all female (those are probably beauty salons, etc.) Display on map.
This app actually gives me an idea how to increase awareness of people concerning their privacy. Create a homepage where you can "for fun" see what's available about you on the internet. Of course that entails signing up to a lot of social networking sites (to see "everything").
Then tell them that you sent this comprehensive collection also to Bob (see picture of naked, fat man) who is desperately looking for a "friend". If you're looking for a "friend" too, just send a pic and the info about the next idiot ... user who asks us to search him will be yours.
If you think this app is creepy, you haven't seen anything yet. Plus, I'd be insanely curious just how many will actually send a pic...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't care for the App, but I think it certainly raises awareness, don't share your life on the Internet with everyone! If you do, than you take the risks.
If I recall correctly (as this news isn't exactly new... it's a few days old), the app wasn't pulled because of the outcry. It was pulled because Foursquare revoked the app's access to their APIs because it violated their terms of service which dictated you aren't allowed to use the APIs to aggregate information.
I suppose next you're going to suggest that said women should also be responsible for the unwanted attention they get when they wear certain clothes and have only themselves to blame.
If he really had no idea what that app could be used for, he's by no means any better than the idiots targeted with the app.
Fuck, does it really take more than two brain cells to figure out what's going to happen with this? Are people really that stupid?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I bet it honestly never occured to the guys who did this thing that someone might use it for creepy stuff.
Yeah, no, they knew exactly what it was. Just look at the loading screen:
http://www.cultofmac.com/157641/this-creepy-app-isnt-just-stalking-women-without-their-knowledge-its-a-wake-up-call-about-facebook-privacy/
Sounded like a cool app to me. If you do something idiotic like publish your location in real time on the Internet for the whole world to see, you need a nice kick in the pants to help you understand just how much of a fool you are. I actually think we need more apps like this, they help remind people why some of us "crazies" actually value our privacy.
All this is really good for is being good example to the non-tech masses how effective data mining is.
They may have had the idea that all data-mining is is to profile you for the purpose of sending you spam and coupons.
As for weird guys stalking women, old news.
Which leads me on a tangent.... if they made a "special" CSI or Law and Order or NCIS episode were the cops were corrupt and using their positions (powers and privileges shown/used in the normal episodes) for their own gains and not to the the Hero of the Week.
The only surprise here is that it took so long to have such an app.
I expected that the whole metrics of social networking used in data mining and publicity would be used to service the needs of the parents (where did your kids go today? What did they buy? Who are these people on the photo with him?), the spouses (Where is she? Is he really working?), the employers (was he really calling sick from home? Does he have a drinking problem?) and any other legitimate or illegitimate need.
The potential so grand, so dark and so evil that this simple app listing girls around you seems quite harmless...
Grindr does the same thing. But of course, it doesnt publish info about nearby delicate, vulnerable and angelic innocent creatures known as women.
I bet it honestly never occured to the guys who did this thing that someone might use it for creepy stuff.
Cutlery shops, anyone? Those must be really creepy as well because you can chop people to pieces with them!
Ezekiel 23:20
I suppose next you're going to suggest that said women should also be responsible for the unwanted attention they get when they wear certain clothes and have only themselves to blame.
Yes. You don't want your boobs stared at, don't display them. We're men, get over it.
If you share your position with the whole internet then anyone will know where you are. Who would have thought?
freedom always had an ugly side. it should be banned - b/c that's not freedom.
It's IPhone so the main problem is that the app is showing girls around you, not homosexual man...
I suppose next you're going to suggest that said women should also be responsible for the unwanted attention they get when they wear certain clothes and have only themselves to blame.
I suppose next you're going to defend their rights to write all their personal information out on the internet and then tell us that she should still expect privacy and that it's our fault for reading it.
you're right, this isn't much different than http://pleaserobme.com/ -- and it even has a high chance of being effective. any girl stupid enough to make her facebook account public is more likely to sleep with the kind of guy that needs this app. just sayin
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
I really wonder. I'd take the stance that the argument "look at what she was wearing, she was asking for it" is pretty horrible & overtly oppressive in most circumstances. However, the state of affairs described by wvmarle would be, to me, the equivalent of leaving the house without pants. If you leave the house without pants on, then yeah, you deserve the negative attention you get. It's a boundary which _all_persons_ capable of dressing themselves should respect, and if you left your house without pants in the morning and threw a fit because you were getting unwanted attention, I'd say that you were not competent to manage your own affairs.
I bet it honestly never occured to the guys who did this thing that someone might use it for creepy stuff.
More likely, I think, is that they don't consider that stuff to be creepy. A depressing number of people just don't.
Don't post your info on Facebook or 4square.
I mean, if I sit in the bushes outside your house, and I happen to see you undressing, it's really your fault for not closing the windows more carefully. And if you didn't want me pointing a telescope at your daughters room, you really shouldn't have put her in a room with a window... If you didn't want me leering at your date, you probably shouldn't have brought her to a night club.
Yeah, the data is out there, and bad people will take advantage of it. But, that doesn't make it okay to do bad or creepy things. The ability to cross-reference and link data about people is a powerful and scary thing. It's really amazing to see people freaking out about Google's ability to profile you, and then blame the victim when another company facilitates the same.
Let's face it... It'd be nice to be able to have a public presence without worrying about this kind of BS.
The problem is foursquare and facebook. In fact, I'd say this app is a good thing, as it exposed the issues, to the general public, with facebook and foursquare.
If the attention is just looking and perhaps verbal comments. Yes, if a women dresses in a way to attract male attention, she shouldn't be complaining about the attention she's attracting. She's got to know she's going to get the attention of all the unwanted men as well as whoever she was looking to impress.
The same for men of course. If a man is out walking on the street in his Conan the Barbarian leather harness, he has to expect to attract attention. Likewise if he's wearing a $10,000 suit and a Patek Phillipe watch.
Yes. Yes, they apparently are.
Then again, it's also possible that this was the intended purpose all along. If so, +10 Dark Side Points for them.
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
I'd be willing to file this under "creepy, but inevitable". Given the amount of data these people posted about themselves publicly, it'd only be a matter of time until an app like this was made, and it'll only be a matter of time until one is made again.
Rather than being creeped out about it, and removing it, someone should just take a lesson from judo, and use the weight of the users against them. Someone should just create a Firesheep-like app that identifies users of the system, and when they accessed your data. Call it "Doucher Alert". If the alert goes off, and five minutes later you get hit on by a guy who "was just passing by, baby", then you can safely cross them off your list. Let the morons self-identify. Don't take away their tools, but just make sure the toolbox contains a long enough length of rope.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
i thought there was already an app that let you see which nightclubs the most women had checked into, so you could avoid bar hopping. this just adds the facebook information these women are already giving away freely. i don't believe women who dress provocatively deserve to be raped, but i do believe anyone who puts out their personal info and realtime location is asking to be fucked in the ass.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Heh he could have changed about 5 words and sold it to the government!
"Terrorists around you" (everybody!)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
A while back I was chatting to a friend in a bar, who suddenly said, "wow, he's hot! I wonder if he's single?" and pulled out his phone to check.
I think the app on the phone was called Gaydar. It did essentially the same thing -- showed nearby men's pictures, and some basic profile information. However, the big difference is the men had all very clearly opted in to this service.
(The man was not on Gaydar, so my friend had to do things the old-fashioned way, and go and talk to him.)
It's App to find people who want to be found. It's like posting your address in the White Pages, but not realizing that everyone can see it. I guess some people are just that stupid!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
But its ok for advertisers to spy on there every move to rid them of some excess money lol.
Jack of all trades,master of none
It's actually a kind of ice breaker app. Indeed it is the opposite of stalking. It's more like fishing. It only becomes stalking when the fisher finds one in particular that it wants. I say "it" simply because I don't want to demonize men any more than necessary. (It's not like women never do scary things)
You wouldn't say that if I walked around in Speedos!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Do you want to clarify that a little? ...because if 'whatever purpose' really does imply whatever purpose then you seem to be suggesting that some women are 'actually after' getting raped. I thought we were past the 'she was asking for it' vein of apologism in relation to this sort of thing.
I've been reading about this thing ever since the story broke and found plenty of apps that do more or less the same thing - it's only after Cult of Mac reported about it that it seems the outrage really took off... and even then still only for this app.
The most worrying story I read was that people (they mention girls/women. a lot. pulling at the ol' heartstrings, I suppose, as the app can list men just as well) should indeed be aware of what information they put out there when they go and sign up for facebook, foursquare, etc.
If you feel a "but" coming, here goes:
BUT, that doesn't mean that people should be allowed to just take that information and use it for their own purposes.
They likened it to the "with what she was wearing, she had it coming" adage. Which is a horrible thing, and a horrible comparison as it immediately conjures up images of sexual assault / rape. In reality, the comparison is more akin to "with what she was wearing, she shouldn't complain that somebody was looking". If somebody walks down the street dressed up as Batman, I'm going to look. If somebody walks down the street in shorts that are little more than panties made out of denim, I'm going to look (female or not), because who wouldn't? I'm not going to suggest that if you're wearing that, you want to get sexually assaulted, and perhaps you don't even want to get looked at - but in the latter case you really just have a poor grasp on reality.
So if somebody puts up information on foursquare about where they are, and I find that information, think the person looks cute, yes - I may just google them, and find their facebook, and then take a closer look. Is that creepy? Well if I look up your favorite movie, drink, etc., walk into the establishment, sit down close to you and order your favorite drink and start yapping away about that movie.. yes. But then I'm a creep - that doesn't make finding that information 'creepy'. It's just human curiosity. Millions of people don't find it one bit creepy when it's a story in the latest tabloid / Cosmo / etc.
And yet that is exactly the sort of thing that is being argued in these articles. That when you put something on facebook, you're actually only putting it up there for the purposes that you want it to be used for. Even if you've made it public for the world, that you get full control over how that information is used.
So you want to be found with foursquare because that's how you get your cheaper drink, but you don't want anybody -but- that establishment to know that. Of course the establishment has the exact opposing desire: they want as many people checked in there as possible. Neither of them are likely to 'want' apps like these to exist, but the latter two desires are completely opposite.
So what is the solution? Why, ban these apps, of course.
Never mind that the information can still be looked up manually (or by means of other apps), as long as the threat that's on the radar has been eliminated.
One suggestion that I did find interesting was getting a notification when somebody uses your information. Unfortunately, that would be technically a horrible mess, and with things like foursquare, how quickly would you turn those notifications off when you get dozens per day from random passers-by / people doing web queries / etc?
There was a great opportunity here to teach people about their privacy settings, but it has gotten completely undermined by simply labeling the app as 'creepy', 'stalker app', etc. and the defense that just because you're telling the world where you are, that doesn't mean the world should actually be listening.
This includes Cult of Mac, whose latter stories have focused more on the app than on the privacy issues with foursquare/facebook.
Though I wouldn't expect much different, seeing as Cult of Mac uses a comment syndication service (Vanilla) which, in part, accepts facebook logins. Which in turn yields your facebook profile image. Which in turn yields your facebook profile, no matter what you make your user name in the comment appear to be.
Doctor, heal thyself.
Idiot. It's *ALWAYS* a man's fault. When will you get that through your head? The world, and indeed, the laws of nature and physics must all change because women aren't responsible for knowing or understanding them. Women are always the victim and are never responsible for consequences of their actions, inactions or their lack of knowing.
Meanwhile, if you're a man, you're just evil.
At first I thought that this app was quite a tragedy: the ultimate tool for nullifying privacy.
Then I tried using it for it's intended purpose.
As it turns out, being able to know about a woman before you hit on her is the ULTIMATE tool to load the dice in the mating game. Yes it's creepy, but it works.
If foursquare didn't kill it I would have made an android version.
Depends on the type of attention. Yeah, maybe she wants to be looked at, but that doesn't give you license to grope her.
Wrap the thing in tinfoil like a baked potato.
If AT&T:
Preheat oven to 450-Degrees-Fahrenheit.
Bake for seven (7) hours.
Serve with sour cream/chives and cheese of your choice.
Enjoy.
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
Would it surprise you if the government already uses such "apps" and cops on the street had it in their patrol cars? Sure, tin foil hat alert, but when some creep uses it to smooth talk women and there's public outcry, why let cops, or robbers (burglars can also get all this info on you, including how far from your home you are) get away with it? It's about time people started understanding what privacy is about and this app does just that.
I'm all for a few more iterations of this, just so the public gets aware of what is really done with all their information.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
AMEN!
I have no problem whatsoever respecting a woman who respects herself enough to not put herself on display, similarly to how I have no problem not peeking through someone's blinds. But, ladies, just like I might catch a glimpse of your naked ass if you walk in front of your wide-open picture window as I'm walking down the sidewalk in front of your house, whether I wanted to see it or not (PROTIP: I probably didn't want to see it), I'm probably gonna see your tits and ass if they're hanging out of your clothes.
I guess what I'm trying to say is if you want respect, dress and act like a respectable adult. If you want to dress like a slutty Barbie doll and act like a highschool student, excpect to be played with like a Barbie doll and taught a lesson like a student.
That said, I've never been the type to play with people like that, or "teach them a lesson", but there is no denying that there are people out there who do these things. If you don't want to fall victim to it, don't dress and act in ways that invite it. If you can't get that through your head and adjust your lifestyle accordingly, for your own betterment, then I'm sorry to say you get what you deserve.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Speedos (and all spandex) are a privilege, not a right!
What is "creepy stuff?" Maybe behavior that would force women to confront their inadequacy in our "equal" society? It is not creepy, it just is what it is. If anything is creepy, it is the Facebook aspect. They merely utilized technology to solve a problem. Heaven forbid you meet a nice girl after "stalking" her with this app. It used to be called courting. Next, the fine technology we call eyes are going to be "creepy."
The perps are still responsible if they rape/molest women, but if women dress provocatively they ARE partly responsible for "unwanted" attention.
;) ).
The fact is in most "western" cultures the guys are the ones who are expected to do the "chasing". And many women try to look attractive so that they have a higher chance of selecting better candidates.
So what happens is there will be very many candidates who are unwanted by the women (assuming the women are attractive enough
I'm lucky, I can smile at women and most are fine with that- many even smile back. But if some unfortunate guy who falls in the "unwanted" category tries the same thing many women often call it "creepy", or the guy's a pest. Don't blame the guy so much OK? That's the guy's role in society - he has to try or his genes will die with him. Be fair don't call guys pests/stalkers if they are only just trying. Call them pests/stalkers if they keep trying after you said no, "go away".
The other problem is sometimes some of these "stalker" guys actually get the girl... WTF girl you're actually going out with the guy who stalked and pestered you despite you saying you didn't want him[1]. That only encourages other guys to try the same thing to other girls! If women would stick to "no means no" they wouldn't be pestered as much. If a woman plays too hard to get she shouldn't be surprised if she gets a stalker or an asshole.
[1] Yeah, it does happen in real life and not only in Hollywood movies (by the way some of those guys in the movies would normally receive a restraining order and be in jail for the stuff they do).
They also think nothing of calling up random strangers who show up on bluetooth -- I had this happen a couple times so I turned all those features off. Turning this off worked.
If the attention is just looking and perhaps verbal comments. Yes, if a women dresses in a way to attract male attention, she shouldn't be complaining about the attention she's attracting. She's got to know she's going to get the attention of all the unwanted men as well as whoever she was looking to impress.
The same for men of course. If a man is out walking on the street in his Conan the Barbarian leather harness, he has to expect to attract attention. Likewise if he's wearing a $10,000 suit and a Patek Phillipe watch.
The thing is it is wholly different for men than it is for women. Because, you know, we're men. We don't share and we don't experience what women do all day: harassment, cretinous dumbasses looking at you with envy, gross propositions out of nowhere, wandering hands, etc.
We just don't. So let's stop pretending the problem is the same on both sides, because it's not.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
This is the first thing that came to mind.
Guys, really? Stop being so anti-social and awkward. Its a safe bet to assume there are women in a bar/library/Starbucks. A line you can come up with on the spot such as 'I like those shoes/hairdo/etc' will get you a lot further than saying you were also at locations X, Y, and Z as she was. From someone you've never met, that comes off of creepy, regardless if he/she posts it on myspace/fb/G+.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
"look at what she was wearing, she was asking for it"
That depends what "it" is. If "it" is physical violence, you're absolutely right, it's horrible. What you're wearing never justifies physical violence. If "it" is being stared at, it's perfectly reasonable.
