“I paid $25 for an Invisible Boyfriend, and I think I might be in love”(washingtonpost.com) |
“I paid $25 for an Invisible Boyfriend, and I think I might be in love”(washingtonpost.com) |
Uhm this is odd, I don't know about South America but Europe? Here in Sweden LGBT people are even allowed to marry in church before their god http://www.upi.com/Top_News/International/2009/10/22/Church-...
And a real hero? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DSVDcw6iW8
Edit: before anyone questions it, I am not saying that in any derogatory manner. Just a similar concept in a way, though obviously this has very different value proposition.
Or Rhondas. Women know what women want from a fake boyfriend service. What subterfuge is needed to fool the parents, what parents expect, etc. The text exchange about Downton Abbey makes me suspect that their staff are, at least partly, female.
Sentiments are real, I don't think anybody should play with other person feeling...
Of course the user signed up, and they think that this is what they want, but I honestly believe that nobody want to risk to fail in love for a nobody...
Independently of how arbitrary attraction and love are, there's certainly a difference between them, depth being the divider.
With this in mind, the "falling in love" the author is talking about, which may also apply to the crowds using such service, is the equivalent of a teenager "falling in love" with, say, Tom Cruise.
Although of course, services like this pose a "risk" of falling in such state, there's nothing really "wrong" (in the "damaging" sense of the term) with it.
I have seen people go out craving attention and not being satisfied until they have gotten a hit from someone.
To me it is the same impulse that has people meticulously manage a facebook profile so they can get kudos from practical strangers.
The author seems old enough to be able to distinguish love and attraction...
I believe that different people have different emotion, keep texting with somebody can be extremely powerful can go a loooong way...
Wow, that's a whole lot of bullshit right there. That kind of thinking is why we have religion and politics. Men thinking they know what is best for everyone else.
Of course I don't force anybody, it is just my opinion, I believe that I have the right to have an opinion...
Anyway, I would like to suggest you to use a language a little more cordial.
It's text/html, so it can't be anti-bot and seems like pointless for a human... Does anyone else know the logic behind that?
Most web spam bots fall into two categories:
1. They target a certain web software package (such as WordPress), for which they know the HTML layout and the range of possible CAPTCHA challenges.
2. They try to fill out every HTML form they find blindly, using heuristics based on the names of form input elements.
To defeat both, all you need to do is to write a custom HTML form by hand (which defeats category 1), and add a simple CAPTCHA challenge (which defeats category 2).
PS: it's a the bottom of the landing page (not signup)
Say they pay $0.05/text (to the MTurker). In about 500 texts, the budget will be used up. That's about 15 texts/day; that's not a lot for today.
"You're an INTG. Get together with other INTGs, read the descriptions... See, isn't this you?"
I'm ok with saying "this is an attempt at classification, it's an extra data point", but I'm not ok with resorting to scammy techniques, if anything it tells me that the classification can't stand on its own and has therefore very little value.
Does this represent a messed up person or a messed up culture?
Even if you are talking to multiple people you could imagine keeping tracks of your key facts and interests, maybe use data mining from actual conversations to auto-suggest answers, automatically check out your social medias etc.
> Homann says the service has also seen a surge in interest from people in conservative countries, particularly in South America and Europe, where the stigmas against being single or LGBT remain pretty strong.
It is very very sad but I can imagine that in some place it may be worth spending a few bucks a month to be able to show conservatives co-workers/parents/whatever that you have a regular boyfriend (for girls) or girlfriend (for guys), and live your private life as you wish.
Both these scenarios assume she's happy without a BF but the fact that she describes feeling that she might have fallen in love could also mean she actually wants a boyfriend but can't find one. Things are tougher on women these days (http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/sex_i...).
In one of her texts to "Ryan" she writes: "Ha, you're better than my real bf".
