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Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

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161–170 of 356 posts

Re: Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

#161
How do they prevent men from creating fake female accounts and see what's told about them?

Do they take steps to anonymize the evaluators? Even if they do, timing the changes in the evaluations will allow to guess who said what, except for the most frantic womanizers.

I can foresee a Lulu user being busted, bad things happening to her, and Lulu being sued.

Finally, for those who talk about DDoSing the site: it's smarter and funnier to build a Lulu whistleblowing bot, which makes stuff more public than intended.

Re: Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

#163
"Lulu’s Term of Service disingenuously shifts the responsibility of notifying men of their unwitting participation to Lulu's users, which I’m inclined to believe has never happened."

WHAT?! You mean the Lulu app users might not be strictly adhering to the site's Terms of Service?! Well, notify the FBI about that! There's a law created in 1984 https://www.eff.org/issues/cfaa for JUST such criminals as these, and it makes the users guilty of committing a felony offense (a perfectly reasonable use of the law in this case)! Never mind the EFF's Week-Of-Action for reforming the CFAA this week https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/help-us-remember-aaron... . Lulu's users are clearly a threat to society and deserve felony convictions for their awful behavior here.

Re: Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

#164

I bet it's just a matter of time before they piss off the wrong person, get hacked or DDoSed out of existence. And I sincerely hope that the bitch who owns the company never succeeds at another product again.

Too much vitriol.

Playing to the base instincts of the hoi polloi is rarely a bad business strategy.

But it is self-debasing.

She should grow up. So should you.

Interesting: "hoi polloi" autocorrects to "hot pollo". And now I'm hungry.

Re: Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

#165
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not thinking like an entrepreneur. That just means that prison rape victims are an untapped* market. *badoom, pish!

I find it absolutely despicable to make light of violent abuse, including sexual abuse, in prison. We should be doing all we can to make our prisons safer for everyone. The fact that many people think it is OK to make and laugh at prison rape jokes sickens me. What would you think if I made rape jokes about your 90 year old grandma? Or your ten year old son? Or your wife? If that is not ok, neither is prison rape of…

Do you live in the real world? Prisons aren't safe because they are full of violent offenders! It's pretty obvious that when you densely pack the bottom tier of society into small spaces that the outcome will be a whole load of violence - of all forms, rape (which is about power and control), gangs (which is core to the human species), fights and murder.

Re: Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

#166

I have two reactions to this, and I think most people who care about sexism in our society would agree with both: 1. From the sound of it, this is a horribly sexist product that dehumanizes men and reinforces traditional gender roles. I hope to one day see a world where an app like this couldn't exist because there would be no demand (and because everyone would be disgusted by the basic concept). 2. Actively opposing…

... but there's no hypocrisy in those same people being less upset about it than about similar treatment of women . You clearly believe this, but that's what it is, your belief. I disagree; women may have " much farther to go," but that doesn't mean this is somehow intrinsically less important to people who really do support equality. There is nothing wrong with establishing your own priorities. Calling this a lower…

I may be misunderstanding you here, so I'd appreciate a bit of clarification. The way I'm reading your argument, it sounds to me like your claim is something like, "Context doesn't matter: similar forms of harm necessarily carry similar moral weight." Thus, this app is intrinsically just as serious of an issue as a similar app rating women would be.

But that reasoning doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see how you couldn't apply the same argument to say "Regardless of context, it's always equally bad to violently shove someone," ignoring the difference between shoving someone standing on flat ground and shoving someone standing at the edge of a cliff. Of course I would be more upset about shoving in some contexts than in others.

So my claim is that the same reasoning applies here. This app absolutely does harm men, but the position of men in society is such that the resulting harm is fairly contained: this service is notable precisely because it's unusual. On the other hand, a similar app for rating women would be yet another contribution to a vast complex of social attitudes and institutions that combine to have a powerful oppressive effect. My sense is that network effects would reinforce and magnify the harm that such an app would do to women.

So yes, when evaluating my desire for sexual equality as a whole, I find myself more pressingly concerned about women's issues. But from my perspective, that's not an arbitrary preference but a rational choice.

Re: Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

#167
post #120
post #69

Where are all the feminists now? This is the perfect example of double-standards implied by women. Imagine an alternative scenario where men could rate their female counterparts on the basis of their 'assets' as defined by some vague methodology. Imagine how much fire under men would be, with ALL men being broadly labelled as sexists because this app was targeted at men. I am seriously asking - Where are all the femi…

The effects of male and female versions of this application would not be the same. Different subjects, in various senses of the word. And you don't have to imagine that alternative scenario. It's how men generally treat women.

It's how men generally treat women.

Do you have anything to back this up?

Re: Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the former CTO of that company, I really doubt this. When I was there, the app was built on Django, and I left some pretty competent people behind, so I'm quite sure they wouldn't have made a mistake so rudimentary. However, I don't know what happened after I left, so there might have been some dubious decisions.

Ah, so apparently guys are still good enough to hire. Interesting. Care to share your experiences on what it was like to work there?

> so apparently guys are still good enough to hire. Interesting.

I re-read the parent, and nowhere does it say nor imply that the CTO nor the people he hired were male. For all that we know, the site might be built by bimbos scratching one of their own itches.

I wouldn't bet on it, of course, but I'm amazed to see that prejudices are so deeply ingrained that:

* you read what was absolutely not written;

* nobody noticed.

Re: Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

#169
post #73
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men have had the upper hand since the dawn of existence and still have the upper hand in basically every society in the world.

Nope, men have the upper hand and lower hand, and if you take the average out of that then women are men are equal at least in all Western nations. Even though 60-80% of politicians may be male, that's contrasted with 80% of homeless people being male, 80% of suicides made by men. If we look at young people, then women clearly have the uppder hand. In addition to having the upper hand in dating, they out-earn young m…

You're right about some of this, although you're overstating the case: about 44% of the homeless in the United States are single men; families with children are about 36% and single women are only 13%. (Figures for Europe are certainly different as they offer different social services, especially for families.) Greater male service in the military is one component of this, as in the US veterans make up 16% of the homeless, as opposed to 10% of the general population.

I'm one of those overeducated women with the upper hand or something like that, although due to my great success in education I'm not out-earning all that many people yet. Remember, though, that the mythical ability to get a guy to pay for dinner and that incredible math PhD mean nothing when a guy on the street is looking me up & down & giving me a "compliment." If I talk back to that crazy guy on the bus, even if I'm out-earning and out-educating him, I always remember it can go like this: http://unwinona.tumblr.com/post/30861660109/i-debated-whethe...

To return to the original topic, I don't support Lulu at all. I've had far better success in dating and life treating men like people.

Re: Lulu: An App No One Should Accept

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/07/lulu_app_for... and here: http://jezebel.com/5982867/the-creepy-new-yelp-for-boys-and-... Do you not know how to use google?

I think the OP is asking where the "shitstorm" is.

Why would there be a shitstorm? That only happens when the self-proclaimed defenders of the male gender feels threatened by someone challenging their world view.
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