Close, but not quite. By default, your land-line information is posted in the white pages unless you pay a service fee to have it not listed. My solution is to not have a land-line. Or a facebook account for that matter. :)
Well, depends on his intention. If he was trying to raise awareness to the privacy issue it would be very different in my books.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's App to find people who want to be found. It's like posting your address in the White Pages, but not realizing that everyone can see it. I guess some people are just that stupid!
Well, a step beyond that - it's taking your white pages information, then looking up any references to you in the local papers, then pulling your phone records (if they were publicly available), and compiling a dossier on you.
The "creepy" factor is that we as a society are still getting used to the fact that it's now trivial to compile that dossier. We still think it's the 50s, where the police (or a private investigator) could build that file of where you go, what you do, who you hang out with, where you were and are, but that it was really time-intensive and a bit expensive. So unless you had a reason to think someone would want to go through that effort, so assumed it wasn't done (and were mostly right).
Remember, this app was compiling data from multiple sources - GPS for where you are, FourSquare (and it's brethren) for location information on other people, Facebook for the public profiles, etc. It's nothing that a person couldn't do right now. (Google+ will show you "nearby" posts today). It's just a bit time-consuming to do by hand (and so we assume people don't bother). What we forget is that it's trivial to get the computer to do all that research for us, and display it in easy-to-use formats. It's now inexpensive, both in time and money to build those dossiers - which means we need to change our assumptions to "everyone knows everything I put online".
No. No one EVER deserves to be raped.
People conituously tell the entire world exactly where they are and everything about themselves for a long period of time. Someone looks at that information and uses it to their advantage.
I can't beleive this, shocking!
I only downloaded this app on Friday after first hearing about it and now it's been pulled... I guess I don't get any free updates to that one...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Our society is truly fucked up if you can't send a stranger a text message without being labeled a creep. Seriously. Having come across this conversation, a lot of this is not making sense once I think about it. When I was a teenager I used to search female profiles on AOL and send text messages to strangers. No one thought it was creepy, and I even met one of my girlfriends like that (nice girl). We didn't even have profile pics back then. WTF! Now there is a total fucked up paranoia about everything. Why have all this social media crap if we cannot meet new people for fuck's sake!!! Boring. Let's wall everyone off into our own little corner of the world where we only talk to the people we know. It just seems to be the opposite of ideal and makes no sense that the technology is going to prevent us from forming new relationships or breaking the boundary of our isolated regions or locales. No wonder I hate Facebook--the reasons are becoming apparent. Instead of FB bombarding us with people we might know, why don't they facilitate connections with people we do not know who are interested in the same things that we are? The people I know are that simply because we were born in the same area and ran in to each other. I guess it makes sense that the technology continues to model this lame reality.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Or even gay bashing
"Find Nearby Gays and Beat Them Up!" :rolleyes:
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I bet it honestly never occured to the guys who did this thing that someone might use it for creepy stuff.
I bet it honestly never occurred to all the narcissists posting their current fucking location to a publicly accessible social networking site that maybe, just maybe, someone with less honorable intentions than their BFF-of-the-week might end up seeing that information.
Wake up call, folks - This app came down because the dev needed to obey Apple's policies (ie, use a semi-legitimate means of getting to Foursquare and Facebook rather than just scraping them without permission). Some less legitimate dev could quietly recreate this exact app outside the Apple food-chain, and no one would even know about it.
Thnak you for pointing out that guys have been doing this for millennia.
Good-bye
Who are you talking about here? Foursquare or Facebook?
This app doesn't really facilitate stalking any more than cars or binoculars, and probably less so, since check-ins are made of one's own volition. As for whether it's stupid for women to post that information, I'd say hardly. Women like to be seen, noticed, and approached, though obviously by the men they're interested in, and this is yet another way to be seen. That they have to deal with advances from guys they're not interested in is just the price of being the more passive of the species. I'm not saying "who cares if women get stalked," I'm just saying this isn't any more or less dangerous than the rest of reality. Some people may turn out to be mentally unbalanced, but that's life.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
There are few absolutes I agree with, this is one of them.
Good-bye
If you want to stalk chicks in your area just use foursquares. Why go through a middle man when you can get your stalker info straight from the source?
What creeps me out this sentiment is soo blatently obvious to everyone here yet it seemingly went clear over the heads of those offended by the app.
No we get constant bombardment of guilt. You looked at a 17 year old and felt funny in your pants? pervert. You admired a child's smile too long, pedophile. Took a picture of a child you dont know in the park? pedophile. Dared to stare at a woman's heaving and mostly exposed chest, pervert.
Good-bye
Speedos are swimming wear. I wear them at the pool, on my boat and at the beach (unless I'm nude of course :). Speedos are tight and don't flap around while swimming.
Where it's acceptable for women to wear skimpy outfits, it is acceptable for men to do the same. I don't care about your oh-so-fashionable, below-the-knee boardshorts dude, you look like an idiot.
One of the questions this issue raises, is: why do people (not just women; men just as well) put all that information out in the open on the Internet?
I think that's one of the more interesting questions. For whatever reason people elect by themselves to put their personal information (such as name, age, gender, religion, where they work, live, where they are right now, who they are friends with, conversations with those friends, etc. often including images of themselves) out there.
Are they intent to meet strangers? Trying to make new friends? Just some casual contact to waste some time at the bar? Totally different reasons?
And by the way I don't think this information increases the risk for them getting raped. A rapist doesn't generally care about who their victim is. Following someone you just met to their home or hotel room is asking for trouble, whether they have a Facebook profile or not.
It does possibly increase the chance of getting hit on by someone, and it increases the chance (assuming the parties involved want this) for a relationship, if only as short as until breakfast. It helps finding likeminded people, and that can be interesting for some. Sure it's always presented as men chasing women but there are women that like to be chased, or women that chase themselves, just like the men do. And it's not even necessarily for casual sex, though probably it often is.
On those same lines, when I wear my chainmail shirt to the bar (I wear something under it so there's no skin showing, but a chainmail shirt just looks awesome in general), I've been told that I draw the attention of all the guys away from the girls to me. But not for the reasons you imply... they just want to know about the chainmail shirt, or if they can buy one, or how I made it (yes, I did make it myself), etc, etc. Sure I get hit on here and there, but whatever, I just find it more amusing than anything. I'm not annoyed when I'm hit on... I realize it comes with the territory I'm dwelling in.
But yeah, my wife says the other women get annoyed somewhat when I wear that out. Course, women try to hit on me too, but they'd have to fight their way through the guys. My wife doesn't mind much, because i'm a) faithful, and b) she gets to show me off :P
I'm not too proud to admit I was once a member of Okcupid and had a lot of success with it. A major feature with the phone app was that it notified you that other people were in your area (in my case, females in the area), but were of course restricted to just Okcupid profiles. It even notified you if someone was a close match to you was in the area. What's different about this app and the app from TFA?
It's been proven that steal-to-order burglars have used google maps to identify churches to steal the lead roofing materials from. Mobile phones have been used by drug dealing and smuggling syndicates. Tourist helicopter flyovers have been used to help thieves identify property to steal (one family had a granite lion stolen from their garden even though it was hidden by bushes at street level and cemented in place).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I'd like a "Creeps Around Me?" app.
Would bet that a lot of the Slashdot crowd would show up on that one, not to mention the 4chan crowd.
Stupid people deserve what they get. It's not as if these people have never heard of privacy settings on facebook. I've tried with these people, they officially don't care that their information is out there for everyone to see. Then they act surprised when someone takes their information and misuses it for something they didn't intend. In this day and age, they are asking for it. That doesn't change just because they are a certain gender.
All they now need is an app for the ladies that warns them of some one using "girls around me" app thats near by. Easy!
Good point! We should do more to protect women.
Clearly, since women are so much more vulnerable, weak, and defenseless than men, they should not be allowed to visit all of the same places. Restricting them to "safe" areas should do the job nicely. That way, they're safe.
Oh..wait.. you want equal ability to go anywhere a man can? Well, sounds like we have a conflict...
the company behind the app defended its creation: 'Since the app's launch till last Friday nobody ever raised a privacy concern because, again, it is clearly stated that Girls Around Me cannot show the user more data than [what Foursqure or Facebook] already does.'"
In most cases nowadays, in order to protect yourself from snooping bosses, stalker-ish weirdos and the like, most facebook profiles are protected/friended. You don't want random people to see it, or use it as a tool to get to you... that includes, especially, people who are in a club or somewhere on the block around you to access your information to get a 'heads up' on who you are and the specs they're looking for in a potential girlfriend. So freaking creepy, it burns. They don't seem to get that, which is sad.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
I had to take a database theory class to understand the dangers of "unique identifiers" with web forums and other systems. You might not give out your name, but mentioning the last few employers is enough to identify you. Just one historical local event can be identifiable to a city.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
... but not for individuals?
Check your premises.
Does anyone know some alternative apps that do the same thing and still work? I think it's a fricken awesome idea and wish i had tried it out when I could.
It's not like women never do scary things
When it comes to stalking, I'd say women are easily the more active, more frequent "offenders". Considering what some of my female friends tell me when they have a new crush ... well ... my mental reaction is often "Oooookay, I'll slowly move backwards. Don't break eye contact or she'll see it as a sign of weakness and unleash the crazy!".
Funny though, stalking by men is horrible, bad and unacceptable. Stalking by women? Meh, not even worth talking about.
You're the one who brought up rape, GP never mentioned it
By "getting what she deserves" and "taught a lesson," I parsed that as being treated like a sex toy/arm candy and tossed out when she gets boring, not treated with respect, etc. And why not?
You want to act like Snookie, you've got no business bitching about being treated like Snookie.
And?
Does the fact that you used to do this when you were younger automatically mean its ok? We've all done our fair share of things as a teenager I'm sure we dont anymore.
I would also like to point out that the onus of what is "creepy" is not decided by one side of the fence. A medium such as AOL back in the days advocated to that exact method of meeting strangers. Some people didn't use AOL that way. The same applies for Facebook, Myspace, etc.
tr;dr - If I feel creeped out that JohnDoe2 keeps messaging me about concerts about my favorite band regardless of if I have NSYNC pictures all over my public profile, its still creepy.
The issue with a lot of people isnt that their info is unknowingly public, its that someone is has sought you out and knows some things about you and you're wondering from where and what else does this person know.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
If you have your privacy settings so anyone can see you, then what do you expect?
Shouldn't there be an infinite number of absolutes that you agree with? 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, ...
What he said isn't an absolute at all, even if you and I agree with it.
I wouldn't say you deserve the negative attention. I have no problem with public nudity. Just don't be surprised if someone looks.
I don't see anything wrong with nudity, honestly.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
We are just barely entering the erra when male abuse victims are taken seriously by police.... stalking? we are still a while off there both legally and socially.
A while back I had a female stalker, mostly I got laughed at or got outright nasty looks. A lot of guys picture stalking as this wonderful thing they would love to have happen and see other guys who are not enjoying the experience as not being grateful.
And the girls just had this 'but you are guy, it is different' dismissive attitude. Even worse some took her side with the idea that it was wrong of me to reject her, that it just was not acceptable for guys to not accept a girl's advances.
pleaserobme.com anyone? information put on-line is there now, later, and forever. so it's pretty funny honestly that people think they can put their address in a public accessible spot, then turn around and say they're out of town for the next week. They wonder what happened? How does this guy know i am a cancer and i love dolphins? or how does he know my number? perhaps more people want to get in touch with you than you want to get in touch with.
pretty hilarious app imo. I'd be using it to freak out girls then tell them "hey perhaps you should think about the security of that web-service your pour your heart into called Facebook"
Agreed. It doesn't seem like the app even considered trends, which would be easy to build up over time: "Hey GirlX goes to this club every Friday and then this coffee shop afterward. I'll wait for her there." That's just the wrong kind of attention.
Well, that's one opinion. Do you think this would be somehow different than knocking on a strangers door to ask if she'd like to go out with you? Sounds a little creepy to me. And a lot pathetic.
I sure as hell wouldn't respond to a text message from some random person who thought we could be friends. I'd probably tell them to fuck off or not even reply.
Maybe nobody ever told you that, but it's creepy nonetheless. It sounds like the years of "a/s/l" which everyone got bombarded with on chat rooms -- bunch of lonely pathetic guys thinking they'd put their swerve on and assume and try to hit on every suspected female in the vicinity.
If you want match.com, go there. I don't give FB enough information to try to infer people I might like to know. I sure as hell don't want random internet losers to think we should be friends.
I'm sorry, but as a guy even I can see how some random guy going "mmmm .... girl ... will you be my friend" would be somewhat creepy.
Most especially since this app is mining through other services to get this information. If the women had signed up for a "introduce me to random guys" kind of thing, sure. But they're most likely wondering who the hell you are and WTF you're texting them for.
This is kind of like standing at the door of the mall and asking every pretty girl who walks in if she'd like to go out with you. In real life, that would likely lead to security or the police having a little chat with you.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Aw man, that is the perfect example of how social networking destroys your privacy. Why remove it? Not knowing something, doesn't mean it isn't happening...
Bow before me, for I am root.
Or are they just not changing the defaults set by the social networking site? I know plenty of Luddites that don't understand or care about their privacy until it is too late.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
I think you missed the part where I explained about the opposite party being aware of the intention. Rather than an app that simply crawls Foursquare for women who have checked in nearby. The way I read the article (the summary, forgive me if I'm wrong) these women had no idea their information was being sent to this third party app for this purpose.
None of us know everything. Therefore we're all naïve.
Unless you can point out a situation where someone DOES deserve to be raped, it IS an absolute.
Well, that's one opinion. Do you think this would be somehow different than knocking on a strangers door to ask if she'd like to go out with you? Sounds a little creepy to me. And a lot pathetic.
No, it's not a lot different from knocking on a stranger's door and introducing yourself. The reason why datavirtue may think it acceptable is that before he knocked he was invited by the girl onto her porch so he could read her diary which she left there with the intent that strangers read it. People tend to forget what their open privacy policies on FB really mean; either that or they truly don't understand the implications. All this app does is bridge that gap from a virtual front porch to the actual one, and only for people openly publishing where that IRL front porch is. Creeped out? Stop sharing your location with strangers.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
funny. And how is this app any different than http://pleaserobme.com/. Same type of data (who you are) one wanting to share where you're not, the other to share where you are. Glad my teenage girl is almost entirely invisible on FB.
it just shows the shit any creep on facebook can already see
Yeah while you can use the information you gathered as an ice breaker, I think you'd come off as more of a stalker though.
A line you can come up with on the spot such as 'I like those shoes/hairdo/etc'...
In most parts of the US it will also get you labelled as effeminate (ie: gay.)
(Just an observation...)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
The issue with a lot of people isnt that their info is unknowingly public, its that someone is has sought you out and knows some things about you and you're wondering from where and what else does this person know.
Why is that an issue? Here are the answers - they got the information from Facebook, and they know whatever else you say about your daily life or post in your profile.
Here's an example - I'm friends with a girl on Facebook that I haven't seen in about 15 years, and I know her middle name, birthday, son's name, school history, current work situation, relationship status, where she ate last week, etc. Not because I actively seek it out, but because she posts an update when she does goddamn anything. If she's creeped out that I know all those things then she's probably pretty stupid. It would be pretty funny to run into her on the street and start spouting off all these facts about her life though, I would like to see the look on her face. If narcissistic people like that are surprised that other people know all the stuff that they constantly post about themselves then they have no one to blame but themselves.
I also don't really see anything creepy about my behavior there. I think it's a little creepy and suspect that she feels compelled to tell the world that she ate at Firehouse Subs last weekend, not the fact that I remember odd bits of information.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
It is not about showing your status to the bloody whole itnernet, it is about application *aggregating* that data and making it easy to get. It does not matter too much if you show your four square checkin, if it is not searchable. YOu are one among thousands. Nobody can manually search that many profile and pay dirt outside of chanec. But *aggregating* and offering the results is what makes the app creepy.
