Lulu: The new path to love?

Is ‘Lulu’ familiar to anyone? This is the latest app to enter the world of mobile dating, an industry worth an estimated $212.6 million in the US whilst the world of online dating is worth an eye-watering $1.2 billion. Like it or not, traditional forms of courting seem to have been totally overtaken by the cyber world of dating.

Cosmopolitan magazine has denoted this latest marvel as “Sex and the City marries Facebook”. It is essentially a private network where girls can express and share their opinions: “a private app for girls to read and create reviews of guys they know”. Girls can only see and create reviews of their male Facebook friends. According to the site, “if guys don’t want to be seen by their friends on Lulu, we take them off immediately via the button at the bottom of this page”. And here’s where the main problem arises.

Any number of guys may be featured on this app, being openly reviewed, whether lauded or laughed at, without them even knowing. I can’t imagine many guys out there know about this site and thus would never have the thought of actively seeking out the website to click a button to avoid such possible humiliation.

Many girls may see this as totally harmless. Maybe it’s all just a bit of fun. But what if we reversed it? What if an app were to be created whereby guys reviewed girls? All hell would break loose and feminists would have a field day.

Another qualm I have is with regards to the minimum age. Lulu is 17+. They claim to check the age of all users via their Facebook profiles. However, I personally know countless people who have lied about their ages on Facebook, rooted in first registering with the social mammoth in order to qualify for their minimum age (13 years old).

Surprisingly, the majority of women who use this app seem to be pleasant. They haven’t taken the advantage of a power position behind the screen to totally humiliate their male counterpart. The average score given is 7.5 out of 10. Positive hashtags are selected three times more frequently than negative ones. In nine months alone it has acquired one million users. This is clearly what the people want.

I understand the draw to this kind of app. Why wouldn’t you want to know if the guy you’re schweffing on in the union on a Friday night #WillWatchRomComs or  heaven forbid #WearsCrocs. But with the possible humiliation that could ensue and the out and out slandering of guys who aren’t even aware of it, it seems clear to me that we would be much better off without it. Ladies, why don’t we all step away from social media of this kind, remove our Tinder accounts (especially in the minuscule town that is St Andrews; #tooclosetohome), and throw ourselves into the conventional dating world of meet and greet. You never know where it might lead.

Image courtesy of www.girlsguideto.com