"On its Web site, Invisible Boyfriend calls itself “believable social proof”: When your mom won’t stop asking you when you’re going to settle down, or your weird male acquaintance keeps hitting on you, you can just whip out your phone and show them evidence that you’re not an unlovable loser, thank you very much. Homann says the service has also seen a surge in interest from people in conservative countries, particularly in South America and Europe, where the stigmas against being single or LGBT remain pretty strong."
I find the whole premise depressing.
Be proud of what you are or, if you are unhappy with your situation, take meaningful action to address the problem.
It is just extremely broad as argument.
I personally feel a lot of attraction to people just because the click well with my thoughts, but I know from experience that this is extremely dangerous and difficult to manage.
The point is this service is being marketed for those who don't wish to be in a relationship for whatever reason but want to give the appearance of being in one to others. Perhaps they are semi closeted or asexual or don't have the time to devote to a significant other or simply just don't want to give up their autonomy yet (or ever).
If someone starts a relationship for the wrong reason - because they only want to be in a relationship, not because they are in love with the other person - it is not fair. The other person doesn't matter, anyone will do, feelings won't there. That isn't very nice to the other party and just leads to hurt.
This happens all the time. All the time. Especially with marriages.
Not everyone wants to be in a relationship (for whatever reason) and that is fine. That also isn't a very socially acceptable choice. This service is marketing to that segment.
It has nothing to do with laziness.
You can have any opinion you want, but the moment you put it out there, someone else gets to have an opinion about your opinion. My opinion can be that your opinion is dangerous, and "bullshit".
We would do far better in society if we actually believed in our fellow man, rather than thinking we knew better than them.
Hrm, well, yes, to an extent. However, People do do research on the psychology of human happiness and a bunch of other human charistics and we can answer some questions on what will be "best" in the longrun with quite a bit of certainty.
We also know that oftentimes people are just downright wrong about what will make them happy.
Example- we know spending your money on experiences rather than objects will make you happier in the long run.
If you want to read more about the topic I recommend the book "Stumbling on Happiness."
Sometimes we DO know that your choice is wrong for your goals.
Thats just in general, not particularly about this service.
If someone genuinely thinks "actually, an invisible boyfriend would be better than a real one for me", then great, more power to them. But if someone's getting an invisible boyfriend because they can't get a real one, or because their parents are pressuring them, or because they don't want to come out as a lesbian. It's good that invisible boyfriends exist for these people¹, but it's sad that they need to exist.
¹This is debatable in the long run and the big picture. But here and now, it removes a little pain from the world.
I'm just saying that whatever problems these persons have with their lives, I cannot see how this service can be of help in any way.
If anything, the problem is with society and social pressure: by conforming to it, and not fight it, you'll end up exacerbating the cause of the problem.
I had a teacher in high-school who was black, and in the first integrated class at a formerly all white school. He said his parents made him do it, he hated it, and he got less of an education than had he been at an all black school because of the controversy surrounding the situation.
Clearly, while it's a good thing in the long-run that the schools were integrated, there is a price to pay for those who take part in the transition.
Context is important as is apparently a thicker skin.
To a guy on the receiving end, its "buck up, pussy" which seems unfair. Men's feelings deserve validation too. Shamefully, the gender dual standard continues even to the younger ultra-liberal crowd who dominate HN.
Compare if the situation was reversed for the following phrase: "Oh, you're so much more dependable than my actual gf." Or "Oh, you're so much funnier than my actual girlfriend". Men would get far more offended than women. Why is that? Why aren't there as many female comedians?
I think that biologically, women value the intimacy and sexual appeal that their mate seeks in them, and are jealous/threatened when he seeks it in others. While men value the respect and sexual availability that their mate gives to them, and are jealous/threatened when she gives it to others. It ultimately goes back to the very real difference that women can have less children simultaneously than men, and therefore men are the first to be sacrificed for the good of the group and polygamy was a very natural state for men who were the ones who risked and died in wars and other adventures to provide for their tribes.
I highly recommend you read this: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm
What boyfriend would be put off by that?