That said, in addition to the map being creepy, people do not value their privacy. I do. facebook and associated domain go directely to 127.0.0.1 in my host file. Good luck trying to track me with your "like " button.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
We are just barely entering the erra when male abuse victims are taken seriously by police.... stalking? we are still a while off there both legally and socially. A while back I had a female stalker, mostly I got laughed at or got outright nasty looks. A lot of guys picture stalking as this wonderful thing they would love to have happen and see other guys who are not enjoying the experience as not being grateful. And the girls just had this 'but you are guy, it is different' dismissive attitude. Even worse some took her side with the idea that it was wrong of me to reject her, that it just was not acceptable for guys to not accept a girl's advances.
Clearly those naysayers are not familiar with the "bunny boiler" concept. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunny_boiler
If you want match.com, go there. I don't give FB enough information to try to infer people I might like to know. I sure as hell don't want random internet losers to think we should be friends.
You realize this is exactly what facebook was started for and why it became popular in the first place. Now that everyone's mom, family, kid, and dog is on it doesn't suddenly change the fact that it was basically built as an easy way to scope out females at your college.
I'm sorry, but as a guy even I can see how some random guy going "mmmm .... girl ... will you be my friend" would be somewhat creepy.
Most especially since this app is mining through other services to get this information. If the women had signed up for a "introduce me to random guys" kind of thing, sure. But they're most likely wondering who the hell you are and WTF you're texting them for.
They are putting that information out there. They did sign up for that. Yes girls think it's creepy even when friends of friends go up and talk to them in public about things on their online profiles (had someone bugging my sister years ago doing that while she was waitressing). Yet instead of them learning to guard that information and change their privacy settings or god forbid stop using dumb shit like facebook, foursquare, twitter, etc we should just blame an app that pulls information together? I don't think so.
This is kind of like standing at the door of the mall and asking every pretty girl who walks in if she'd like to go out with you. In real life, that would likely lead to security or the police having a little chat with you.
This is what social networking was built upon. Think friendster, myspace, facebook, or the next one would/will have anyone use it if it was all guys? It's a dating site, without the lame "hey someone browsed your profile/sent you a message" spam emails that masquerades as a communication app, but really they've always been about scoping out people you want to date.
She wants them stared at, just not by you. That flaunt is her attention getter and then she filters out the guys until a cute one shows up.
Most women do not troll in an establishment like men do. Women tend to sit there and lure men in. Hair, makeup, breasts and/or butt/legs is what they got.
The real issue is that people (women in this case) are still not securing their Facebook/Foursquare pages from non-associcated people. This poor bastard was just the first creative fuck to mash all this useful info into a single app that would help you Troll better for dame's.
You use this app to check out a certain club, that perhaps has a cover you would rather not waste on a sausage fest. This will show you how many woman have checked in and rather they are attractive or such.
Creepy/Stalker would be an app that allows you to Tag a certain person and then see where they are now. This just shows you who has checked in "here" and then a faster link to their Facebook page. IF all that info is open and linked.
No one seems to be screaming at Foursquare for exposing all this useful material in the first place.
I agree with the parent and have a hard time seeing the problem with this app. From the article this is information the participants are freely making available. If anything I think this just exposes a poor choice in default sharing on the part of FB/Foursquare. I suspect a change in default privacy for foursquare would fix this issue entirely. Then, as the parent mentioned, the women/men who want to meet new people this way could. I see no harm in that.
I should mention I've never used this app, FB or foursquare but have seen friends use FB and foursquare have a rudimentary understanding of them..
Yeah... I had a long conversation about this app with a female friend, this weekend. What struck me is how the reactions to the app differ, quite starkly, along gender lines. Women view it as being something for stalkers and rapists, while guys seem to view it as something for valuable intel (is she single? Did she grow up near where I did? Does she like the same music?) before approaching a female and chatting her up.
Although I admit that it's creepy... and that it's a little unfair for there to be such an inequality between the amount of info the guy has and how much the girl has, there was one point that I thought was important to understand about this app...
There doesn't seem to be anything about this app which robs a woman of her free will. If she meets a guy and it seems like they have a lot in common and she takes him home for a romp, she still *decided* at some point, that she felt she would benefit from the tryst. Okay, so it was all a facade on the part of the guy. How is this different from wearing cologne, or dressing nicer than you normally do, or driving around in a high-end sportscar and forgetting to mention that you rented it? And keep in mind that there are guys out there who are really good at cold-reading, where they can fake high levels of similarity with their target *without* the need for all of this advance intel.
But, back to your point, I agree. A stalker doesn't seem to be after "any" girl, he's after one, in particular... and he'll be checking her FB and FourSquare account, exclusively. As for rapists, if we're talking about the "jump out of the bushes" kind and not the "date-rape" kind, I doubt he's going to pick out one girl in particular from her FB profile... it's probably more about which one strays too close to his panel-van.
Ultimately, though, I think this app is *most* useful for making people aware of the privacy implications of social sites like FB and FourSquare.
Gizmodo calling anything shady or creepy really is the pot calling the kettle black.
They could also, change their gender status on those services to Male. And if everyone does this, then those programs that make use of gender not very useful.
If you're providing all that info to the public, what would you expect people to do with it? I don't post my GPS location, and tweet what I'm doing every minute of the day. These people want to be noticed by everyone, or they are very naive about technology.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Who said rape?
Look, if a girl wants to meet a guy who will treat her with respect, she needs to not dress to acctract guys who will take advantage of her. Plain and simple, it's a fact that these guys exist and it will happen if you invite it. Note that I'm not talking about rape, I'm talking about being willingly used for sex, there is a huge difference.
Mod me a troll if you will, but there was nothing trollish about my comment. I take the faceplate off my car stereo because I know there are thieves in the world. If I leave it on and it gets stolen, it is my fault I made an attractive target, just as much as the thief is wrong for having taken it. I learned this the first time I left a faceplate on a car stereo and came back to a broken window, fucked up interior, and no stereo, and adjusted my future behavior accordingly. If a woman can't do the same after seeing negative effects from the way she dresses and acts, then she does, indeed, deserve to keep being treated that way until she learns, just as I would deserve to keep being taught not to leave the faceplate on my stereo until I finally learn to stop inviting the negative consequences it can bring.
I never menioned rape, mostly because the fact is that the majority of rape victims are plainly dressed at the time of the attack and are often victimized by someone they know, not a random guy hitting on them because they're wearing short shorts and a low cut shirt. Rape isn't the issue here, expecting people to treat you any better than you're willing to treat yourself is the issue.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You're a day late.
iPhone users following girls already. Pull the other one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Bingo! This guy gets it!
Again, I have never treated a woman like this, nor would I. I tend to avoid women who invite this kind of behavior, as a general rule. My wife actually has some self respect, as well as my full respect; were she the type to dress slutty and flirt with every guy she meets for attention, she would not be my wife, nor would she have my respect.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Is that creepy? Well if I look up your favorite movie, drink, etc., walk into the establishment, sit down close to you and order your favorite drink and start yapping away about that movie.. yes.
Why? Why is it creepy?
In an increasingly connected society in which there exists a strong trend to share information and collect it in realtime, at some point it becomes normal to see somebody and want to access their public information. If only as a matter of curiosity.
If I see an attractive woman, and an application on my portable device can identify her right away and collect all the public information and present it to me, how much information is at my fingertips to determine if I would like to get to know her more?
That is what you do when you get to know somebody in the first place. Collect some information about their likes, dislikes, personality, etc. With technology you are just doing some that before you even speak with them.
Absolutely, there are creeps that will use it, but that does not mean that all people that use it will be creeps. Creeps (or players) will find whatever means are at their disposal to con women.
This reminds me of something I was watching on Netflix recently. East of Eden. In that a group of college students create a program that can identify objects and people in a camera view and created augmented reality. You walk around seeing all public information about that person instantly.
Personally, if everything is public already, I don't find it creepy at all if I look up a girl's profile to find an icebreaker to talk to her. More to the point, I might find reasons I don't want to talk to her. If I saw her smoking for example.
My point was that it's subjective. I can't point out where someone does deserve it because that's up to the individual to decide. But I don't think that situation could ever exist.
True, there is that varient. Perhaps I should have been more specific.. females stalking males who are currently capable (as in not already attached) of returning their interest. Females trying to break up another relationship which they feel entitled too... though even then, outside extreme cases, I encounter the attitude that he must have done something insensitive to her like ditching her (under the idea that women are fragile emotional beings not responsible for their own lives, thus if she is that upset he MUST have done something to injure her). So bullshit all around ^_^
Not that you made a claim one way or the other, but ignorance is no excuse (especially when you have to agree to TOS in order to use the site).
Yes, and I am sure that the person who split the atom was thinking about the usage that it was going to have....we are not responsible for the people who abuse certain technology....only those people can account for their actions. The creator of the a bomb is responsible for all the deaths made by its use...the person using the bomb to so is, so why are they acting this silly over this app! Apple has got everyone's panties in a bunch as they have shown that with total control over what apps are there, they can point out the ones that might be deemed unfit (like TOR if it was an iphone app available inside of china or syria.....!)
What do you think people did before telephones when everyone in a town knew each other? You didn't wait until the girl/boy you liked sat next to you at a butter churnin', you went to their house and knocked on the door.
No. No one EVER deserves to be raped.
Um... What does staring at someone's boobs have to do with rape? Are you implying that they are morally equivalent?
By "getting what she deserves" and "taught a lesson," I parsed that as being treated like a sex toy/arm candy and tossed out when she gets boring, not treated with respect, etc. And why not?
Honestly, that's exactly how I parsed that bit myself. Rape was the last thing on my mind as this is already considered a universally bad thing. I think the GP AC is one of those radical feminist types that think all men are monsters and have a propensity towards raping women.
Also, in this world you teach people how to treat you. Why should we respect anyone who doesn't respect themselves, regardless of gender? And this comment has nothing to do with rape, FYI. That's a completely different subject matter that most men and women tend to agree on anyway.
They will do something about it as soon as it will benefit the important people. And remember, companies are people too.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Curiously, how oblivious were you to how parties worked in college or what they were for... Heck how dating worked in college in general... What bars are for... or in general any other hangout in real life that people go to pick up the other gender. Picking out one mode of doing so seems a bit 'pathetic' as well, not to mention ignorant and shortsighted.
"I sure as hell wouldn't respond to a text message from some random person who thought we could be friends. I'd probably tell them to fuck off or not even reply."
You make his point quite well. Enjoy your walls of eden.
When I was a teenager, I was looking up phone numbers of women and started calling them. I can bet you if that were true, they would call that extremely creepy.
When I was 16/17 we already had discussions about privacy and what should be allowed and what not. Showing friends who had clearly drank too much was considered clearly not done. No matter in how much of a public place it was done.
So when we had photos developed, we would first show them to the person and he would decide if it was OK or not to be made public or not.
Privacy to me still means much more then 'behind closed doors'. To me it means everything about me and what makes me, regardless of where that happens and it should be MY decision with what happens to that information.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Being a rape victim myself (yes, it can happen to a guy) and not afraid to talk about it openly, I can declare with some level of certainty that being stared at and being raped are two entirely different things, that nobody deserves to be raped, and that GP has their head stuck somewhere that is most likely uncomfortable. How GP was moded insightful for their "no shit, Sherlock" comment, I do not kn....oh....this is Slashdot, right.
For those who might feel the need to ask, I was roofied by my (at the time) GF. I totally would have consented, but lack of consent and the involvement of drugs qualifies it as rape. There are other circumstances (mostly regarding a witness to the event, which is how I'm even aware that it happened) which I will not discuss, in order to protect that witness, but I am open to any legitimate questions regarding the event.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Forget the car stereo analogy I made elsewhere in this thread (though it's also a true story). I learned to get my own damn drinks and keep them in view.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I love it! Not so much to use myself but because I think people are morons for posting the things they do on the internet. If that creepy guy over there seems to be drooling at you as he glances to and from his phone it serves you right. Ha! Hilarious!
Eh.... the following comments from the developer sort of flies in the face of the "it's all innocent!" argument:
"In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control!" (right in the summary) and "helps you see where nearby girls are checking in, and shows you what they look like and how to get in touch" (press release).
That doesn't necessarily mean they advocated stalking, or that they were doing anything illegal/dishonest/that-a-clever-person-can't-do-with-twitter, but this type of of data aggregation, presented as a way to find chicks to hook up with, is just about the definition of creepy.
It might have been somewhat less creepy had they marketed the name and function of the app as "People Around Me" (apparently, you can also search for guys, but I had to dig through the press release to find that out) and allowed users to mark themselves as track-able/approach-able, but they didn't.
Yet another situation where the data we're willingly spraying about can be used in ways we can't anticipate. Now just imagine how they use it behind the scenes.
But there are people who deserve to die.
Also, the developer, i-Free, has their full statement here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/03/31/girls-around-me-developer-defends-app-after-foursquare-dismissal/
True, there is that varient. Perhaps I should have been more specific.. females stalking males who are currently capable (as in not already attached) of returning their interest. Females trying to break up another relationship which they feel entitled too... though even then, outside extreme cases, I encounter the attitude that he must have done something insensitive to her like ditching her (under the idea that women are fragile emotional beings not responsible for their own lives, thus if she is that upset he MUST have done something to injure her). So bullshit all around ^_^
That is some all-around scary shit.
Reminds me of what Sheldon Cooper said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrPpw8A_-xY
I don't see this as being the same at all.
In this case, someone posts their location on Facebook (which I think is kinda dumb) only to have Four Square pick it up, and then have an app scrape that, and then give a bunch of people their current location and personal information.
Reading this, it sounds far more creepy than "hey, she's out in public at a bar she must want to meet people, maybe I'll go introducce myself".
Now, if they didn't post and didn't have it public, it wouldn't happen. But that doesn't make me any less creeped out about how the app worked and how it was advertised.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Rats. Missed that this link was already in the summary. More coffee for me.
Ignoring your gut reaction, what's so creepy about this app? This is exactly the business model of foursquare and facebook - selling your demographic and location information to advertisers. Facebook is only free because you are the product. The only thing that's different here is that Joe-random-public is connecting the dots instead of Starbucks or McDonalds.
-JS
You're only a pervert or creepy if your undesirable to women, when is the last time you've seen an A list celebrity labeled a creep? You don't, in fact the roles are switched and they become the objects of obsession. Bottom line, if your undesirable prepare to be labeled a creep. The good news is that their are billions of women and one of them might find you desirable, keep trying. Don't get married, and dont obsess about someone who doesn't want to be with you. Women can also be more trouble than they're worth sometimes, if your questioning wether to hold or fold, fold.
I believe all Rogers employees deserve to be raped. I am raped by them often enough.
Well Two and A Half Men proved how harmful female stalkers can be. At least it them a way to write Charlie out of the show.
Women who understand men should still be treated decently.
I totally enjoy looking at girls in skimpy clothes, and are grateful that they are that liberal about it. Most of them know reasonably well what they are doing, why bother worrying about it.
What I fail to understand is that you label some woman as bad even though you actually want her and obviously enjoy sex. Maybe if you treat her decently first, you both could still be happy?
Je me souviens.
By that logic, women who wear dresses and walk on stairs want people to stand under and peer upwards.
Similar to patents, perving using a computer is the same thing as being a pervert - it might not be illegal, but it's still a problem on your end.
I am perfectly capable of creeping (on and/or out) the women in my vicinity without the help of an app, thank your very much.
You really think so? The point you're missing is that the recipient needs to have control over whether they respond, or are even seen as "available" to be approached. I actually met my ex-wife through AOL's profile system, but she was listed as looking and had signed her profile up for the service. The difference is in how much information is presented to others without that person's knowledge or control. It's not just a text message to a random stranger, or the even more classic approach an interesting person in the bar; it's an avenue for finding out FAR more of this person's information than what may have been intended, for whatever purposes. It's more akin to searching through a random stranger's garbage and THEN the text.
I do agree with you here, though: " Instead of FB bombarding us with people we might know, why don't they facilitate connections with people we do not know who are interested in the same things that we are? The people I know are that simply because we were born in the same area and ran in to each other. "
I'd love to see services where people can meet other people with like interests, so long as both (or more) participants actually want to participate, know which data is presented, and have control over how much and which data is shown. Just because it's on Facebook doesn't automatically mean I want it on a "Meet Random Strangers" app. My new racquetball partner probably doesn't need to know I have two daughters until/unless it comes up in conversation, just like it has worked for the last how-ever-many thousands of years.
Hey...you can't rape the willing, eh?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How about this: imagine you're the father of an 18 year old girl who is living on her own for the first time. Is this app still not creepy?
