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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.
My recommendation is take the rejection at face value and in private, instead of meeting up for a date and have the guy run screaming because you're a 450 pound overweight lard-ass
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.
Because these systems are built on milking the ugly men who have no real chance of ever doing anything but creeping out women. Banning them removes the sites bread and butter.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I haven't been on a dating site for some time since having found someone (not on a dating site, BTW) and taking myself out of the game. But several years ago I was on a couple of dating sites geared specifically towards Christians. I was in my 40's and looking for age-appropriate matches. I try to be as well mannered online as I am face to face, especially on a dating site. I had very little problems getting responses, and what I learned from many of the women I talked to surprised me. A lot of them told me about how lewd and creepy the men were -- and this was supposed to be a Christian dating site! In contrast I always behaved as a gentleman, and in fact, I had to hide my online status sometimes because when I logged on I would get inundated with chat requests.
Unfortunately I never found anyone who was a great match. Distance was usually a problem. I met someone the traditional way.
It seems to me that a lot of people cannot handle the anonymity that an online presence provides. This is true, not just of dating sites, but everywhere. There is a tendency to objectify everyone. Men are particularly bad at it, but I've seen women do it too. The thing is, people like to be treated like people. A good rule of thumb is to not say anything to anyone that you wouldn't say within arm's reach.
Proverbs 21:19
than this crap.
They claim that the best looking man only received 38 messages in four months. That's totally untrue. I received 43 messages.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Your font looks so good. How about we get together and kern that shit?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
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.
I am, indeed, female. (And bi, so I have experience flirting with both men and women. Though, y'know, not straight women, though a femme-y bi woman isn't necessarily going to have social removed from a similarly femme-y straight woman.)
I think it's more complicated that simple fearing of rejection. Women are strongly socialized not to initiate (you will be seen as fast! and too pushy, and forward, and generally undesirable!) and to be leery of the advances of men. (And, frankly, to be afraid of men. And not for no reason, though women are not uniquely vulnerable. Men, of course, are suppose to never admit to being either afraid or having been hurt.) Meanwhile - and probably partly as a buffer against their fear of rejection - men often ritually objectify women amongst themselves* and focus on the more trivial sexual aspects of the relationship. I mean, don't get me wrong, sex is great, but you don't expose yourself, emotionally, as a man, by saying you're looking for sex.**
Really, I think many parts of this are pretty ridiculous, and not just on one side or the other, but it's useful to understand where it comes from. It's a lot less useful to get stuck there. And, of course, especially as the gender roles of days past fade, we have more and more evidence that guess what? Men and women both crave emotional connection. And men and women both crave sex. (Sadly, none of that guarantees we'll be on the same schedule for any of our cravings.)
Now, that I'm generally pretty willing to make the first move doesn't men that I'm that interested in getting random nonsense from strangers online. Especially of the "Hur, hur, suck my dick. No? Well, you were ugly anyway," variety. Back in my hometown (Seattle) I could even handle being on sites like OKCupid, because folks were generally polite, but in Ohio it was just ridiculous and I disabled my account. (I also really didn't tend to find folks I had much in common with, and the more polite folks who contacted me mostly seemed to hope that I'd make their lives more interesting and I've tried that and it ends badly.)
* Or in groups with small numbers of women where they feel comfortable, I've been present for enough of that, and I suspect at that they were holding back.
** And, of course, there's all the social stigma around women liking sex. Which is ridiculous, at least in these days of decent birth control, but there are still strong cultural currents. (It's kind of ridiculous how many times I've invited a guy into my bed, he made sure I meant for no strings sex, I cheerfully agreed... and then in the morning he decided we should be in a relationship. Um, what?)
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.