Eight Point Four

Ah, Thanksgiving: a time for giving thanks for friends, food and family; a time when we can put aside our differences and come to terms over pie and turkey. It is one of the most noble of traditions. It is also the weekend when your little sister comes home from college and tells you that an online app based on reviews by women has judged you an 8.4.

She brought it up so innocently. Oh Andrew, have you heard of Lulu?  You should really see this, you’re on it. Wait, wow, hang on, how could I be on something I have not even signed up for?  As it turns out, even millennials can be baffled by the power of social media. For those of you still in the dark, “Lulu” is an app that rates men. That’s right – based on anonymous user reviews men are rated out of ten for categories like personality, ambition and looks. This is also done without the knowledge of poor, unwitting individuals like myself. If that’s the taste of vomit in the back of your throat, you are probably reacting similarly to me.

I am not going to point out the fairly obvious one-way street involved here; you can probably figure them out for yourself. What disturbs me more is that my privacy, my made up character, whatever firsthand impression I may have made, has just been jettisoned into the Internet without me even knowing. I will concede that there is an opt-out button if you go the website. However, the only reason I knew this rating and picture combination existed was because my sister stumbled across it. Otherwise I would have passed on in blissful ignorance.

There are some seriously messed up things here that we can point out and condemn. My character being boiled down to a number, preying on people’s ignorance, playing to gender binaries, the list can go on and on. It should go on and on too, if ever there was a reason to be royally ticked off I’d suggest now. But let us back up a little and address a perhaps more overlooked issue in this mess.

I am under the sincere belief this is just as damaging for women as for men. Like most of the social media world you can attach hashtags. Yep, a number was not enough to sum up my personality. We had to resort to hashtags.

One of my personal favorites that sat in my “good” box was #NotADick. (#NerdyButILikeIt and #CanTalkWithMyDad were close runner ups).  As a college male, I am woefully unprepared to assume what women look for in men. However, I know as a human being that #NotADick should not be a plus. Shouldn’t that be the norm?  Is that really a plus factor for someone?

As flattered as I am with my 8.4 rating and my various hashtags I am also profoundly insulted that I can be made into a number out of ten. I would like to think of myself as more than #NotADick, though I am sure many of you would disagree with that and I am sure you have very good reasons. The vague nature of this kind of thing gives no real specificity. Was I having a bad day? Did you catch me at a particularly good or bad time?  How well does this reviewer honestly know me and what then gives them the right to assess my character out of ten?  At least for college applications we got to write a personal essay.

This is social media at its very worst. We should not take this kind of nonsense seriously, yet some people clearly do. It worries me that we have become insular in strange ways that looking at a number online and assessing someone is somehow more potent than sitting down and having a conversation. I would challenge any one of you to sum up your character in a number out of ten, but you would all fail because people, as we all know, are difficult to understand.

Lulu is trash and hurtful to men and women. This is not something to which I need to draw your attention. We know about things like cyber bullying and other fallout from social media, yet I have never come across something so deliberately degrading, even if presenting itself under the guise of a “healthy” way for girls to know about guys. Respond to this by getting to genuinely know people. Numbers are not made to describe human beings. I am not and will never be an 8.4.