The idea that doesn't "rob a woman of her free will" is based on the idea that we have free will when it comes to who we trust. We've all got healthy baseline distrust toward strangers. It takes a bit of a sociopath be good at manipulating people into building trust quickly. Fortunately, there really aren't that many people who can do it, because we're *all* vulnerable to those folks out there who have a knack for making us into love them. Free will is bullshit. We're social animals and we operate by a fairly standard playbook. We're not expecting people to enter into our lives with a complete portrait of who we are, ripe for exploitation. It changes the rules of interaction that have governed our behavior since sometime around when cities arose. It's basically a tool that turns everyone into a potential sociopath and makes a lot more people into potential victims.
"Oh hey, you just got out of the Peace Corps? I was with them in Kenya last year. Did you know so and so? Oh, you're turning 21 tonight? Let me buy you another drink or two."
My "is this thing creepy?" line is somewhere around "would I stop being friends with anyone who used this?" In this case, the answer to that is definitely "yes".
As for people deserving this because they put the info out there or the company that produced it having any kind of moral standing because they didn't break the law? Bullshit. This is not how people intended for their information to be used. Few people have any clue that this sort of thing could exist. Just because privacy concerns are part of the nerd consciousness, does not mean that the hundreds of millions of people using social networking are on the same page. Whether or not this is legal, creating and using it is gross.
This is good information the so labelled should immediately use, and escape to a civilized part of the world.
I always stop at Jewellers shops because I almost became one. One British/Iranian colleague was always unsettled by this, thinking I'm not certain of my orientation, mostly head up - feet down in case you need to know. My fellow citizens are never bothered by this though, this is satisfactory.
Je me souviens.
Well, if a guy is smart...he isn't going to use that intelligence in such a direct manner. It does, however, give him good ammunition for his repoire with her after he approaches. Talking about things that will spark her interests...and he can come off as something in common with her...shared experience...etc.
its all part of the game really....any advantage a guy can have to create intimacy (which girls value highly and react to), and stand out as a bit different from the crowd, and are interesting....will help said guy get laid....or even more if that's what he's after.
One of the main things a guy can do on approach..is get the girl to talk about her self, and if he can work in things HE knows, he can keep her going on, etc.
There has never been a woman that went home complaining that the guy she was with let her talk about herself too much....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I think it's rather more like the girl leaving her diary in what she thought was her living room because she doesn't care if her room-mates read it, but didn't realize there was an invisible (to her) portal marketed by a creepy company to creepy creepers for their creeping pleasure.
Agreed, people need to be more informed about privacy settings and how to ensure that only the people they trust can see the things they want to keep with the trustworthy. For this to happen companies like Facebook need to be far more clear about which data is used for what purposes, and simplify the settings to the point that it's a easy for the user to understand what's happening. Asking for this, though, is like the salmon asking the bear to show it exactly how to avoid being eaten.
Maybe Facebook should be required to warn users more clearly and provide easy to understand settings (or perhaps "even easier to understand"; remember, most of Facebook's users are people who still don't get the difference between a CPU and a computer case, and have zero clue to the real reason Facebook is "free").
"So what is the solution? Why, ban these apps, of course."
Not to add the to creepiness, but I look at apps like these as doing a service: making people wake up to the amount of information they *voluntarily* provide on-line and what could be done with it. Someone could almost as easily make a home-grown program that would do the same thing, or even release the code to as open-source. This app is like a "proof-of-concept" program in the computer security business when a vulnerability is discovered. Sure, maybe it wasn't intended as malicious and this app was withdrawn, but A) it would certainly be useful to people who were intending to be malicious, and B) someone will undoubtedly re-invent it in another form very soon. People need to prepare for that eventuality.
Maybe most of us here could see this coming for years, but most people posting stuff on Facebook don't treat it as the equivalent of stapling a detailed, full-color printed profile on all the telephone poles in your neighborhood *and* every other neighborhood world-wide. They'd never think of doing that in the real world, yet don't think twice about it on Facebook. It's dumb.
But she was askin' for it!
This is often why they're rapists in the first place, so, no, "an eye for an eye" isn't appropriate for serial rapists.
Actually, the only truly effective deterrents are chemical castration, death, or permanent incarceration (depending on the severity of the crime) since rehabilitation is often impossible for these shitbags. Even plain old righteous punishment typically doesn't work, not that our advanced society still engages in this (heh). A more permanent solution is required; these folks were either born broken or have become broken at some point along the way.
It is expected that individuals in certain jobs (primarily dealing with children) show standards of behaviour different from the norm.
In some cases there is a good reason for it...I think it would be difficult for a 18 year old boy to keep their minds on schoolwork if the students were passing around links to pictures of their 22-year old teacher in clubwear at a rave.
Why is it creepy to have all the same information you'd have if you asked a friend of hers?
The "creepy" math is simple: woman finds man attractive, then all advances are "romantic"; woman finds man unattractive, then all advances are "creepy". There's no deeper meaning.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If I feel creeped out... its still creepy.
Yup, that's all there is to it. No, the technology doesn't matter, but why you expect the world to protect you from feeling creepy when it's entirely an emotional respone is beyond me.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well, a step beyond that - it's taking your white pages information, then looking up any references to you in the local papers, then pulling your phone records (if they were publicly available), and compiling a dossier on you.
No, it's not. You can't control what gets written about you in the papers. And white pages is generally "opt out" instead of "opt in".
The "problem" is that it's "trivial" to compile a dossier on people who actively post their private information and make it publically available. If you didn't have publicly viewable profiles (or didnt have a profile at all) on foursquare, facebook, g+, twitter, etc, it wouldn't suddenly be so trivial to be tracked by another layperson.
We only have a conflict because of stupid cretins like yourself. Women are not 'vulnerable, weak and defenseless' as you put it. And they don't need protection. You tried to put these words in my mouth but I didn't wrote them - you did.
Women are the target of many. Males need to stop being predatory toward females. And we need to recognize that A) Yes, many men tend to be predatory toward women and B) This is a bad thing and needs to be stopped.
Once we'll be there a long road will be traveled.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Of course they knew. They read the T&C when they signed up for foursquare/facebook/twitter/whatever. After all, only after they fully read and understood would they click Accept.
You still stand a far lower chance of getting raped in a street if you're wandering alone in the dark. And then killed if the rapist is afraid of you reporting him.
Legal reaction has been mostly stupid on those grounds. Specially considering the fact that with all they did, it is still very tedious to get a rape reported. Not mentioning that everybody either laugh at you or doubt you - at the worst possible time.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
+1
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Hmm. I see what you're saying, and agree Snooki isn't exactly a classy lady, but I don't know if I like where this argument leads, even after removing the "rape" part of the equation.
/shrug) moral levels, too, albeit more discreetly.
By this logic, if person #1 decides that person #2's behavior is amoral or atypical enough from their own moral standards, person #1 can can treat person #2 like shit/meat/a victim/whatever while avoiding any moral repercussion of their own. Since comparing morality doesn't have an objective benchmark (other than existing laws, I guess, but that's a discussion all on its own), this isn't a very good precedent; you may end up with some "Lawful Good" (so to speak) cop beating the shit out of some "Neutral Good" (again, so to speak) nursing student to "teach them a lesson in morality".
I think the best you can really say is if someone is acting like a piece of trash and engaging in behavior you find reprehensible, you have the right to avoid them entirely, and perhaps cite laws or your own ethical code of conduct, depending how much you give a shit about "correcting" someone's behavior (it's my opinion that your case be stronger than "god says so!"). You don't have the right to deviate from how you'd treat anybody else, though, unless the offensive/damaging behavior is directed at you and/or harming you or yours.
In other words, this thinking means that while you're busy treating Snooki like the trash she is, you have no business bitching about others treating you like the trash they see you as for your perceived moral failings. Snooki's actually a great example; it's a logical disconnect to watch her (or others like her) bitch about how shitty some asshole is to her, while they in turn bitch about how morally bankrupt some skank at the bar is. It's probably a good assumption that the same thing happens at other (higher?
The more I think about it, the idea of ignoring other people's "reprehensible" behavior when it doesn't affect your life in any way is actually a pretty damn good one.
I think it's rather more like the girl leaving her diary in what she thought was her living room because she doesn't care if her room-mates read it, but didn't realize there was an invisible (to her) portal marketed by a creepy company to creepy creepers for their creeping pleasure. . .
I think you've put your finger on the fundamental disconnect here. Our naive diary author likely switched it to public because, after all, how else will her college friends find her? Once she made it public though, the creepy company started selling her data because, after all, it's public: "What do you mean that isn't what you intended to happen? Why else would you make your diary and location public if you didn't want people to find you? Aren't we simply helping you make it happen?? Why are you complaining???"
Asking for [clarity], though, is like the salmon asking the bear to show it exactly how to avoid being eaten.
How does the quote go?
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"-Upton Sinclair
And that's why this misunderstanding will never go away.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
And if they shut the door in your face, the community around you would let you know that continuing to pursue that person is Not Cool, and they would tell you in various ways.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Does anyone ever deserve to be killed?
I sure as hell wouldn't respond to a text message from some random person who thought we could be friends.
I had something kinda similar happen to me.
Texted a friend who I hadn't talked to in a while. "Hey Jon, got a few?"
"There's no Jon here, don't text me again or I'll call the cops on you."
The language the receiving party used in their reply was... far more uncouth, shall we say, with a distinct ghetto flavor. I believe in that person's assessment, my attempt to contact a friend at an obviously old number somehow qualified me as a "Bitch-ass faggot nigga" or something equally stereotypical.
I've also had a situation where I've been receiving texts out of the blue as if I were in the middle of a multi-user chat. Nested replies and everything. I politely asked to please remove my number as I am not (nor I have I ever been) Mikaela (whoever the hell that is). Their insistence that I was, indeed, their friend Mikaela was quite persistent and I unfortunately had to resort to a similar tactic of threatening to call the police (even though it would have went nowhere, because the cops around here don't give a shit).
I kinda feel bad for Mikaela, her friends probably gave her a lot of shit the following day.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Do you think this would be somehow different than knocking on a strangers door to ask if she'd like to go out with you?
That is how my wife's parents met.
'Am I within the Restraining Order Zone' app, soon at the app store nearest you.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Indeed, I'm all for treating people decently. It would be nice if everyone was, but the fact of the matter is that's not the case. I've stated in this thread that women who dress and act slutty do not get my respect and I did mean that; that does not, however, mean that I would simply not speak to them or interact with them.
That said, one should note that I said dress AND act, inclusively. This was to be taken literally; just because a girl dresses slutty doesn't mean she's a slut. Some women love the attention but make boundaries very clear by simply saying "no" when hit on by a guy they have no interest in, and I respect them for that. As for girls who act slutty but don't dress the part, in my experience, getting into costume is the first step in the act, but were I ever to encounter a slutty girl who didn't look the part, she probably wouldn't get much respect from me, no.
The fact is that I don't want a slutty woman, regardless of my enjoyment of sex and independent of any interpersonal feeling you may wish to project onto others. Further, I never labeled anyone, good or bad. This would be why you fail to understand why I did so. I'm a married man, my wife doesn't dress or act slutty, and I treat her with the utmost respect. Yous assumptions and projections are, quite frankly, insulting.
As an aside, I think this thread hold the record for most occurrences of the word "slut" ever on Slashdot.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
and the app is still available on Installous course you dont have to pay for any apps on installous :)
To get installous open Cydia and add a new source, then add the http://cydia.hackulo.us/ repository.
then you can download installous appstore which has all apps on the normal store, except they are now all free.
also installous keeps all apps even if they are removed by apple from the main appstore they will always be available on installous for jailbroken users.
They protest for the right to have an equal salary and equal rights, but I don't see a whole lot of feminists protesting for the right to have to sign up for Selective Service like men do. It puts me off that they'll gladly even out the societal lead that we have but they have basically zero desire to take on the same responsibilities.
I've stopped holding doors open for women, letting them be in front, etc. (with the exception of people I know). If they want equal treatment, I'll treat them as equals. I don't go out of my way to be polite, but I don't give them any extra consideration, either. With equality you don't just gain the benefits - you also lose some perks.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I should have proofread...
that does not, however, mean that I would simply not speak to them or interact with them.
Should read:
that does not, however, mean that I would disrespect them, either; I would simply not speak to them or interact with them.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Exactly! The only solution is to fight fire with fire!
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
You do realize that you are using the term wholly out of context, correct? Are you wasting our time or trying to make an unfunny joke? He did use an absolute, EVER. No one should EVER be raped, EVER, in the entirety of the Cosmos. No human should inflict that type of harm on another for any reason, even in retribution for an equally heinous act. It is an impossible position to condone and why i will always call out people who think 'pound in the as prison' is an acceptable term to use in the 21st century.
Good-bye
And we already do that kinda stuff anyway!
"Hey, your friend's kinda cute... what are her interests?"
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I don't see anything wrong with nudity, honestly.
You haven't been to a nude beach. And no, there aren't hot women at nude beaches. There are, however, everyone else.
I don't give FB enough information to try to infer people I might like to know.
And anyone else who feels the same way as you should do the same.
Don't know any better? Learn.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
It shouldn't have to come to data protection laws. people should have enough sense to NOT publish every minute detail about their lives.
Quite. This is creepy, but not in the way that people have been harping on about. The outcry is at entirely the wrong target.
It's creepy that people publish so much about themselves without thinking, it's creepy that it's possible to know exactly where people are and who they are and everything they like and dislike and do and who their friends are. The fact some guy comes out with some cheap data scraper that takes readily available information and packages it up with a smutty logo and tacky name doesn't make it any worse- it was already a bad thing.
Since when is it gay to compliment a woman?
Does anyone ever deserve to be killed?
not for the way they dress
Likewise if you can't talk or interact with someone you may not know but are interested in knowing.
How did people make new friends before networks?
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
The "creepy" math is simple: woman finds man attractive, then all advances are "romantic"; woman finds man unattractive, then all advances are "creepy". There's no deeper meaning.
Is that you, butthurt basement dweller?
I can think of a few politicians and lobbiests who do.
Without lube.
Maybe with an implement wrapped in sand paper.
no, lots of people thought this - they complained about privacy and were told to shut up, there's nothing wrong.
well, here you see exactly why you want strong privacy controls on your data.
Indeed and the point wasn't that it's ok to mistreat someone else under any circumstance. The whole point here it does happen, not that it should or that it's OK or in any way justified. Knowing that it does happen, regardless how wrong it is, why would someone choose to put themselves in that position?
As a rape victim, myself, victimized by my (at the time) GF, I reflected on how it happened and implemented behavorial changes to prevent it from happening in the future. For one, I get my own drinks, now; and I don't drink it if it's left my sight. I also make a distinct disconnect between being raped and dressing or acting slutty, so the whole rape scenario didn't enter into my mind when I posted; I was spending time with a girl I was dating, dressed in rather modest clothes, when it happened to me.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Don't let RMS read this thread..
Bingo! This guy gets it!
Again, I have never treated a woman like this, nor would I. I tend to avoid women who invite this kind of behavior, as a general rule. My wife actually has some self respect, as well as my full respect; were she the type to dress slutty and flirt with every guy she meets for attention, she would not be my wife, nor would she have my respect.
...and here's where we have the problem. In some parts of the world, a woman showing her hair/face/legs/wrists/ankles/etc. is considered to be "dressing slutty" and "flirting" is also defined as doing these things in a public place where men might see them.
In other parts of the world (such as nude beaches), a woman could be lying naked on the ground and other regulars there would hardly notice.
With the internet, as with today's multicultural society, you get these groups plus everyone in-between being pressed into the same meat/cyberspace, with predictable results.
And you've identified the real issue here too... respect. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about men or women, Foursquare/Facebook/Bar/park, etc. It's about what causes people to gain/lose respect for each other. People who break taboos through ignorance lose just as much respect as those who do it intentionally, even if for different reasons.
None of those things are "perverted" acts, unless the intent is to be a pervert in the first place.
I don't feel guilty when I do any of those things, and don't have to, because I'm not going to act indecently in any of those situations. It's not hard to recognize that many of my daughters' elementary school friends are going to grow up as beautiful women; hell, my daughters are too, and that worries me because it's my job to teach them ways they can behave when they do get to be fully grown, beautiful women, while being totally ill-equipped to do so. I can't afford to ignore what my kids and their besties are going to grow into; I'm sure as hell not gonna allow that to come as a surprise if I can help it.
