I first heard about Lulu a little more than a year ago at a work party.
An app for women to anonymously rate guys on looks and personality? How middle school, I thought. Not for me.
But my co-worker insisted through the night that all girls should check it out.
Curiosity eventually got the best of me, and I, too, became a member of the Lulu community. But I couldn’t shake the thought that by using this “girls-only Yelp for men,” I was being a mean hypocrite.
That didn’t bring me to delete it, though. Well, it did, but not permanently.
It was too amusing to see what other women had to say about guys I knew. Not to mention the reaction I’d gotten used to seeing when guys who had no idea the app existed found out about it.
The first question was always, “Am I on there?”
Maybe I just know too many cool dudes, but no one was ever openly upset about whether he was reviewed.
So I kept the app, and I told myself if I didn’t leave any reviews, I was only being half hypocritical.
Would I want boys dishing out on my best and worst dating qualities? Definitely not.
But as of Feb. 27, thanks to a law student in Brazil who was not happy about being on the app without his consent, we can all use Lulu free of guilt.
Felippo de Almeida Scolari, 28, successfully sued Lulu for damaging his reputation after being alerted to his profile by a picture a friend sent him and his girlfriend. He’d scored 7.7 out of 10 and was considered #cheaperthanbreadandbutter.
Following the lawsuit, Lulu changed its policy from opt-out to opt-in.
Although Scolari had every right to be upset, the way I see it, he was probably just using the law to his advantage and taking an opportunity to make money.
I mean, the media attention Lulu got from the case only drew more attention to his bad rating, which could have been much worse than if he’d simply requested for it to be taken down.
Now, to appear on Lulu, men have to be as gung-ho about being reviewed as my former co-worker was.
Some have said the change was big enough to completely alter the scope of the app that was designed to “be a private place for girls to share their experiences and make smarter decisions.” But if you were using Lulu in a smart way in the first place, the change is something to be celebrated because it makes the app consensual.
The way I see it, the profile ratings were something to be taken with a grain of salt anyway because people and feelings about people are so subjective. Just because #notad**k is something you look for in a potential love interest doesn’t mean someone else will find it attractive.
Regardless of the changes, Lulu’s best and most underrated feature, Dear Dude, still exists.
Dear Dude, an anonymous sort of advice column within the app, is reason enough for anyone who is annoyed by any newly missing guy profiles to keep Lulu. And while I don’t want to turn this into an advertisement about how great the feature is, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite pieces of advice from the Dude himself,
Q: “Why do guys think we like seeing their d**ks in pictures?”
A: “I don’t know, man, but they are f***king gross. I honestly don’t understand the d**k pic thing. Penises are not particularly aesthetic, especially when engorged, and especially when photographed from a bad angle with a camera boasting 4 megapixels at most. The d**k pic phenomenon points to a larger problem with dudes: we obviously have no clue what you like. … The point here, and it should not be a revelation to you, is that all visual sexts are a risk, and should be approached with caution … but the larger point is that d**ks are gross, and I totally hear you. And guys are totally dumb. Sorry.”
[Marjorie Nunez is a UF journalism senior. Her columns usually appear on Fridays. A version of this column ran on page 7 on 3/11/2014 under the headline "Lulu guy-rating app provides amusement, guilt, perspective"]
