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Online Creeps Inspire a Dating App That Hides Women's Pictures
HughPickens.com (3830033) writes "Tricia Romano reports at the Seattle Times that Susie Lee and Katrina Hess have developed Siren, a new online dating app designed to protect against men inundating women with messages that are by turns gross, hilarious, objectifying and just plain sad. A 2012 experiment by Jon Millward, a data journalist, found that women were messaged 17 times more than men; the best-looking woman received 536 messages in four months, while the best-looking guy received only 38. Lee hopes to change the nature of the messages and put women in the driver's seat. As online dating options have grown, Lee noticed that her friends' frustration did, too: With every good introduction often came a slew of lewd ones. "I just started looking (at online dating options) and very quickly realized how many things are out there and how immediately my 'creepy meter' went up," Lee says. The free iPhone app, currently launched to a select market in Seattle in August, allows women to peruse men's pictures and their answers to the "Question of the Day" ("You found a magic lamp and get three wishes. What are they?") and view their Video Challenges ("Show us a hidden gem in Seattle"). If a woman is suitably impressed by a man's answers, she can make herself visible to him. Only then can he see what she looks like. "It's a far more thoughtful — and cautious — approach than the one taken by the dating app of the moment, Tinder, which is effectively a "hot or not" game, with little information beyond a few photos, age and volunteered biographical tidbits," writes Romano. "And the implicit notion that it's a "hookup" app can be uncomfortable for some women."
OK Cupid's stats as illustrated by co-founder Christian Rudder give another example of how steep the curve is, when it comes to physical attractiveness vs. messages received on online dating sites.
Women just message the men they like instead.
They are already there (in the dating game). And they were always there.
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
The whole dating situation is ridiculous these days. Dozens, or even hundreds of guys email a couple of women and almost none get any response at all; is it any wonder they escalate to crap? A response, positive or negative, is better than no response to a lot of people.
If you're in the top 20% on looks, congrats. Otherwise: you get treated like shit, whichever side your on.
As if I'm going to jump through hoops just to get to look at a girl? This starts the relationship out on a bad note -- one where the guy has accepted responsibility for the actions of others and is willing to make sacrifices as a result. This is sexism at its strongest, unless it works in both directions -- ie, no pictures are displayed until a user chooses to present themselves to another.
Can't women just do this on any other dating site by not having any photos on their profile and sending photos once they've been talking to a man for a while?
Why would a man join this site compared with dating sites that let him see photos and don't make him jump through silly hoops?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
" If a woman is suitably impressed by a man's answers, she can make herself visible to him. "
It seems pretty unworkable to me. I suppose these women must be a mix of Angelina Jolie/Kate Upton and Jennifer Lawrence, to insist on being anonymous.
What I don't understand is why would a desirable man put up with all of these games just to view a woman's picture? If a man is attractive enough to get replies and messages from women on online dating sites in general (most men can easily send out hundreds of messages to get only a handful of replies), presumably he's attractive enough to go on other sites that don't make the man jump through these hoops, just to view the woman's picture, let alone go out on a date.
Which means that the men who are willing to put up with these kinds of hoops wouldn't be attractive to these women in the first place.
This Sig does not Exist.
The issue is, you'll start having malevolent users filing false reports against people. "He doesn't look like an underwear model! Ugh! Gross! *complaint filed*" Any guy who doesn't look great has had to deal with this in meatspace - getting a nasty rebuke, getting ignored, getting stared down with that "how dare YOU talk to ME" look just for saying hello. For all of the stereotypes about how men are shallow, women are entirely capable of being far, far more cruel and arrogant about looks.
It has been tried. A dating site was made where only women could initiate contact. The result? It went nowhere because women wouldn't initiate contact in almost any case. Men couldn't women wouldn't, so it didn't go anywhere.
The thing is not only do we have a cultural bias that men are supposed to initiate relationships, but the person who initiates puts their emotions on the line, sets themselves up for rejection. Women do not wish to do that by and large, and do not need to since men are very willing to initiate so they just don't.
Unless we are able to change that, such a site will go nowhere. The vast majority of women will just be unwilling to initiate a relationship and thus the site will wither and die.
Did Anita Sarkeesian take a shit all over Dice? First the Facebook/Trans article, then the Intel/Gamergate article, and now this? Come on, you are better than stooping to this level.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.