A friend of mine has a 17 year old who has a pretty good body; he and I discussed that fact just the other day, actually. He's worried her future boyfriends won't see her for anything more than her looks, where he sees her as his perfect, genius, wonderful little girl. Her mom seems to have it under control though (we hope). I've known her since she was wee tiny, though, so the "funny feeling" really doesn't apply here... Still, I also don't feel guilty about seeing a hot chick and thinking "Damn! That's a hot chick!" before I find out she's only 17, at which point I'd think "Damn! I hope whoever that kid ends up with is a guy who treats her right!". If you make the much healthier decision that women closer to your own age are better relationship prospects, this whole thing really becomes a non-issue anyway.
There's a co-worker of mine who's super hot, and mine isn't the only jaw that drops when she wears sweaters to the company Christmas party, but it's easy to keep to business while we're at work because (get this) it's time for work. I also don't find the need to act on those urges; she's attractive, but I really don't picture her naked in my head all day long. I've found I'm not looking for sexual conquest anymore, especially at work. Frankly, I have more important shit to do.
Anyway, I don't feel guilty about ANY of these situations, because I know what's appropriate for me to feel and/or act on, I know what is NOT appropriate for me to feel and/or act on, and I know it doesn't make me less of a man to exercise the judgement and self-discipline required to behave like a normal person.
If you're looking at a kid you know is 17 year old (or hell, any girl that's too young for your old ass man self; it's not just about the arbitrary age of 18) and fantasizing about screwing her, or taking a picture of a random kid's smile with the intent to get all pedophile-y later on, or staring at a co-workers heaving and half-exposed rack like you're gonna motorboat the shit out of them instead of discussing today's TPS reports with her, then I'm sorry, but you're really not grown up yet and you SHOULD feel guilty. You still need to learn when it's appropriate to act on the urges most guys feel, and when it's time to set them aside for a more appropriate time and place (not to mention age, ya weirdo). Studies have also shown that women have to deal with their own brand of urges, too (though they may be an alien concept to men entirely; my gender prevents me from attaining this exact knowledge). They generally seem able to compartmentalize their actions and thoughts a lot sooner and more efficiently than men are. Whether it's due to societal pressures or biological hardwiring, or men being the weaker sex, or who the hell knows why else, women still have to struggle between "appropriate" and "OooShinyAllForMe" too. Even though some people might be better at it than others, everybody on the planet, of both genders, has to decide to compartmentalize their urges, or be a douchebag. If you're this kind of douchebag, you can quit whining about it and stop being a douchebag, too, just like the rest of us.
It's not about feeling guilt, and to hell with anybody who tries to make you feel guilty, unless you're not "that guy" in the paragraph above. Being a man (a
Oh..wait.. you want equal ability to go anywhere a man can? Well, sounds like we have a conflict...
No conflict... that's what burqas are for.
Now that we've got that out of the way, remember that any non-alpha male has the same problems, with fewer legal defenses.
If he really had no idea what that app could be used for, he's by no means any better than the idiots targeted with the app.
Fuck, does it really take more than two brain cells to figure out what's going to happen with this? Are people really that stupid?
Depends... this is all data available on Foursquare and Facebook. And we've seen that people really are stupid enough to use those services, even though it doesn't take more than a few brain cells to figure out how people are going to abuse THOSE services.
So assuming that slut means promiscuous woman, I never used the word actually, would you still discriminate (giving them less respect than the ones that follow your standards) against people who give physical contact and sex away too (according to your standards?) freely?
I can understand that you wouldn't want to marry a promiscuous woman, just what you mean with giving respect is too vague to me.
Assuming you are monogamous, you still interact with people that can behave slutty. Will you still act differently towards them even if you have no sexual interest?
You do understand that limiting other peoples reproductive and social behaviours can seriously harm their well-being. Given that these are core aspects of our existence (what your parents never had sex?) the danger that you are doing serious damage is far too great.
Je me souviens.
And there is the disconnect between geeks and non geeks, or on a broader term, laymen and non-laymen.
EVEN IF OF THEIR OWN DOING, people are going to construe an app that takes information they themselves provide and use it in such a manner as creepy.
I understand they need to lock down their profile.
But that isnt the point. Its the perception.
There is a staunch difference in the scenario you are depicting and what this app was aimed to do, just as there is a difference in what the app is aimed to do versus what Facebook and Foursquare are aimed to do.
Dont get me wrong, I am not saying the users should not carry most of the blame because they should, and yes, legally they are (the app maker) doing nothing wrong. And im as liberal as they come when it comes to rights
. . . but its still creepy as shit
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
It's one thing to compliment a woman. It's another to compliment her accessories.
"You look nice today."
"Your eyes are stunning."
vs.
"Those shoes look great, where did you get them?"
"That purse really matches your outfit."
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
How dare they let people know information I published about myself? That information was to be use only for marketing purposes and to let them know better ways to convince me tu buy the same stuff and by the government to nail me because I apparently visit the sames spots as someone who smokes weed and whatever other things they disaprove like religious criticism in Ireland.
But... the future refused to change.
I don't give FB enough information to try to infer people I might like to know.
I'd be curious how you did that. A couple years ago, my girlfriend talked me into getting a Facebook account . I entered in only the basic, required information and nothing else. Immediately upon initial login, without entering in any additional information, it suggested a list of about 10 people who could potentially be my friends. Six of those people I actually knew. One had previously sent me an invite to FB; I have no idea how FB came up with the others! I ended up never using the account and subsequently "deleted" it.
Jesus H Christ on a fucking crutch, Slashdot.
It's their fault if they tell the world?! These people are computer illiterate! For many of them, Facebook IS the fucking Internet! And they've been told about this new thing called Foursquare that their friends are using, and they connect their Facebook profile to it or whatever, and it's all happy happy joy fun because
THEY. DO. NOT. UNDERSTAND. TECHNOLOGY.
You get this? They don't read this fucking site every day. They don't get how the services work. They may have HEARD about Facebook privacy but they don't get how it applies to them because they do not understand how it works and they will not care to learn. This is like arcane magic from the depths of Narnia to them!
Yeah, they're ignorant. And now here's the punchline, kids - that might make them dumb, but it doesn't make this app any less of a colossal shitstain that needs to die in a fire as quickly as possible, because it makes stalking and sexual harrassment easier. And do you know what happens, when it's made easier? IT HAPPENS MORE. Do you know what gender disproportionately suffers from both of the above, along with the consequences of the above, such as rape and violent assault? WOMEN.
And that's why, if you read the reactions in the CultofMac article, the dude's female friends were horrified from the start. For the men, it's just a neat fucking trick, but for the women, it actively makes the world a more dangerous place for them AND THEY KNOW IT. They're right to be scared. The statistics are there and they're just as shitty every year. So you can whine about how you'd never use it like that, but you should fucking well know at this stage that there are plenty of men out there who would.
If you assholes had any balls at all, you'd get off your fucking high horse and take a stand on shit like this. You'd step in and try to educate the ignorant, and get an app like this pulled because YOU, Mr Smart Computer Nerd, know the consequences and you expect people to trust your knowledge and experience every day when it comes to technical stuff.
Fuck you if you think that this app is okay. It's not. And the fact that most of you aren't willing to say it - and the way you revert to 'they should have known better', as if these technophobes are able to just grasp all the stuff that's instantly clear to a tech nerd - really highlights the sheer level of total douchebaggery on this site.
Why does this shit get so frequently modded up on slashdot? Perhaps an over-abundance of basement-dwellers get mod points or something.
It's sexist because it's making sweeping (and frequently incorrect) remarks about 50% of the population.
It's bad enough that people post bullshit like this. It's worse that it gets modded up.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And we need to recognize that A) Yes, men in general* tend to be predatory toward women and B) This is how nature works** and it will not change.
* to varying degrees, and with exceptions, but behavioural studies are clear on this.
** except with the species where females behave predatory towards males.
Once we'll be there a long road will be traveled.
Fixed that for you... seriously, pal.
You do understand that limiting other peoples reproductive and social behaviours can seriously harm their well-being.
I certainly do, and I never proposed any such limits. I simply said, knowing what's out there, one should expect to be treated a certain way when they dress and/or act a certain way. I state this quite explicitly in the first paragraph of the post to which you are replying. I did fail to proofread prior to posting, but you will note the correction I posted immediately after.
Given that these are core aspects of our existence (what your parents never had sex?) the danger that you are doing serious damage is far too great.
There is no danger that I am doing serious damage by simply not associating with someone who acts in a way I find unacceptable. If you wish to argue this further, please go into great detail regarding how, by not interacting with someone, I am causing any damage at all.
The fact here is that, through extreme attention-seeking behavior, including social and sexual promiscuity, people often times are doing more damage to their own self-esteem and self-image than I, or anyone else, could ever do. Case in point, one of my best friends in high school, very well respected girl but for some reason after graduation felt the need to seek any form of intimacy she could get. After a year or so of social and sexual promiscuity, she came to the conclusion that she was useless, that nobody wanted her, that she would never be good enough for anyone to actually stay in her life. Why? Because all the guys she was flirting and sleeping with were using her, none of them stuck around for very long, and she thought it was a problem with her, as a person.
Well, she survived her suicide attempt and reevaluated her behavior while she was in the hospital, and came to realize that her behavior was attracting the kind of people who use people. She made behavorial changes and has been the happy girl I remember from high school ever since and is now in a committed relationship with a man who treats her well. Her life has improved since she moved on from her slutty phase, and I don't think anyone would argue that.
To be clear, I have no problem with people dressing or acting however the hell they want. I have the right to not associate with people I don't wish to associate with and I excercise that right vigorously. What I have a problem with is people, knowing what is out there, acting like they shouldn't expect to be treated a certain way when they dress and act a certain way. If you dress like you're looking for attention, don't be surprised when you get it. That's all I'm saying. With regards to my friend from the story above, she knew what she was doing and she accepted the consequences rather than complaining about being hit on. What she didn't realize was that the reason she couldn't find a decent guy was directly related to how she dressed and acted. When she changed her behavior, she changed her whole life. What I have a problem with is people expecting to be treated better than they treat themselves.
That leaves the following question: Do I tend to treat people better or worse than they treat themselves?
I'd say I treat people at least as well as they treat themselves. I tend to treat a person with respect from the start and, if I determine that they're not the kind or person I want to associate with, I simply stop associating with them, no mistreatment or disrespect involved. If they care to ask why I don't talk to them anymore, I politely explain that our lifestyles are not compatible and that it's nothing against them, as a person, but rather their behavior, something they have full control over changing if they wish, that I choose to not associate with.
Surely, there are people you don't associate with?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
In case my previous reply was too involved for you to follow, I'm not saying I don't respect a woman's right to dress or act however they choose. I certainly respect that, and believe me when I say I do like to look, too. There's nothing wrong with promiscuity, either, provided all parties involved are consenting. There's a difference between acting slutty and being promiscuous.
I have no respect for anyone who knowingly puts themselves in a position they don't want to be in, through their own actions, then complains about being in that position. To be clear, in this instance I am talking about women who dress provocatively and behave flirtatiously, then complain when they get hit on or used for a one night stand. Well? If that's not what you want, don't act like that's what you're after, pretty simple concept and I have zero respect for anyone who can't wrap their head around it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Dude... Have you actually read the CoM article on this? The gist of it, any, is this:
I've a Linux friend who took a schmuck look at his girlfriend while girls around freaked out due to how unaware they were about this whole thing.
Sorry to say, but you sound precisely like the Linux schmuck described in that article.
The loss of privacy in today's society is becoming too much. Just 10 years ago we would have never dreamt we would be giving all this away.
Already exists. Called Grindr.
I'm sure they though it would be cool to show you if there were any hot girls in the club, before you paid to go. Or which of the 8 starbucks in the vicinity had hot girls.
But as far as "someone could use this for some pretty bad purposes" well people can already use the current technology for some pretty bad purposes. This app just made it easier.
Well, that's one opinion. Do you think this would be somehow different than knocking on a strangers door to ask if she'd like to go out with you?
It would be more like going up to a strange girl in the coffee shop/laundrymat/grocery store/library/street and talking to her.
While you may not use facebook to meet girls/guys a LOT of people(errr kids) do. Facebook is a way to meet people.
if I only had mod points... then again, you don't need them it seems
Speaking as a male and a avid Slashdot poster. I've never really had the problem of women stalking me before and wonder why it hasn't happened yet?
Been there, done that. In the late nineties, I was stalked for over a year by a former GF, which served to validate that breaking up with her a couple or three months after we started dating because she was a potentially violent nutjob was a spot-on decision. Of course, she later turned that "potentially" into "actually" (and even got one of her crazy friends to help) and I was forced - in a public place - to physically defend myself. No one was charged with anything, and I walked away from the whole thing feeling pretty lucky that *I* wasn't charged with something for defending myself to the minimum extent necessary to defer further attack. Yes, that means I hit a chick. In public. On the street. With witnesses. It was slam-dunk self defense, and one strike was enough to convince them both to back off, but the possibility of being arrested was at the front of my mind as events unfolded, even though I'd tried to walk away only to be attacked from behind.
I was then, and am now, on the fence regarding the fact that it happened in a country where ownership of handguns is illegal and ownership of long guns is both restricted to shotguns only, and is very difficult. On the one hand, it meant she couldn't get one. On the other, it meant I couldn't get one either, and I lived in real fear of her coming after me with a knife or bat. She was that far over the edge. I went underground for two years, during which time I moved into a place where the lease, power, water, phone, everything were not in my name, and switched cell phones (to a different carrier, not just number) because she worked for the parent company of the one I had at the time and could have gotten any number I switched to.
You're absolutely right, it's not taken nearly as seriously, even now, when a woman stalks a man as when it's the other way around. Even when she's truly dangerous, it's just not taken as seriously. I'm just glad it never became a deadly force situation, because I most likely would have been the one to go to jail, especially if there were no witnesses.
You make a good point too. The issue isn't as black and white as simply "blaming the victim." Instead of saying "it's the slut's fault for getting raped because she's a slut!" many people are trying to say "don't put yourself in that vulnerable a position.", which I get.
The place to draw the line, however, is well before we get to "if you don't like getting raped, make sure you change everything about your life to avoid it, because it's your fault it happened."
It's a slippery slope from being asked to take rational precautions (it's unfortunate enough that this is true) and being told that you were dressed or behaving like bait. The point of being so careful with the treatment of rape, or any type of sexual assault, really, is it's a personal violation from the get-go; often the victim feels regret and guilt about the situation already, and excusing the attacker as a known force that should have been avoided is counterproductive.
I would actually argue that this is something along the lines of what Zuckerberg had as a vision for Facebook, letting people hook up with people around them. He wasn't as blatant about it, but I think it serves the same purpose. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if when you check in on Facebook that it would show you other people who have recently checked in near you (it may already do that, I've never "checked in").
I just don't see anything creepy about getting a list of everyone around you with information about them that they made public. It seems like a natural progression, actually. If people have certain details publicly available, and they also publicly check in to places where they are, then why not join the two? See a list of everyone who has checked in around you, it makes perfect sense. It would also be a great new way to meet people in a bar, you see a girl on her phone and you jump on and find out who she is based on pictures and send her a flirtatious message on Facebook. This just seems like a natural progression between social networks, location services, and dating sites - real time information about the people who are actually around you who also want to meet other people. I frankly don't see what problem people have with this, and I also don't understand what TOS were violated for Foursquare.
It also may screw up a potential idea for an app I'm working on. Bah.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
it's making sweeping (and frequently incorrect) remarks about 50% of the population
Also frequently correct. When you really look at sexual attraction, what motivates it is often unflattering. Being attracted to "confidence" is just socially acceptable code for power or dominance. This is often related to wealth, another thing to which you're not supposed to admit to being attracted. Men have a simpler drive, but we're usually told to be ashamed to look at a woman's body - this is objectification, etc.
On the one hand, it's easy to see why stigmas like these exist: looking no further than a woman's body is an easy path to misery, men who are the most dominant are often also the most abusive. Our biology is what it is, however, and it does us no good to just deny it. These sorts of comments are just people venting their frustration, don't make too much out of it.
Indeed and I've battled with this for the last 14 years.
