Buck Up, Men: Here’s Another App That Promises to Ruin Your Game!

Dating is scary. Even Will Arnett, who is very sexy (at least according to some friends of ours), is reportedly too traumatized to find a new love, after his shocking split from Amy Poehler. Now, we’re wondering if Arnett has ever heard of Lulu, a new app that provides users – all of whom are girls – with private reviews and recommendations of guys. Launched in February, Lulu is described by founder Alexandra Chong as something like “Yelp for boys” and is now available on both iOS and Android platforms.

image source: credits to http://www.flickr.com/ by Henry8.0

Gents, here’s your chance to know more about this potential game-ruining app so you can easily course-correct if ever a vindictive ex-girlfriend bombards your profile with #badkisser or #smallpackage or any other embarrassing (and untrue) hashtags.

A useful tool or a virtual burn book?

Even without knowing the numbers, we know that Luluvise, Inc., the company behind Lulu, is confident that there is a market for what they are offering. We personally know girls, who would find the app helpful, especially those who have a hard time deciding whether a guy is worth dating or not. As for set-up and ease of use, Lulu just syncs with users’ Facebook accounts, allowing them to anonymously rate their male friends, ex-boyfriends, and hook-ups for other women. Now take note that these ratings cover almost everything from appearance to sense of humor, to kissing style, manners, and so on. And each guy profiled has a dedicated page that includes reviews or testimonials, average ranking, relationship status, education, etc. Users can also “spice up” said profiles by adding hashtags such as #Manslut, #QuickDraw, #Awesome, #SweetToMom…well, you get the drift.

So dudes, you understand how this can be both advantageous and disastrous at the same time, depending of course, on whether there is dirt to be dished in relation to your dating history. It’s not all bad since you can get your female friends or relatives to promote you and improve your value in the dating market (they may even do it without you prompting them to do so).

But on the other hand, even if you’re a nice enough guy, who has never been anything but decent to your former girlfriends, you could still get burned by an embittered ex-flame. Since you can’t actually see what is being said about you, your only choice is to opt out of the service by sending an email to privacy@onlulu.com or downloading the companion app, Lulu Dude, to deactivate your profile. Word of advice, you should probably stop waiting for the app to just disappear into oblivion. With over 60,000 downloads, Lulu could be in it for the long haul.

Rating the competition

As controversial as Lulu has been recently, it’s not the only dating app out there. Tinder, which is more of a hookup app, also syncs with users’ Facebook network and promises a “more controlled environment” by only letting users see what they want to see based on factors such as location, shared interests, common friends, and so on.

There’s also Mamba, which boasts of over 23 million users, according to its Google Play page and is self-described as “the biggest social dating network.” It’s free to sign up but recent underwhelming reviews may make you think twice about joining, unless you’re in desperate need of a date.

We’re not going to mention every dating app in the market today because we have a feeling that the list is quite long. But we are going to predict that someone will come up with a Lulu-like app that caters to men (in the name of gender equality and all that) sooner or later. Perhaps, as consumers, we’ve become accustomed to reading reviews before buying a product or testing a service, be it a new gadget, RingCentral PBX, an electric car or a jewelry cleaning service, and so on. Consuming information on a potential date may not be such a shocking idea, considering some of us are already engaging in “social network stalking” just to know more about a crush or an ex. It’s possible that in the future, more Yelp-ish apps for dating would surface. We just have to cross our fingers that these applications never cross the creepy line or encourage any Fatal Attraction-esque behavior.