Creepy guys inspire Seattle women to make a new dating app

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024665918_sirendatingappxml.html

by jcomis • 12 years ago

14 18 12 years ago

[Siren] 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.

So they fixed the use case where the woman's photo is exposed, but leave the same problem for guys?

I've had a couple creepy female stalkers, and honestly, would prefer the same protection they're offering women. It's certainly the case that dating sites are dominated by creepy men, but a high ratio doesn't necessarily translate to a lack of problematic female actors. As a side issue, the fundamental gender imbalance of the website actually legitimizes the problematic world view that creates many of these problematic guys in the first place - namely that relations are a game in which women hold the power and they just need to play a numbers game if they want to win, with perhaps adjusting their wording to slip by filters.

Further, I don't think this app actually solves the problem it attempts to: it actually lowers the effort on the part of bad actors, since they only need to maintain one profile rather than messaging many women. I'm not sure how they're proposing to have women sort through a large number of profiles that are made by bad actors any more than they could sort through a large number of messages made by bad actors, nor do I think that filtering the profiles is a fundamentally easier task than filtering the messages would have been. (Actually, I think the opposite: that it's easier to make a misleading profile than a misleading message.)

Glad to see another sexist project pitched as a solution to social problems.

Ed:

I actually want to tone down my comment a bit, but will leave the original wording as is. I don't mean to condemn the authors, because they're addressing a complicated and sensitive issue without any known solutions. That being said, while I think their hearts were in the right place, their execution seems to focus primarily on /their/ issues, while completely ignoring the issues faced by the other side of the equation. Programming things that solve your problems and not other peoples is hardly unique to this case or a new development (heck, it might be the hallmark of software), but it's disappointing in this case, because they clearly have many well thought out features, that unfortunately, I'm completely unable to take advantage of to solve my problems or my issues with online dating.

Let me say that again: the inherent sexism of the app is particularly disappointing, because while it does many of the things I'd want in a dating app, it refuses to let me use them and instead frames me as enemy-until-proven-otherwise.

I just don't understand, at a fundamental level, why both sides don't have their pictures hidden and only be allowed to interact via their video/question/etc interface until both sides approve. (Well, I have one conjecture, but I'm reluctant to ascribe it as true: that they're tacitly admitting women want eye candy, not just personality, and that their app isn't meant to serve the interests of men.)

frontline• 12 years ago

the term sexism is reduced to meaninglessness when you're applying it to men not being allowed to see womens' pictures without permission

ObviousScience5• 12 years ago

My apologies, I probably should've used the phrase "gender discrimination" or "discriminating based on gender", since there is no large scale institution discrimination accompanying it, though this particular app is institutionalizing different roles based on gender.

omegaworks3• 12 years ago

legitimizes the problematic world view that creates many of these problematic guys in the first place

How exactly does it legitimize anything?

I see Siren as a very pragmatic solution to the problem. The problem exists, this app is a response to lived reality.

ObviousScience5• 12 years ago

How exactly does it legitimize anything?

The fundamental model behind Siren exactly agrees with their prediction. I meant "legitimizes" only of in the sense of "to those people", which it does: the gender norms presented in Siren exactly correspond to the prediction or norms thought of by those problematic actors.

In this way, it actually (to them) encourages their problematic behavior rather than discourages it by way of reaffirming their (warped) worldview that makes those behaviors seem reasonable.

I see Siren as a very pragmatic solution to the problem. The problem exists, this app is a response to lived reality.

Setting aside for the moment that I don't think that Siren actually even addresses the problem that it claims to, even if it did, solving the named problem only solves the problem that (some) women have with online dating at the cost of making a gender-based power structure, while simultaneously ignoring (or even worsening) the problems felt by the other gender in the same arena.

I'm not sure I view this as "pragmatic" if your overarching concern is the poor treatment of women in the dating scene or sexism in a more general setting.

ahelwer• 12 years ago

Siren is great! I got in pretty early (friend is friends with the people who founded it) and it's been nice to use. Answering questions of the day usually works for matching with people, and the community also puts on some excellent events. One of them had an architect present on the history of erotic spaces, and another presentation on the influence of Leigh Bowery[0] on costume design (seriously, you start to see stuff inspired by him everywhere). It was a step outside the techie bubble which I haven't seen often.

In general I think the sex-positive nature of Siren will help it in the dating apps scene. Recognition of the asymmetry of experience between women and men on straight dating apps is implemented well, including a recommendation system between women. Fills a void between OkCupid and Tinder.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Bowery

mflkemlkfew• 12 years ago

What an awful decade this is to be a single man. Men have been so vilified that now mere acts of courtship (not the strawman examples in the article), are considered misogyny.

With rising trends of authoritarianism in the western world, it's almost like we're getting our own anti-sex league a la 1984.

This isn't progress: it's repression.

omegaworks3• 12 years ago

Men have been so vilified that now mere acts of courtship

Please provide examples.

Strawman: a person compared to a straw image; a sham. a sham argument set up to be defeated.

How exactly are the examples in the article, which the app author states she experienced in her own life, shams or arguments set up to be defeated?

thrownquiteaway• 12 years ago

When talking about vilification, I think the poster is referring to articles like this:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction...

that say things like

What startled me the most was the fact that when he was a young, boyish looking professor at Cornell, Feynman used to pretend to be a student so he could ask undergraduate women out. I suspect that this kind of behavior on the part of a contemporary professor would almost certainly lead to harsh disciplinary action, as it should. The behavior was clearly, egregiously wrong and when I read about it my view of Feynman definitely went down a notch, and a large notch at that.

Oh no! He was attracted to and dated women! How terrible!

bruceb2• 12 years ago

Uh. Relative to other parts of history it is a better time to a single middle classish man. 50 years ago most men had to be married to engage in romantic "happenings". Now you don't.

ObviousScience5• 12 years ago

50 years ago most men had to be married to engage in romantic "happenings"

I don't believe that this is actually true, and expect that it's likely a revision of history pitched by people who wish that were true, eg, people pitching the 50s and 60s as some of idyllic time where the social propaganda matched reality.

In general thinking that the habits of hormonal teenagers varied so greatly over time, particularly over 50 years, is a bit silly.

It also doesn't explain why so many young ladies went to live with their relatives out of town for 9-12 months, or why they suddenly had new siblings/cousins when they returned. There are wide spread accounts of this, and it's a consistent element of fiction dating back a long time.

Don't confuse social fiction with the truth.

rfeather• 12 years ago

Has no site tried to apply the standard techniques used by email providers to deal with spam? Ex. Spam filter trained to recognize spammers and harrasers.

carsongross• 12 years ago

Slutty girls inspire Seattle men to make a new hookup app.

Problem?

javert• 12 years ago

Lee hopes to change the nature of the messages and put women in the driver’s seat, which is what Siren was originally going to be called.

What a </ expletive> joke. Women are already completely in the driver's seat, as evidenced by the statistics presented in the article.

Lee said: “In 2014, it’s very hard for a woman to be both professional and sexual.”

Funny because in 2014, it's very hard for men to have sex at all if they have standards.

Let's be clear: Women have insane leverage over dating and this site is merely an attempt to better capitalize on this leverage. "Let's make men jump through a bunch of hoops, because they are at such a disadvantage that they will have to."

I'm not saying that any of that is the explicit intention of the site creator, but only that it is the "invisible hand" of the dating market at work. No pun intended.

Creepy guys inspire Seattle women to make a new dating app

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