You can never blame the victim for the occurance of a crime, you can only fault the victim for making themselves an easy target, relative to others around them. Even at that, not every crime is committed against easy targets. When my former GF roofied me, it would have been much simpler for her to ask for consent and, had she taken the easy route, it wouldn't have been rape. I could not have prevented this, because it was perpetrated by someone I knew and trusted, but I did learn from it and now I get my own drinks and don't drink anything that's left my sight. It's not perfect prevention, but it's a simple measure I can easily take. Similarly, I no longer leave my radio faceplate in my car, let alone on the radio, after having one stolen; in that case I did make myself an easy target, I was in a nice area and figured the risk wasn't enough to warrant the extra effort. I was proven wrong and I learned from it.
I guess it boils down to recognizing your mistakes and learning from them. If there's not a clear-cut mistake that was made, one still must make the effort to learn from the situation and look for a way to prevent it in the future. It's not a perfect system but it does preven repeat occurances.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
But I see you posted no actual argument for your position, or even a description of your position. What's your definition of "creepy" that works for a larger set of people than mine? Are are you just in it for the ad-hominums?
Realistically, I think you're just reflexively white-knighting, thinking nothing more here than "ZOMG some mean man said somehting bad about weak, vulnerable women, must protect!" That's pretty sad, if true.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's still correct to say it was pulled because of the outcry - what are the chances it would have been removed otherwise? They'd managed to get 70000 installs before having their access revoked.
No, it is totally creepy that you even give a shit enough to read what she ate last week. Facebook is 100% creepy, everybody there is just spying on each other and constantly being a voyeur. That is its entire purpose.
Yes, knowing those details about somebody is creepy. Regardless of whether or not they made the information available. YOU looked it up. YOU read it. YOU have some reason for knowing these things.
Fucking creepy facebook stalkers. All of you.
Why, ban these apps, of course.
I realize that when you say this you intended the apps that display the information, exposing the privacy violation, but why not ban the data aggregators causing the privacy violation in the first place? Why not ban Foursquare?
Because they're bigger and have more money? Probably because people would protest, but I don't think they'd protest too hard unless some pundit declared that this was big bad government sweeping in to take away their freedom to publicly expose themselves. I'm rambling, but the US currently has no laws limiting this kind of data collection by private organizations and that's a significant problem.
It's simple man: It's because (face it) WOMEN DO THE CHOOSING, boys! In the end, that IS how it "really works", like it or not.
You're not a "real man" (no sarcasm) if you can't control your cock (in other words, letting it do your thinking for you or make you a pussy whipped fool). If a woman doesn't want you? Walk away and say "next", but don't make pussy the 'end all/be all' of your existence either. Men are in much higher competition for women, than women are for men. Reminds me of a joke I heard once: Little boy says to little girl on X-Mas day while comparing presents each received "Look at my BB gun!" Little girl says "Look at my $million dollar trust fund and Barbie with Club House and all accessories" (this continues for a while, the girl keeps on outdoing the boy). Eventually the little boy pulls out his penis and says "Yea, well, I got one of these and you don't!" and the little girl says "big deal: I have one of these (pointing to her vagina) and with 1 of these? I can get all of those I ever want!". Truer words were never spoken. It is how it works, and women do the choosing boys, like it or not.
I just read the summary and remembered I saw a picture with the words "Girls Around Me" and I thought it was an ad for a movie so I ignored it. Don't watch movies anymore.
I don't know why it's a creepy app as it just increases the men's hunting chances a little. It's not as if men aren't doing this anyway and women know, expect, and count on it. Personally, I think foursquare didn't like their public data being used when they weren't getting a cut. Also I'm sure women don't want to give men any help in the chase.
Why is it creepy to have all the same information you'd have if you asked a friend of hers?
The "creepy" math is simple: woman finds man attractive, then all advances are "romantic"; woman finds man unattractive, then all advances are "creepy". There's no deeper meaning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBVuAGFcGKY
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
How about this: imagine you're the father of an 18 year old girl who is living on her own for the first time. Is this app still not creepy?
If my 18 year old is using Foursquare, which by design broadcasts her location to the Internet, and has a Facebook page with her personal (or identifying) data available to the Internet, then No. Expecially because it doesn't do anything that can't be done with just a few more mouse clicks (or taps to you younglings).
When I was a teenager I used to search female profiles on AOL and send text messages to strangers. No one thought it was creepy...
Back in those days, people expected that the information they entered about themselves in their profile would be accessible and searchable by random strangers, and it was considered acceptable to seek people out in that way. Anyone could enter public chatrooms, see the screen name of everyone else in the room, and send them private messages - this too was acceptable. However, most people don't expect modern social networking sites to work that way. The expectation is that only people you already know will see the things you post to Facebook, regardless of your privacy settings. As someone else pointed out, looking up random people on Facebook is comparable to knocking on random people's front doors.
My how times have changed.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Don't want people looking at your information? Well don't make it publicly available. I don't understand why is this case any different from any other "user cries because she/he fails to read what is written".
"The "creepy" math is simple: woman finds man attractive, then all advances are "romantic"; woman finds man unattractive, then all advances are "creepy". There's no deeper meaning."
In high school, if not before, you would have seen this behavior in detail quite often. It and the women who espouse it just get worse from there.
"'Why does this shit get so frequently modded up on slashdot?""
This is slashdot, users are well aquainted with the above behavior. Take your Politically Correct BullShit somewhere else!
Posting anonymously as i'm currently using IE on Vista, Uh!
Her friend would presumably size you up and screen you for whether you could be trusted with the information.
actually, other people's posts appear on my main facebook page if i'm friends with them. i dont't have to actively seek this information.
i dont know that a post is a useless ' what i ate last night' thing or something amusing/interesting. until after i have read it.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
I'd like to add that (annecdotally) whenever a girl did not reciprocate my feelings, I was consistently labeled "creepy". I understand this may not be the norm and that the girls who did reciprocate my feelings may have simply been oblivious to my creepiness.
Its a sad thing that these circumstances are still treated with less seriousness than the more commonly accepted
"male stalking female" behavior.
I know a local lesbian who has had no end of trouble getting the police here to take her issues seriously, being stalked by a former lover (brief relationship of a couple of weeks before the psycho started showing).
Its troubling to think that they dont take seriously someone whom is currently suffering from having an unwanted person hanging round their home, watching their schedule, leaving 'gifts' (on one occasion narcotics), trying to force this person to be around them.
I worry to think of how traumatizing it could be for a male to be stalked by another male and to have this kind of thing ignored (men typically being more aggressive in their stalking, statistically speaking)
Ignoring this behavior can shatter a persons life, victims can be seriously psychologically scarred by the experience if it draws out over as short a time as a few months if the stalker is particularly active. It can take decades for some people to rebuild after a stalker who may only spend less than a year in jail if that.
And now for the oblig. car analogy:
It doesnt matter if your driving a Ferrari, a Land Rover or an old VW Beetle, if someone is tailgating you about a yard/meter from the end of your car and your doing 60 miles an hour, it dosent matter if they are in a Maserati, a Lexus, a Combi van or a fully loaded Semi trailer... they shouldnt be there, and if they dont back off, it can seriously fuck up your life.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
well in this case.. the app was called "girls near me" not "12 inch ramrods near me"
I agree with your fix on A). But B? Seriously?
Are you sure that's how nature works? To me, it looks as if this is a construct of the judeo-christian society where you're forbidden to see a breast until 16, you're told those things are "a sin" and other craptastic notions like this. Way to screw things up. These notions might have served a purpose back in the day (the same as not eating pork, circumcision, etc served a purpose for society a long time ago) but in the 21st century, we should really know better, I'm sorry. There are also all the bullshit we're feeding our kids, on the form of Hollywood movies advocating for women to wait for the prince charming and men to do all sort of stupid things. I'm sure the impact of this pile of shit we feed our children from very young has more to do with the way we see sex than any kind of natural tendency.
This screwed up education has an effect on men AND women leading to an often confrontational relation when it comes to sex. There is absolutely no shred of evidence that there is anything "natural" or "biological" about this. I'm willing to be proven wrong if you have references of course.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
If you're providing all that info to the public, what would you expect people to do with it? I don't post my GPS location, and tweet what I'm doing every minute of the day.
Even you probably leak a lot more information than you realise. For example every site which logs your connecting IP knows your rough location, so a profile of everywhere you have ever been in the last 10 years (within a few km) could be compiled quite easily by someone with access to that history. Say you post on Facebook a lot, that means Facebook has that information for every day of your life you have posted there if they choose to store it (personally I don't have a Facebook account, but the principle works for other accounts). Your CV on linked on contains a mine of information, any tweets you do make give a good idea of your interests, your purchases on Amazon give a really good idea of what you bought and where you were when you bought it, who your friends are (Amazon wish lists you have bought on), anything your friends do on Facebook mentioning or picturing you can be used etc, etc. If you are a member of Facebook or G+, every single website you visit with those buttons on it (which is almost every website nowadays) is providing info on your visit back to Facebook and Google, and even if you are not a member, Facebook or G+ may well have ghost account set up for you without your knowledge. Same goes for advertisers.
Even for those who avoid Facebook there is a huge amount of information out there ready to be mined at some stage - we are living in a very different world from that of 20 years ago even, and this privacy issue is not going to go away, and is not confined to Facebook and Foursquare - those sort of sites are more just accepting the inevitable - your data will be mined, it's just a question of how hard you want to make it. Personally I avoid such sites as there is too much potential for nasty usage of this data, but it doesn't mean I am not tracked, just tracked less.
One idea which occurred to me for persistent twitterers was that workplaces will probably start retroactively mining tweets for information on where an employee was, and whether they were working at times when they state they were working - it would be quite easy to build up an almost complete picture of work patterns (say) going back several years for someone who uses twitter a lot - a scary thought.
Erelong applications of all this public data will be ubiquitous, and even if you try to avoid being tracked, in many ways you can't avoid it.
"I did fail to proofread prior to posting, but you will note the correction I posted immediately after."
I noticed after I sent the reply.
"There is no danger that I am doing serious damage by simply not associating with someone who acts in a way I find unacceptable. If you wish to argue this further, please go into great detail regarding how, by not interacting with someone, I am causing any damage at all."
Well, assuming that people like/need to communicate with others, withholding that possibility can make them feel isolated and some get depressed. I would grant you the right to be stressed out by unnecessarily talkative people, but your behaviour could erect some "wall of silence" if copied. I remember situations where I felt about silence like that.
Also ghettoization happens not only because some party builds a wall around another group but because people move closer to similarly minded people, here is an example:
"To take just one example: a large number of Muslim teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, reputedly an enlightened institution with liberal outlook and social sensitivity, prefer to live in Muslim-dominated colonies or ghettos rather than on university campus after 1992."
From here:
http://twocircles.net/2010apr14/living_together_separately_ghettoization_muslims.html
I personally think we should rather try to live all mixed up, if we claim we live in the same country. While you are not that far yet, ghettoization is the next step.
Regarding the "great damage", I could point you to the Origins of violence paper by Prescott, that appeared around 1975 in the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists". While we are not talking about bringing up children, I have the suspicion that it is still important for the larger society. Personally I would rather follow the precautionary principle regarding my social interactions.
Here is a link:
http://www.violence.de/
Don't worry it is an english language website. Also there is some nudity.
I just went to some erotic massage training course over the weekend, one woman there said that she has stopped judging people. I wished more people were like that. But yes, I find the society of promiscuous people relaxing, I'm almost ready to move into some sort of ghetto :).
Je me souviens.
I think the main problem is how you come across. I remember maybe 8 years ago, I met a girl at a bus stop and immediately started talking to her like I knew her - because I was absolutely sure I knew her and just couldn't remember her name and where I met her. We had a good talk for a few minutes until I was finally convinced I *really* didn't know her at all. But it was an absolutely innocent, un-creepy situation, she was a nice girl, at the end I knew she really wanted to meet me again, but I had to say goodbye (I was in a relationship and happy at the time).
It has done a lot for the way I talk to strangers if I want to get to know them (both male and female). I do believe in the concept of peer review, though, and only try to meet women known to friends (there are many, many strange women out there). Worked so far.
In high school, if not before, you would have seen this behavior in detail quite often.
It's been a long time since I was in secondary school. And it was an all boys school anyway.
It and the women who espouse it just get worse from there.
I think you need to broaden your social circle from the school you grew up in.
This is slashdot, users are well aquainted with the above behavior. Take your Politically Correct BullShit somewhere else!
Again with your wild overgeneralisations. Take your wild, unsubstantiated claims elsewhere! Merely attaching with ad-homenim (about political correctness!) doesn't support your point.
A man is generally considered creepy by women when he acts like a creep. You know with staing, stalky behaviour, hitting on them at inappropriate times, or repeatedly after rejection.
If you find all women think (and I think this is the implication here, I can detect some real anger in your post) you are creepy, the there are two possibilities: the women you know are mostly socially stunted, or you're a creep.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
These sorts of comments are just people venting their frustration, don't make too much out of it.
Sure, I suspect it's just some poor frustrated soul. If it was sitting at default Karma or whatever, I would almost certainly have left the post alone. What annoyed me was it got modded up to +5. But, hey, the benefit of free speech is I can call bullshit as loud as the person spouting it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
But I see you posted no actual argument for your position, or even a description of your position.
My position it that you have made an unsubstantiated, very over generalised claim. I call bullshit, and the person making the claim generally has the burden of proof.
What's your definition of "creepy" that works for a larger set of people than mine?
I would say that your definition doesn't enter into it anywhere, since you were talking about women finding you (or others) creepy, so it's their definition. Generally I would define it as (when talking about unwanted advances) saying something like "that guy was creepy".
At that point, you can conclude that the woman believed the man to be creepy, which is what this is about after all.
Realistically, I think you're just reflexively white-knighting
No, not really. As far as I can see, there aren't even any women in this conversation, and I'm not rushing to anyone's defense. I'm atacking you because you're posting crap.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Unless I'm mistaken, that is not what is happening here.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
In an increasingly connected society in which there exists a strong trend to share information and collect it in realtime, at some point it becomes normal to see somebody and want to access their public information.
The developers of this app are creating data about you and making it available. The individual snippets are out there, e.g. your name, a photo of you and your location. This app pulls all that together, puts it on a map and displays it to anyone. It is the collection and assembly of the information and the searchability of it (by location) that creeps people out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So anytime anyone accesses your publicly available data you want to get an alert? I don't see how that wouldn't flood you with useless messages. Or do you want to get an alert if your data is accessed by a specific application? It would seem trivial for an app designer to get around that. Also why bother installing a "doucher alert app" when you could just as easily simply restrict what you post in public?
By this logic, if person #1 decides that person #2's behavior is amoral or atypical enough from their own moral standards, person #1 can can treat person #2 like shit/meat/a victim/whatever while avoiding any moral repercussion of their own. Since comparing morality doesn't have an objective benchmark (other than existing laws, I guess, but that's a discussion all on its own), this isn't a very good precedent; you may end up with some "Lawful Good" (so to speak) cop beating the shit out of some "Neutral Good" (again, so to speak) nursing student to "teach them a lesson in morality".
Like you said, we already have existing laws that draw the line at the physical assault you mentioned (though whether that still actually applies to the cops you mentioned is arguable at best). But the problem I have with your position is that I am, in fact, 100% in favor of both a bimbo's right to be a bimbo, and someone else's right to mock her for it. And someone else's right to mock them for that, and so on.
If someone wants to mock me for taking shots at a woman who sees no need to amount to more than a pushed up set of loomas and tight jeans, they're welcome to do so. If I was content with all form and no appreciable function, I'd have a far greater number of Apple devices in my stable (Zing!).
On a tangentially related note, some personal wisdom I've recently gained: If you are going to aim higher and happen to get into a relationship with a woman working on her PhD, you might want to get some distance as her defense date draws nearer. At this point, I'm considering Borneo....
A line you can come up with on the spot such as 'I like those shoes/hairdo/etc' will get you a lot further than saying you were also at locations X, Y, and Z as she was.
It's probably worth noting that a man who complements a woman on something that men generally don't pay any attention to is probably just trying to get into her pants.
I agree with your fix on A). But B? Seriously?
Are you sure that's how nature works?
Yes, I'm sure. It's pretty well-documented.