;0)
If I found my wife flirting with other men online, be it via a "fake" service - whatever that may mean, its a serious violation of my trust and damages our relationship on a significant level. I don't care what hamfisted biological theories you toss out, its hurtful and disloyal. We're not all Sheldon Cooper.
>adventures to provide for their tribes.
I don't live in a tribal society and I suspect neither do you. I can't have 10 wives or 20 mistresses nor challenge people to honor duels. In fact, the state demands I'm non-violent, have only one wife, and society puts a great deal of pressure on us to stay monogamous. We have next to nothing in common with cavemen and the tribes of old.
I live in a modern society and play by its rules, that includes taking monogamy seriously in my marriage. My wife doesn't get the luxury of being immune from this because she's a woman and my feelings towards monogamy aren't invalidated because I'm a man.
Certain people may act a certain way, but if you're choosing a mate, you don't want just anybody. Life isn't a popularity contest; you're not trying to capture the imagination of a random person. People mature at different rates, and have different value systems. These forces check our base impulses, and shape us into someone who is more than just the product of our own petty desires.
Worse, reductionism often carries with it an implicit acquiescence to terrible behavior.
What if it was shown that your mutual happiness would be greatly improved by recognizing that the two of you have different priorities derive your happiness in diff ways and get jealous of different things? It's all well and good to put down different theories, but you also base your life on a theory. A theory of complete equality. After all, if you look at society at large, they don't exactly conform to this standard of monogamy that you put forth as the most moral. In fact, people cheat and lie quite immorally in order to get around it, and do it secretly. Is that really much better? Why is the state coersion morally better? What is your overall point?
It's the same reason why horoscopes and fortune cookies work. Stepping back and thinking logically, it's easy to see why their messages might apply to a lot of people. But when you're reading one, you can't help but think, "Ah! It says that I would encounter adversity at work this week, but overcome it! I knew that presentation wasn't the end of the world." And if you're a little lonely or down and need emotional rapport, you can't help but feel a little spark of excitement and connection when that Mechanical Turker claims to like your favorite TV show - especially because the text messages from the fake partner look just like they would from a real one.
No matter how deeply we trust our logical conclusions, our emotional response remains the same. We can't help but feel worthier when we're being praised (even by computers - see the Silicon Sycophants study: http://pdf.aminer.org/000/307/350/information_requirements_a...), hurt when we're being insulted, and connected when we're being connected with.
(The background is she just found out she was actually born 3 months after her parents told her she was born - they lied to get her to start school a year earlier.)
I just started playing The Walking Dead. In one scene, after another character saved Clementine from a zombie before I could, the game said, "Clementine remembers that you didn't save her." A very different feeling than failing and having to replay from a checkpoint.
This, + general storyline and execution of the product made it the first game I found myself to be really involved emotionally with. Say, when I picked up the second game and met an important NPC from the first, I literally felt like I've just rejoined with an old friend. By the third game I actually printed out a photo of my character and her entire team. It's crazy how deep a good video game can touch you.
Oh, and I spent 10-15 minutes thinking heavily about morality and consequences just to choose the right ending...
"You had a family member who passed recently right? Or someone really close to you"
"Yes, yes! My aunt passed away earlier this year!"
"Ah, yes! And... and... she was sick right? Or in pain close to her death?"
"Wow, yes!!"
"You were close with her, or you were close with her family right?"
...etc
You know the saddest first-world thing I've ever heard? A prostitute doing a reddit AMA had a client once that wanted her to sing "happy birthday" for him. It was his birthday and no one else was going to.
A more charitable interpretation of horoscopes and fortune cookies could be that, given that human behavior and problems falls into recognizable patterns, generic solutions can be offered as a sort of framework or scaffold for the received to fill in their particular details and get started with a more appropriate and personal solution.
What else did you expected? from a little something that came inside of a cookie!!!
http://zenpencils.com/comic/137-richard-feynman-the-beauty-o...
