Lulu is an app that allows women to anonymously rate men. Which is kind of scary.
Using Facebook, women can sign into Lulu and anonymously rate dudes based on a gamut of things, ranging from personality to sexual prowess to sartorial adequacy. They define you in this digital sub-universe by selecting from a pool of hashtags like #Alwayspays, #Boring, #SexualPanther, and #WearsEdHardy, among many, many others.
What Yelp is to restaurants, Lulu is to your reputation, except only other females can view what members of the Lulu club have said about you. And there’s less autonomy than an app like Yelp when it comes to describing what you’re rating – meaning there’s no room for elaboration or explanation. There is also no way to know whether a rater is posting in a moment of lucidity and verisimilitude, or if she’s making shit up because she just found out you hooked up with one of her friends before you met her. There are no checks and balances to something that, if taken seriously, could ruin your chances with a woman. It also seems counter-intuitive that some women would give you a high rating on Lulu, because it could potentially drive other females your way. I don’t have any ex-girlfriends who are trying to get me hooked up, and I assume if there are any women who currently have their eye on me, they would not be trying to steer more women my way, either. So my assumption is this can do more harm than good, unless you’re lucky and/or have a bunch of female friends who will log onto the app and sing your praises.
If your Facebook profile does not delineate you as a female, you can’t see the reviews women have posted about you. You can, however, download an app called Lulu Dude, which allows you to see the number of women who have checked you out, and the numerous badges you can receive once you amass enough hashtags for the app to view you as funny, commitment-prone, polite, hot, etc.
The best way to get around this is to have a female friend download the app, look you up, and show you your reviews.
If you’re put off by them enough, you can get yourself removed from Lulu forever.
When Chris Leydon, a creative digital media artist, asked Lulu how a man could see his reviews and be removed from the app’s database, he was asked to provide proof of identity in the form of a screenshot of a passport, a bank statement, or a utility bill, and his Facebook username.
But I’m inclined to leave my reviews up, even if they are negative. (I’m currently not sure.) Because a person who takes an app like that seriously enough to allow it to deter them from going on a date with me is a person I probably don’t want to date anyway.