To me, it looks as if this is a construct of the judeo-christian society where you're forbidden to see a breast until 16, you're told those things are "a sin" and other craptastic notions like this. Way to screw things up. These notions might have served a purpose back in the day (the same as not eating pork, circumcision, etc served a purpose for society a long time ago) but in the 21st century, we should really know better, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry too - you can't change human nature over the course of a few hundred generations. Wanting it doesn't make it so.
There are also all the bullshit we're feeding our kids, on the form of Hollywood movies advocating for women to wait for the prince charming and men to do all sort of stupid things. I'm sure the impact of this pile of shit we feed our children from very young has more to do with the way we see sex than any kind of natural tendency.
Unfortunately, the effect of that is negligible. They don't make movies that show how things are, or how they should be, they make movies that appeal to humans. Like it or not, the courtship rituals of all animals (humans are just another class of animal) are driven by success. Asking men to deviate from what is clearly a winning strategy is itself a stupid strategy - why will men do that when it works for them?
This screwed up education has an effect on men AND women leading to an often confrontational relation when it comes to sex. There is absolutely no shred of evidence that there is anything "natural" or "biological" about this. I'm willing to be proven wrong if you have references of course.
Well, the mating strategies of all creatures is what has been shown to be successful (only the successful ones reproduce and raise their young into adults), so the onus is on you to show that a better strategy is available. The current strategies in use is the result of experimentations over hundreds (if not thousands) of generations, across multiple languages, races and cultures. The strategies (such as the one you propose) aren't in use, because the males who relied on them never managed to reproduce.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Not every time. I meant that an alert could be thrown that there's someone nearby running the Stalker app. The idea behind the app was to see who was around you, what they look like, all their interests, so that you could "casually" bump into them. It would seem like a chance meeting of like-minded strangers, which is nice-- when it's really a stalky douche using insider information to manipulate someone. A doucher alert would level the playing field, alerting you that this stranger isn't just a chance encounter, that they've scouted you as a target, and you can treat the encounter as appropriate.
I mentioned Firesheep as a similar concept. A couple years back, someone released a program called Blacksheep that sniffed public wifi traffic for authentication cookies, then hijacked social media accounts. All this was just a logical conclusion to sensitive data being broadcast in public over HTTP. Someone came up with Firesheep, which used the exact same concept (public wifi, HTTP) to detect if someone was using Blacksheep (I think by flooding the wifi with fake connection attempts, then monitoring if anyone tried to play them back).
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I disagree, and agree with gemini. I think that this can be broken down better if we step away from a more sexually charged analysis and look at a more generic analysis. What clothes you wear will dictate how you are treated- if you are wearing clothes that would dictacte a certain type of treatment, then you are indicating a want/willingness to be treated like that.
If I walk into a bank wearing a trench coat and ski-mask; I expect to get some frightened looks, and be stopped by security and potentially searched (with my consent; or asked to leave the bank if I do not give consent for a search). If its cold and that's why I'm wearing my mask and coat then I might go to security right away and apologise for my apperance to assure them of my good intentions and then move on to my banking needs. If I like unnerving people, getting frightened looks and/or getting searched, I wear a trenchcoat and skimask even when it's not that cold outside and visit lots of banks.
If I walk down the street wearing a muscle shirt, shorts, and one of those holster belts with a water bottle on either hip- I would expect to be asked what gym I go to, how far I'm running today, other fitness questions, I look like a guy who works out/runs- they will treat me like a guy who works out/runs. I am currently equipped to work out/run, people should assume that I either DO work out/run or that I at least want to be identified with those who work out/run.
If I walk down the street wearing a full suit+tie, carrying a briefcase- then I look like a guy who works in an office, people will treat me like a business person; they should.
If I walk down the street wearing a ratty hoddy, ruined jeans, and destroyed shoes- people will treat me like I am a person of poor means, I look like a person of poor means.
If I dress like a 'player', then people will AND SHOULD assume that I am not interested in long term relationships and am on the prowl for a one night stand, or short term relationship without depth or meaning.
This does not and should not magically (or via sexist means) end once gender changes from male to female. A woman in workout gear is working out, a woman in a suit is a business person, a woman in ruined clothes is of poor means, a woman in a trenchcoat and skimask should be feared/searched in banks, and a woman dressed like 'a player' should be assumed to be on the prowl for a one night stand or short term relationship without depth or meaning. To argue otherwise is to argue AGAINST equal rights for both genders.
aim higher and happen to get into a relationship with a woman working on her PhD
You lucky bastard. Bring something nice back from Borneo; perhaps high level funding from the private sector?
So to sum it up:
A) You're sure, it's pretty well-documented
B) You won't share a single link to the documentation based on a doubtful logic that put the onus on me. If it's so well-documented, it should have been easy to find a link.
Ok, I'm fine with this, but you won't convince anyone with this kind of retarded arguments. You just prove you don't give a rat's ass about backing your claims.
Then again, comparing human society to animals has its limitations, and nothing proves that the current strategy is the best one. As a matter of fact, the most "civilized" countries (in other words, the most successful ones) are the ones that have given women the most rights. There, your worthless counter argument, just on par with yours.
Also, one of the things that separate humans from animals is our compassion. Compassion calls for an equal footing of everyone. As a matter of fact, again, most civilized countries consitutions clearly state that everyone is born "equal".
Also, do you think the current status quo is a "good one" meaning it suits whatever you feel makes a good society?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Well, I kinda buy that someone does that initially. How long does it take until you notice that other people start to comment on your status, though? Besides, social networks are intended for making contacts. Granted you can also simply use them for exchanging messages with people you already know, but social networks don't exactly hide what they are about.
At some point you have accept responsibility for the way you act in public.
So to sum it up:
A) You're sure, it's pretty well-documented B) You won't share a single link to the documentation based on a doubtful logic that put the onus on me.
Well, it is your claim, you should have to put some effort into it.
If it's so well-documented, it should have been easy to find a link.
Just use google scholar - the first 10 results for "human mating and mate retention strategies" all provide evidence for what I said.
Ok, I'm fine with this, but you won't convince anyone with this kind of retarded arguments.
Don't insult, it reduces the strength of your argument, especially when you've been very vocal about something that's extremely well-studied, well-known and well-documented.
You just prove you don't give a rat's ass about backing your claims.
Then again, comparing human society to animals has its limitations, and nothing proves that the current strategy is the best one.
I didn't say that, I said that evolutionary pressure resulted in the current strategies (note the plural) due to the unsuccessful strategies resulting in no offspring.
As a matter of fact, the most "civilized" countries (in other words, the most successful ones) are the ones that have given women the most rights. There, your worthless counter argument, just on par with yours.
Actually, no. You make a good point (I suspect it's only by accident - even a stopped clock is correct twice a day). However, something else that is well-documented (and no, I'm not doing your scholar search this time - do your own homework!) is that the measured happiness for women tends to be lower than it used to be 35 years ago, when controlled.
Also, one of the things that separate humans from animals is our compassion. Compassion calls for an equal footing of everyone.
No, it doesn't - see the existence of SPCA in every civilised country, yet they don't consider animals equal to humans.
As a matter of fact, again, most civilized countries consitutions clearly state that everyone is born "equal".
Also, do you think the current status quo is a "good one" meaning it suits whatever you feel makes a good society?
No, I don't think it's a good one, in fact I think it's an incredibly bad one (I've sisters too, you know!) that has served largely in the interest of men to the disadvantage of women. The current status quo has lead to women being severely under-valued in society. However, regardless of what I feel, what is known fact is the mating and courting rituals of almost every species discovered by man, and that includes humans as well. In fact, we have more data and research on human mating rituals than we do on other animals, and almost all of the data we have shows evidence that *nature* has resulted in the current mating strategies, and that choosing your original "option B)" from your original post will be stupid idea.
People (men and women) don't do what they do because it's currently politically correct to do, they do what they do because there's an evolutionary-honed instinct in them that drives them in certain practices (such as mating practices).
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
*nods* lesbians face a whole interesting set of additional challenges. One of the early halmarks of the lesbian community was 'getting away from abusive males', so esp for 'political lesbians' it was really important to keep abuse within the community hidden.... thus victimes, if they spoke up, were 'hurting the movement' and were ostracized. It lead to really high abuse rates (I think a stat I saw indicated it was about double that of the general population) and almost no support network.
Things are improving, but mostly among younger (gay as opposed to political) lesbians.
I actually knew a guy a while back who's wife stabbed him. The police came and arrested the victim.. why? Because they figured that if she was upset enough to stab him he must have done something to deserve it or been intimidating her physically.
Though to be fair to police, most modern cases they will listen and take things a bit more seriously. There is still a strong cultural assumption going on, but departmental policies are starting to catch up.
So, what you're saying is that, by not associating with people who bring *ME* down, I'm bringing them down? Well, then, by associating with them, I'm choosing to bring myself down, self destructive behavior, and I'm right for not carrying out that behavior. If you wish to argue that, come back when you have a psych degree.
I will not engage in self destrucive behavior, nor will I support the self destructive behavior of another person; and I will certainly not carry out an action that does both.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Well, it is your claim, you should have to put some effort into it.
Ok, ok. But our societies haven't been living according to the laws of nature for quite a while now. Nature hasn't been driving anything in the last millenia or two. Societies have been pushing social behavior but most certainly not nature. By definition, all modern societies aren't driven by nature anymore.
Don't insult, it reduces the strength of your argument, especially when you've been very vocal about something that's extremely well-studied, well-known and well-documented.
You do it too! (See below) so why can you do it while I would not be allowed to do it?
I said that evolutionary pressure resulted in the current strategies (note the plural) due to the unsuccessful strategies resulting in no offspring.
Now I agree with this, but this is not nature anymore, it's evolution. There is a whole lot of difference in there. Because evolution isn't always right. Whole species have disappeared over the course of time and the fact that evolution drove us where we are doesn't imply at all that where we are is the best place to be.
Actually, no. You make a good point (I suspect it's only by accident - even a stopped clock is correct twice a day).
There you go insulting! And I thought it reduces the strength of your argument...
However, something else that is well-documented (and no, I'm not doing your scholar search this time - do your own homework!) is that the measured happiness for women tends to be lower than it used to be 35 years ago, when controlled.
I'm sure I could find a study that would say that grownups are not happier than kids. Should we leave everyone in high school?
Also, one of the things that separate humans from animals is our compassion. Compassion calls for an equal footing of everyone.
No, it doesn't - see the existence of SPCA in every civilised country, yet they don't consider animals equal to humans.
Ok, I went a bit too far here.
As a matter of fact, again, most civilized countries consitutions clearly state that everyone is born "equal".
Also, do you think the current status quo is a "good one" meaning it suits whatever you feel makes a good society?
No, I don't think it's a good one, in fact I think it's an incredibly bad one (I've sisters too, you know!) that has served largely in the interest of men to the disadvantage of women. The current status quo has lead to women being severely under-valued in society. However, regardless of what I feel, what is known fact is the mating and courting rituals of almost every species discovered by man, and that includes humans as well. In fact, we have more data and research on human mating rituals than we do on other animals, and almost all of the data we have shows evidence that *nature* has resulted in the current mating strategies, and that choosing your original "option B)" from your original post will be stupid idea.
So my point B was "This is a bad thing and needs to be stopped" and you agree that it is a bad thing but your argument against the "needs to be stopped" is that evolution drove us there so it must be the best compromise? Evolution is well and good, but don't you think it's time we take our fate in our own hands? Seriously, pal, evolution didn't give us democracy. So we should ditch it? Evolution didn't give us the internet so we should ditch it?
People (men and women) don't do what they do because it's currently politically correct to do, they do what they do because there's an evolutionary-honed instinct in them that drives them in certain practices (such as mating practices).
I call bullshit here. Evolution drove us to behave a certain way and we passe
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Unttractive tends to correlate with a lack of interest. No, you are not owed a date by virtue of a woman being attractive, there is a concept known as "discretion" and I'm fairly sure you employ it too (women who are not conventionally attractive tend to be outright ignored).
So why is the lack of interest a factor? Well, I've known quite a few men who simply do not take the obvious hint. As in, I've explicitly turned them down. However, this doesn't deter some of them from trying as they constantly vye for my romantic attentions. Even telling them that I'm gay doesn't stop some people because they believe the lie romantic comedies push that if youre persistent enough, you'll win the girl.
Life doesn't work that way. Constantly ignoring a "no", implicit or explicit, is creepy. It's ignoring a boundary and saying your right to a date or whatever else you want is more important than me wanting to be left alone. This is not a specific "you", it's a general one because this has happened to me so many times.
If I'm ignoring someone while they're chatting me up, that should imply a lack of interest. Someone with a lack of social skills could accidentally get labeled as creepy, and that's unfortunate. However, I do not owe anyone my time when I'm otherwise occupied, and strangers don't have the right to constantly attempt to interrupt whatever train of thought I'm having if I don't look open to conversation.
Women love to talk about their shoes, clothes, etc. If you mention those things, they'll want to keep talking, but I wouldn't do it if there wasn't something different or unusual about their accessories.
Asking where they got their shoes is a lot different from just saying they look good on her. Same with the purse matching comment.
Your +1 comment was actually a -1 to your moderation since you can't comment and mod on the same thread :(
Oh well, lol
I might find reasons I don't want to talk to her. If I saw her smoking for example.
I really dislike smoking too... but anecdote: the very first girl I ever loved was a high-school smoker. She had a gross habit (and I do hope she's long since quit), but had I avoided talking to her, I'd never have had some of the most intellectually stimulating conversations of my life. Eh, whatever... Was nice to reminisce a bit...
You do realize I've been commenting in this thread since long before GP and GGP were posted, right? In fact, GGGGP was posted by me. I already couldn't moderate by the time I posted GP, so I didn't do anything to my moderation by posting that. Oh well, lol
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It's too bad you posted as AC, you really seem to get my point but are maybe afraid of being modded down?
Hell, I've got karma to burn so maybe I don't follow that "don't mod me down" mentality. I've been building up excellent karma for years, speaking my mind freely the whole while. On the rare occaisions when I might say something someone with mod points and an axe to grind disagrees with, I don't give a fuck if they mod me into oblivion, they'll never have enough mod points to damage my karma.
Now, were I to completely go off the reservation and start posting in total dick mode, there are plenty of mod points, globally, to destroy my karma in short order. But no, I don't care if a dick with a grudge mods me down, I'll just post again. My karma allows that and I've earned that right by not being a dick.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I guess I didn't read back that far, my mistake... or I can blame this on /.'s crappy interface, that's what I'll do! ... yeah
The app itself was much better than foursquare itself .... I am waiting for the android version
From what you've posted above, we seem to largely agree: there is no objective definition of "creepy", it's a subjective call by each speaker. Human psychology being what it is, you'd expect certain patterns to emerge in what gets subjectively called "creepy". These patterns as seen in our society cluster around the subject, not the acitons of the subject: isn't not that an action is creepy, but that a guy is creepy, so anything he does in connection with the speaker is seen as creepy.
What do you see as objectionable in that claim, now? Or are you just upset in general that we must deal in generalizations when speaking about how people commonly behave? Are you one of those pedants who objects whenever anyone says "always" or "never" in casual conversation, or is this somehting else?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Seems like all the people who are saying "yeah, that's creepy" is the community expressing that the prevailing attitude is "stop being creepy. You might not THINK it's creepy, but we all think it's creepy, so you might want to consider not doing that."
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I had to look it up to find out what a 'snookie' is
Why anyone would want to post their whereabouts online is beyond me. People yell and scream about wanting and needing privacy and then they share every pimple pop, bladder drain and bowel dump with the world.
no I completely agree as had same thing happen and people thought it was funny. I got stalked for few years by friends sister who is 2 years younger than me, it went way too far and freaked me out. I've also been seriously groped by female coppers who stopped to search me. This isn't a subtle thing, I mean pressing against me and digging deep in my pockets to the SIDE for a rather long time and she seemed to understand what she found should be there and seemed pleased yet unconcerned so it wasn't exactly mistaken for a weapon. Neither exactly deeply disturbed me but it pissed me off no-one took it seriously yet I'd have a legal case and a lot of support if I was female.
Ok, so if a woman tells you to cut it out, then the community sort of ensures that you do - that is not what is happening here. Collectively the community is telling you to cut it out, not the individual woman. I'm sure that the single and looking woman will be pissed if she were to find out that she missed the chance of meeting the guy with villa in spain and his own yacht purely because the "community" (consisting of her competitors for a mate, by the way) forced him to meet women via a different avenue (and therefore he missed meeting her).