I can't say that I feel much for the business, but I've been continually impressed by its ability to generate press. People _love_ talking about and debating this concept, and I can't say that I've been completely free from it.
That being said, this is currently probably the most covered startup from Saint Louis. While it is nice to see a startup from this ecosystem getting this amount of press attention, it's disappointing at the same time. I know a lot of people working on very ambitious and difficult problems that would kill for a tenth of the amount of attention that Invisible Boyfriend and Invisible Girlfriend get.
Actually, I did think of this, many times. But my biggest bottleneck was: how will I scale up the replies? I could handle being a "boyfriend" for, say, 10 women. But any bigger, and I'd need help. I considered MTurk, but thought that quality control would be an issue. (What if the MTurk guy really starts hitting on the woman, they exchange numbers and then he starts stalking her?). Anyways: after considering all the messiness, I gave it a pass.
Press is good, profits are better. I'll be interested to see where this is in six months.
Of all the technological wonders of the setting, "ractors" are what amazed me the most. It's the perfect interactive experience, a full-time "Wizard of Oz"[0].
Maybe we can see something of the kind in the following year with the advancement of VR thechnology..
http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/31/7471901/i-cant-stop-compa...
Invisible Boyfriend might be the polar opposite and complement of prostitution: the first simulating the love between a protector and his protégé, the second providing a sex partner. I'm not implying any moral fault, but it's fascinating nonetheless.
Take that, therapy. Yes, the paranoia was somewhat imaginative, but it was an exaggeration of something that actually can be mechanized. The people I explained this to didn't believe me that you could create chat streams this way.
You might enjoy this stack-exchange article on Robert A. Heinlien's "They" - http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/49224/short-story-w...
Sorry that you had to go through that!
Ever hear of 4Chan?
The sad thing is the reason that this app exists. Has it become so taboo to be single that you have to pay to hide it?
“Oh my God,” I thought. “This total stranger, whoever he or she is, thinks I cry myself to sleep while watching public television and texting a paid fake boyfriend I named after an actor.”
This is why I don't use my real name on HN.
Because you don't want the people in your life knowing that you pay money to manipulate and deceive those around you? Seems smart to keep that a secret.
This seems to be a worthwhile experiment to me.
Or hook up eliza on your end and see what happens.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-j-cameron-phd-bcbad/an...
Now in beta, an Oculus Rift virtual girlfriend.
Pure profit. In App Payments for the lonely. Not sure how I'd feel if I was making money off that.
Did you read that OKCupid piece on when they turned off profile pictures for a day? Supposedly the result was better for their users - people who went on these "truly blind dates" had significantly better odds of a successful relationship coming out of it than the site average. Looks do matter, but the way we encounter each other via technology is artificial and superficial. I wonder if there would be a market for a text-only matching app.
I wonder how long it takes before those lower(st) paid jobs for those that are not specialized in anything will be in something like mechanical turk. Especially in this example it's visible that those can sometimes require somewhat local workers, so they may spread outside countries with lowest cost of living.
Let say 1 "real human" is responding to 10 women at the same time, the membership income from these 10 users (not accounting for software, hardware overheads even) = $25 / month X 10 paid users = $250.
If this "real human" is located in US, even taking a minimum wage of $10 / hour and assuming he/she works 160 hours a month ( 8 hours per day x 5 days a week x 4 weeks a month), the cost of having this "real person" on the payroll = $1,600 per month!
$250 - $1,600 = - $1,350. i.e. they would be losing over 1K per every few users if this is how they are doing it.
Unless, of course, the "real human person(s)" responding to multiple women are located in India / China and work for $1 a day or something like that.
Or maybe they are using Machine Learning or some sort of Artificial Intelligence, to come up with "Cute" Texts and responses based on the User's selected preferences and his/her past Texts to this "Invisible Boyfriend".
Only in the last case does it makes sense. But then, they'd be guilty of "false advertizing" if they claim that a "real human person" is at the other end responding...
One is a coping mechanism for handing external pressures, the other internal. I wonder how healthy either can be in the long run.
