Category: Digital Culture

Girl Talk Goes Viral with Lulu App

College friends shared this story in the New York Times about the Lulu App which is essentially a girls-only, mobile application, used in conjunction with Facebook, for profiling men they know either as friends or as previous dates or boyfriends, so that other women can make informed decisions about a guy before dating or sleeping with him. I sent the article to two women under 30, and both responded with words like “gross” and “awful,” and I was about to write a somewhat cynical piece on the subject, but further reading reveals the Lulu app to be more thoughtful and tasteful than the Times article suggests or than one might assume from an outsider’s view.

There are apps and online services tailored to people of all ages seeking casual sex or long-term relationships or something in between these oft-blurred lines in the complex dynamics of dating.  And I’m the last guy who would so much as imply any kind of moral judgment regarding any non-harmful behavior in the diverse mosaic of human desires, passions, or romantic entanglements.

The Lulu app seems to be very popular on college campuses, and while it’s easy to wonder whether or not there is much value in technologically expanding what amounts to old-school “girl talk,” I suspect that particularly at a large university, a resource like Lulu is a net positive for young women.  In a landscape that includes date rape, revenge porn, and other misogynistic trends that have actually been exacerbated in many ways by social media, it’s hard not to conclude that an app like Lulu does seem to empower single women in a way that is uniquely possible and necessary in the digital age. Let’s be honest, women have historically talked among themselves more openly than men do with one another about relationships and sex, and this kind of app brings some of that discussion into the open, even allowing men to be part of it to an extent. Moreover, Lulu’s designers have been thoughtful about trying to mitigate malicious use by the ex-girlfriend or rejected suitor who wants to slander a guy.  For instance, a man profiled has to be 1) at least Facebook friends with the women doing the rating; and 2) agree to have their profiles made available at all.

So, one positive aspect of an app like Lulu might be that it could demystify to an extent what it is women value and what they share with one another. This could ameliorate a measure of low self-esteem among men, which is often the source of their worst behaviors as boyfriends and lovers.  A male college friend who saw the post joked that Lulu is essentially a technological expansion of what used to be the Ladies Room wall at our local bar. He isn’t wrong, and, maybe there’s something to be said for men being privy (no pun intended) to what’s on the Ladies Room wall.  Of course, it should also be noted, as it was by my female contemporaries on the same thread, that a men-only version of this app rating women in a similar fashion would likely ignite a brush fire of feminist outrage.

One thing I do notice about Lulu is that its messaging seems a little bi-polar.  Founder Alexandra Chong is quoted in the Times as describing her users thus:  “You want to know if mothers like him. Does he have good manners? Is he sweet?” This suggests a measure of depth and human connection being sought, whereas the images and video used to promote the app online depict a pretty shallow portrait of the world’s single people. All the models featured look like headliners for MTV’s old Spring Break series, and it’s not that there’s anything wrong per se with the Greek Life, party-school thing, only that this is a rather narrow view of “dating,” even at college. In order to limit potential abuse, Lulu doesn’t allow original comments, but instead offers multiple-choice selections in the form of hashtags.  We see an example of this in the online promo video set in a party scene. A young guy with a perfect body dances shirtless, archetypal plastic, red Dixie cup full of intoxicant in hand, and the sexy, young woman using the Lulu app checks him out to discover that he #OwnsCrocs. This suggests to me a faddish and slightly insipid quality to Lulu. If this same adonis in the freeze-frame were instead tagged #ComparativeLitMajor and #OwnsCrocs, or maybe someone else in the scene who looks slightly more like regular folks had the tag #RudeToWaiters, one might get a sense that Lulu’s users are interested in something other than just turning the tables on raw objectification.

I don’t judge.  If Lulu can empower women in some way that makes dating more enjoyable, or at least safer, so be it.  If it’s just another tool for one-night-stands, that’s fine too.  If it ultimately becomes the latter, though, women should not be surprised to find that new technologies sometimes just help us make the same old mistakes a little faster.

Leon Botstein on Education

“The cost of higher education is not a function of bricks and mortar. The cost is people. It is labor intensive. No matter what the technology, the learning is about face to face. The crude analogy I would make is between learning and sex. Technology can greatly improve, broaden and diversify what we define as the sexual experience, but in the end it’s about intimacy and human contact in real time. That’s the case with teaching as well. For all the improvements technology has brought us – in the end, those are all just tools behind the human social character of learning.” — Leon Botstein

I recommend this Q&A with C.M. Rubin and President of Bard College Leon Botstein.  It’s a familiar refrain:  no matter what technologies come along, the stuff of real value requires human labor.

Who’s Afraid of the TPP?

Ever heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

Okay, if you’re an internet issues follower, then yes, you’ve heard of these international trade negotiations still underway.  If you’re one of the other 180 or so million adult Americans, you probably haven’t.  And that works out to be very convenient for the self-proclaimed protectors of Internet freedom, if you’re inclined to believe the Obama Administration is chomping at the bit to whittle away your First Amendment rights at the behest of Hollywood movie moguls.  WikiLeaks just leaked what its editors seem to think is a damming excerpt from the trade agreement, and Mr. Assange has warned:

 “If instituted, the TPP’s IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”

Ordinarily, that much hyperbole from the mouth of someone as transparently self-serving as Assange is its own weakness, but we’re about to see the blogosphere swell with headlines warning that the TPP is just like SOPA! Beware!  The fact that the leaked excerpt is already out of date notwithstanding, we can agree without even seeing current drafts that the agreement-in-progress does have one thing in common with SOPA:   it won’t affect your rights one wit.  Since the US began Fair Trade Agreements in 2000, not a single one has effected a change in US IP law. And without a change to US law (and by the way SOPA didn’t change domestic law either), how exactly is my dancing in the crosshairs, as Julian Assange insists?  I mean my dancing sucks, but I don’t think the USTR gives a damn.

Let’s be clear, the internet industry lobbies for and tries to sell the public a world view in which all activity online exists outside any law; and there is no way they’re not going to gin up fear over any trade agreement that covers intellectual property. And there won’t be any trade agreements that don’t include intellectual property because, so far anyway, IP is big business, quite possibly a business where you work right now. Meanwhile, Julian Assange maintains his apparent relevance by selling a lot of smoke and claiming there’s always a fire.

In all seriousness, any citizen so inclined should certainly pay close attention to these or any other trade negotiations and do so through less hyperventilating sources. I prefer other soporifics, but we all have our tastes.  One thing that will not, however, be keeping me up is a concern that the USTR is presently engaged in chilling my or my children’s or my neighbor’s right to free expression.  And you know why?  Because free speech can’t be taken away as easily as certain self interests would have you believe.  Dostoyevsky was executed by firing squad*, and we still read Dostoyevsky.  Tell me a trade agreement unfairly favors a multi-national over a small business, and I’m listening, but tell me it threatens my right of free expression?  Let ‘em try.

* No he wasn’t. See comment from Musician below and my response. I think the larger point is the same. I could have made any number of choices — Lorca executed, Wilde jailed, Solzhenitsyn imprisoned, etc. — but Dostoyevsky’s execution here is greatly exaggerated.