Society as a whole understands that men need to pursue women. The men who don't ask a woman out don't get to reproduce. The men who ignore a woman's request to be left alone gets community disapproval. But that is not what is happening here at all. All that is happening is that men are being told that one of the avenues they may have to initiate contact with women is off-limits, which is thoroughly stupid, IME. Protect women, by all means, but don't deny them a chance to be asked out.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
They don't all bring you down, that is an overgeneralization.
I don't need a psych degree to understand that.
Goodby Mr. Troll.
Je me souviens.
Excuse me?
No, people who invite others to act a certain way toward them, then complain about it when it happens certain do bring me down.
That you keep trying to make this about sexual freedom of expression when I have made it clear in several instances that it is about something else entirely inticates either some comprehension problem, a strong desire to believe that I'm trying to deny something, or some similar disorder. Let me assure you, I have no problem with people expressing themselves however they so choose to express themselves. What I have a problem with is people choosing to express themselves in a way they know will get a certain reaction, then complaining about that reaction. Like you, expressing and argument that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about (more or less the definition of trolling), then calling me a troll (a complaint) when I point out the behavior.
More to the point, I have explained the distinction between being promiscuous and being slutty, I am not going to explain it again, so if you want to continue thinking that I have a problem with promiscuity, go right the fuck ahead; if you want to understand the point I'm trying to make, go back and actually read my posts, taking them for what they are, rather than skimming the details that you think support your position.
</feeding>
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Well, it is your claim, you should have to put some effort into it.
Ok, ok. But our societies haven't been living according to the laws of nature for quite a while now.
Yes, they have.
Nature hasn't been driving anything in the last millenia or two.
Yes, it has.
Societies have been pushing social behavior but most certainly not nature. By definition, all modern societies aren't driven by nature anymore.
That is incorrect. Societies evolved to the way they are now for a reason. Even widely disparate societies have more in common than they do differences (Like US societies vs Taliban - they have more in common than they do differences). This is because those characteristics are what worked.
Don't insult, it reduces the strength of your argument, especially when you've been very vocal about something that's extremely well-studied, well-known and well-documented.
You do it too! (See below) so why can you do it while I would not be allowed to do it?
Well, you started it - that's why you have to say "see below" - you can't point to a previous insult of mine :)
How about I agree to lay off insults if you do too?
(This is why it isn't generally a good idea to try a convincing argument by hurling abuse :))
I said that evolutionary pressure resulted in the current strategies (note the plural) due to the unsuccessful strategies resulting in no offspring.
Now I agree with this, but this is not nature anymore, it's evolution.
What's the difference? Evolution via environmental pressure made us the way we are. That's a pretty good description of nature.
There is a whole lot of difference in there. Because evolution isn't always right. Whole species have disappeared over the course of time and the fact that evolution drove us where we are doesn't imply at all that where we are is the best place to be.
Agreed, but it also doesn't mean that where we are is a bad place.
Actually, no. You make a good point (I suspect it's only by accident - even a stopped clock is correct twice a day).
There you go insulting! And I thought it reduces the strength of your argument...
That's the problem with being the first to throw an insult - it generally gets returned in spades :)
However, something else that is well-documented (and no, I'm not doing your scholar search this time - do your own homework!) is that the measured happiness for women tends to be lower than it used to be 35 years ago, when controlled.
I'm sure I could find a study that would say that grownups are not happier than kids. Should we leave everyone in high school?
That's the extreme, the other extreme is that we should make everyone better for their own good, even if it makes them unhappier. I'm not advocating either extreme.
As a matter of fact, again, most civilized countries consitutions clearly state that everyone is born "equal".
Also, do you think the current status quo is a "good one" meaning it suits whatever you feel makes a good society?
No, I don't think it's a good one, in fact I think it's an incredibly bad one (I've sisters too, you know!) that has served largely in the interest of men to the disadvantage of women. The current status quo has lead to women being severely under-valued in society. However, regardless of what I feel, what is known fact is the mating and courting rituals of almost every species discovered by man, and that includes humans as well. In fact, we have more data and research on
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I think it would be more accurate to say that women find advances creepy if they haven't given any signals that it is welcome.
If you walk up to a strange woman, introduce yourself, and she responds with a smile and her eyes dilate, you are probably OK asking something slightly more personal. How you interact is based on how she's interacting back.
If you walk up to a strange woman, introduce yourself, and she's all business. Just shakes your hand, doesn't smile. Remains neutral, eyes don't dilate, face doesn't flush, etc.. You'd best keep things business-like and if your only intent was flirting or asking her out, probably give up at that point.
You make it sound like if you are an attractive person, you can just go up to a strange woman and give her a hug (or more). No, you have to begin with the basic social conventions of getting to know someone, and following normal social cues as to whether the path you are on is welcome.
I can see how some people who are socially awkward might reach your conclusion, but really, it is just exactly as I described.
You could make the case the the 'get to know you' period can take longer if the person is socially awkward or not very attractive, but it is the same 'get to know you' period that any person faces when working up to deciding to flirt or not.
And attraction itself is a very big tent to most women. Lets say you go to a conference. You aren't very physically attractive but you want to meet (note: meet is the first step, not 'advances' or flirting) a woman. You'll have to find something to begin the 'get to know her' period. Notice a book she's read and you've read it too, make a comment about it. Make a joke about something happening at the conference. Give up your spot in a line if she looks in a hurry, etc... rinse repeat continue. And perhaps by the end of the conference you'll notice her smiling more, eyes dilating, etc.. now, and not before, you can start 'making advances' as you put it.
Back when the internet was just beginning to appear on phones, my immediate thought was an opt-in service that did basically what you described.
It would combine a dating service type site along with a location aware app. So you walk into a bar, and you can see a map/list of people in the bar that have also signed up for the service. Instant ice breaker. Walk up, 'I see you signed up for "Get to know people app X" also.' 'I noticed you like ponies, I also like ponies! May I sit down?'
There's a difference between staring and looking. The former is rarely appropriate. And women are very aware of the difference.
It is OK to look at that interesting dress she's wearing, it is OK to basically look at her as a whole. Your eyes are going to see 'everything' that is displaying. What you do in the next split second determines if it is creepy or not.
Our society is truly fucked up if you can't send a stranger a text message without being labeled a creep.
That reminds me of a recent text exchange I just had.
Day 1:
Me: did you see movie X? It was awesome.
Girl: Yeah, I really liked it.
Day 2:
Me: I just cooked the perfect chili verde. I'll send you the recipe.
Girl: Great! I like chili verde.
Day 3:
Me: I'm coming over tonight to cook dinner, do you still have peanut oil in the pantry, or should I get some more?
Girl: Uhm.. I think you have the wrong number?
Me: Michelle?
Girl: No, Carrie.
I had typo'd my sisters number in my contact list on a new phone and was apparently sending some random girl text messages. I wonder what she was thinking during day 1 and day 2: something like, "well, I guess my phone is alive".
The reason why datavirtue may think it acceptable is that before he knocked he was invited by the girl onto her porch so he could read her diary which she left there with the intent that strangers read it.
Did she really though? I mean, there are probably a lot of aspects of my life that I do in public that would give someone a pretty good idea of what I was like, what I liked doing, etc... if... they were to follow me around.
You could watch what time I left in the morning, follow me into the bookstore to see what I read, etc..
But we'd all call following someone creepy. Even though I didn't wear a disguise to protect myself (use a false name in my FB profile), didn't choose to order books from amazon and instead went to a bookstore (I put knowledge about myself out for the public to view), etc..
I can see both sides of the argument really. In the past the only way to get that much info about a person was to do something creepy, like stalk them. Just because it is easier to access now, does that diminish the creepy factor? Well, kinda of, yes. It is voluntary after all.
Honestly, I just think that most people don't realize how many 'pieces of the puzzle' they are laying out on the internet for people to find. Eventually we reach these moments were several pieces are put together for a new detailed view of someone, and it feels creepy. Despite the fact that it was largely voluntary. Most people just don't understand how aspects of what they do on the internet can be combined.
There's no law against being creepy. Normal, well adjusted people don't do it, but it's not illegal. Women know that if they dress provocatively they'll get leered at. They certainly have a right to expect they won't get assaulted though.
Besides, staring isn't necessarily creepy. A little staring followed by charming embarrassment when she catches you can be pretty endearing.
Alright, let me have a look at your first post:
"That said, I've never been the type to play with people like that, or "teach them a lesson", but there is no denying that there are people out there who do these things. If you don't want to fall victim to it, don't dress and act in ways that invite it."
While you might feel tempted to call yourself a realist, you are still blaming the victim for attracting those vaguely named things you would never do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming
Je me souviens.
I'm not blaming the victim for anything more than making themself a more attractive target than others around them. If you read my other posts in this thread, you'll note that I bear that same responsibility for my car stereo being stolen; had I not left the faceplate on it, it would have been a less attractive target. That does not absolve the thief of their crime, but at the same time I am not absolved of my own decisions and actions.
You cite Wikipedia, which at first blush does seem to support your position. However, when you read my comments as a whole (it's also worth noting that my "first post" as you label it is actually four generations below my first post in this thread) you'll note that the point I'm making and the point you're arguing against are not one in the same.
I don't want my car stereo stolen again, so I don't leave the faceplate on it anymore. I don't want to be drugged and raped again, so I get my own drinks and don't drink them if they've left my sight, since that's how it happened the first time. It's not my fault it happened the first time, nor would it be my fault if it happened again because I broke that policy; however, it would be my fault, and only my fault, I didn't take steps I know to take to prevent it. That's not victim blaming, that's expecting people not to put themselves into situations they know how to avoid and don't want to be in in the first place. This doesn't apply to people who want to be in those situations.
By all means, dress like a whore and flirt with anything that moves if you're looking to hook up. If that's not what you're after, either dress and act differently or don't fucking complain when people think you're after that; people are just reading the message you're sending.
You seem to think I'm trying to attack a class of people here, and I'm certainly not. Poeple are certainly free to behave as they wish, but there's a problem when someone continues to behave in a manner which they know is producing results they don't want. It's called self destructive behavior; since you're sich a fan of Wikipedia, go look it up. Note that I'm not saying dressing and acting slutty because you're looking to hook up is self destructive in any way. Quite the opposite, if that's what you're after it's probably pretty damn productive. If that's not what you're after, and you're complaining that you're being hit on all the time or that all you can find are one night stands, then yes, dressing and acting slutty is a self destructive behavior. There is a distinction, based solely on what a person's goals and ambitions are, that determines whether a specific behavior is self destructive for a specific person. You seem to insist that promiscuity is in no way a self destructive behavior for anyone and I fully disagree; it may not be for you and it may not be for many other people, but it certainly is for some people, as well.
Again, you skimmed until you found something which, taken out of the context of my posts in this thread, seems to support your agrument. Taken in context, it just makes you look like you're grasping at straws and hoping you eventually draw the long one. I'd like to point out that, aside from the few who immediately jumped up and screamed "RAPE!" for no reason, you're the only one arguing against me in this thread; and the rape-whistlers had the wisdom to stop arguing when it was pointed out to them that this wasn't about rape. You must have at least as much karma to burn as I do, or you just don't care.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I think this type of iPhone apps should be banned.
You had the opportunity to say something different in your first statement, but no you just had to go with the usual "she could have prevented it".
You could have reminded us that some men have the wrong protocol for dealing with women that show a little bit more.
It also took you a while to arrive at a slightly more reasonable position, far too long for the crowd to notice anyway. Do you think anybody is reading/rating our discussion after that much time has passed?
Amusingly I'm doing a similar thing like you now. Let me ask you to think for the people you are dealing with. If you don't have a socially conservative position which I made an attempt at criticising, your chance was in the first comment.
Je me souviens.
You basically just said that males must stop pursuing females.
No no, I didn't say that. There is "pursuing females "and "chasing females". These are two different things and what I advocate is that we should change the way we pursue females. Of course we will never stop pursuing females.
Also, and I'm not sure you disagree with me on 100% of this argument, I don't think the way things work right now are 100% biological. Society's construct is very much at play here and we can most certainly influence this. And I think we should. What is the part of society's construct on our behavior remains to be determined and if I read you correctly you think it is negligible while I think it is important.
To sum it up, I don't have time to read all the stuff you've thrown at me right now so I'll leave it there for the moment until I've had some time to do so. Any pointers for a first read?
Thanks for the insightful conversation.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
You basically just said that males must stop pursuing females.
No no, I didn't say that. There is "pursuing females "and "chasing females". These are two different things
Unfortunately both those words are subjective - they are just shades of grey, and ask five different people what they mean in this context and you'll get five different answers.
and what I advocate is that we should change the way we pursue females. Of course we will never stop pursuing females.
Also, and I'm not sure you disagree with me on 100% of this argument, I don't think the way things work right now are 100% biological.
I think it mostly is. "Evolution" is more than simply cell mitosis or beneficial mutation; it's the effect of environmental pressures weeding out the failed experiments. As such, society as it exists today (which was independently evolved) is largely the product of evolutionary pressures.
Society's construct is very much at play here and we can most certainly influence this.
We can try, but I doubt that it will get you very far when you are addressing the prime reproduction strategies for humans. They are the successful ones, and no amount of talking will get people to change their strategy as it is built-in to them. The strategy can only change as a result of environmental pressures, and a society that successfully regulates how people may mate is not going to be a successful one.
And I think we should. What is the part of society's construct on our behavior remains to be determined and if I read you correctly you think it is negligible while I think it is important.
You do read me correctly.
To sum it up, I don't have time to read all the stuff you've thrown at me right now so I'll leave it there for the moment until I've had some time to do so. Any pointers for a first read?
Thanks for the insightful conversation.
The best place to start reading about men and women would be at this link over here. He covers a lot of ground with very few words and he does so in a way that the layman can understand. For example, you say that men should be less aggressive when pursuing a mate, but as he says that over the history of men only perhaps 40% of all men who existed ever reproduced, while over 80% of women who existed reproduced. As we currently have much more than 40% (closer to 75%) of men who are alive today who will reproduce, it seems that the male strategy paid off in the long run, hence it is now so popular. The other strategies (like the ones you no doubt have in mind) were presumably tried and failed, in that the males who attempted them never reproduced.
Other than that paper, do a scholar search for "mate attraction and mate retention strategies" (Diane something or the other is one of the more published authors in those results - can't quite remember now what her full name is), and another for "game theory in courtship rituals"/"game theory in mating strategies". A scholar search for "competitive strategies and tactics for mating".
Reading all that literature took me over three years, so you go ahead and have fun now :)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I never said it could have been prevented, I said it could have not been invited, there's a huge difference.
You could have reminded us that some men have the wrong protocol for dealing with women that show a little bit more.
That said, I've never been the type to play with people like that, or "teach them a lesson", but there is no denying that there are people out there who do these things.
I believe that was taken directly from my first post.
I've got a busy day ahead of my today, so </discussion>
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I suppose next you're going to suggest that said women should also be responsible for the unwanted attention they get when they wear certain clothes and have only themselves to blame.
Um, yes? Isn't that sort of entirely obvious?
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS
Besides, staring isn't necessarily creepy. A little staring followed by charming embarrassment when she catches you can be pretty endearing.
That depends on a lot of factors, most of which you do not know at the time. I just know from talking with female relatives and former girl friends that almost all of them get starred at daily and it always makes them feel uncomfortable.
At least it them a way to write Charlie out of the show.
I think you a word there, champ!
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
I've always been told it was the "Am I hot?" app I sell to all-girl elementary schools.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Haven't people been saying it for years? If you don't want something public, don't put it on the internet? If you post something publicly and then are creeped out that the public knows about it, then you're an idiot.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Yet this is exactly what happens at every bar every Friday and Saturday night.
Maybe instead of the creepy "mmm be my friend" thinking which I'm sure is a small creepy percentage of the population, the majority are thinking "hey, she's cute and interesting, maybe she'll think the same of me!" You say "hi, I saw you were here and used this "creepy" app to find you", maybe you even make humorous use of that as part of your introduction. She might say "no thanks" and you say "that's cool, it was nice meeting you anyway" and you walk away. Or she might be interested and your future bride.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
When I heard about it I thought that it might educate a few people about the value of privacy and how sharing your ablution timing online is not a good thing
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
...Hitler...
Hitler could have taken one the hard way, and I'd have been okay with it.
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.