Lulu wants you to gossip, girl.
You’ve probably joked about how convenient it would be to have a Yelp-like service to give and take insider details about specific men…but when faced with the actual opportunity, would you do it? The newly released app Lulu thinks you will.
In essence it is quite similar to a Yelp account but focused on men instead of food and businesses. They describe their similarities to Yelp, but the difference is that instead of being able to write your own comments, you choose from multiple choice answers to rate men on things like their ambition, appearance, whether or not they are a good tipper, and how close they are to their mom. I think we can all agree that there’s nothing worse than a guy who’s rude to the wait staff but do you really need to check out his rank on an app to know he might be a jerk?
OK. So there might be a moment of delight when you think about being able to hear other people’s thoughts on someone you’re interested in, but then it’s just a quick moment. As fleeting as past romance gone wrong. What if he’s the most popular guy on the site does that imply that he’s dated the entire town? Do you trust the input of those other girls?
Lulu thinks you can because other users have the ability to agree or disagree with other users rankings, and it’s marketed to be used to rank male friends too, not just your crushes. That could be helpful, or a total disaster. The app is geared toward the college age range, and if you’ve ever seen a sorority united over a sister’s heartbreak you can imagine the possibly for this to go a little sour. Let’s not even get into the possibilities for trouble if your boss or your next-door neighbor’s boyfriend fall into the mix…but if you’re Facebook friends with them they most certainly would.
Guys do however have the opportunity to easily opt out of being involved, which brings up another host of questions. A lot of people have online connections with people they don’t well or at all, so what does it say about the guys who elect to be ranked on their personality and likeability by girls they might not even know? If they opt out of the ranks are they harboring dark secrets like they’re only pretending to like dogs?
If anything the idea seems a little juvenile, like we’re back playing that board game Girl Talk but instead of making prank calls to the last guy who dumped us we’ve moved on to rating him publicly on all the little things we couldn’t say to his face.
But who knows, maybe it will take off and the newest pick up line you’ll encounter is: “Check out my ranking on Lulu. #Big.Feet.”
