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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.
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.