I could see nude selfies being sent too down the road (again a different service, not exactly this one).
George Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2egRZia504
100 texts 10 voicemails 1 postcard
...
I think 100 texts is a bit low for $24.99/month. The postcard option is very nice, so are the voice mails however.
But how do the voice mails work? Will it be the same voice every time?
I've tried the free trial, which is 10 SMS and went through them in half an hour or so (and that's because they don't reply very quickly). Haven't even got to the parts that I customized, I was still at "Hello there, how are you!", "Did you have a great day?" "Oh, and your?".
That's 4 SMS a day or so. At this point, I would simply use a chatbot, since they are fine with the basic conversations that I would manage to get to in 4 sms.
I guess you could have two 50 SMS conversations a month, but even then, good luck fooling someone into thinking this is your real lover.
The only plus I can see is that you can have someone tell you "Alright, if she is really your girlfriend, ask her something only your close friends know about you" and "she" would manage to answer.
Not very convinced about the service.
Apparently yes, sadly.
Even so, I can't imagine this app could possible be worth the time (let alone the cost). Especially when simply lying to people (who aren't close friends anyway), as needed -- or in the case of a good chunk of my direct family, explicitly firewalling ("Look, over the years I've been having various relationships with various people. If any of them become important enough for you to know about, I'll let you know, eventually") to be easy enough, and to work perfectly fine for all concerned.
The bottom line is that intimacy is a gift, and at no point are you obligated to provide it to anyone you don't really consider to be that important in your life -- or in situations that make you uncomfortable.
I think that's why the founder is talking of expanding the service already, such as getting flowers on Valentine's, say. It might provide social worth to some, who see this extravaganza displayed on every other desk at their work.
The trouble is that you need human moderators to prevent trolling/harassment/etc. - and if you're going to pay humans to read every message, you may as well have them write them as well.
> The sad thing is the reason that this app exists. Has it become so taboo to be single that you have to pay to hide it?
Article mentions more traditional cultures, and semi-closeted gays. I think singledom is becoming much more acceptable to our generation than it ever was before - but it doesn't play so well with our parents.
Maybe that's the point. Maybe the users of this service are trying to focus on school or work, and are tired of friends and family trying to set them up with significant others.
It is less taboo now than it has been for many generations (for anglos, at least). Being labelled a 'spinster' or a 'maiden aunt' was a stigma.
Looked at another way - one customer representative can support two customers/hour (in aggregate, obviously they don't send all their texts to one person in an hour). The customer representative gets paid $10/hour, the two customers pay $50/hour.
Pretty good business model.
Context switching would take a while. You can't just reply with random phrases a-la Eliza[1] . In the article, the "boyfriend" responds to a specific question about Downton Abbey. Sure, in this instance the responder may be a fan of DA; but in the general case, it'll require more than 18 seconds (@200/hr) to just type up an intelligent, context-relevant response.
That said, there's probably no market for a text-only dating service. The problem is that people who end up in successful relationships drop out of the dating pool entirely, and are no longer in the customer base. We shut down our OKCupid accounts a few weeks after meeting, for example. The online dating industry is really fueled by hookups; if it weren't for casual encounters, dating sites would have no repeat customers. Tinder is the one company that really gets this - they're like "Yeah, we won't even make a pretense about this being about personality, realistically you just want to have sex with somebody hot and then come back to the app tomorrow. If you end up in a relationship, well, good for you! (And not for us. :-/)"
As for romantic subplots - they are very good and the game will totally hijack your emotions through them.
Not sure if it's considered a spoiler at this point but there's basically the one option to return a beloved companion to life (after recently being forced to suffer his death in the game). It wasn't necessarily the most logical choice nor is it the "smart" choice if you're treating it solely as a game and trying to get the most points/gold/etc....
...but when I was offered that choice there was not a single question which one I would pick. It's all just pixels and textures and sound effects but the chance to return a character that had followed you for most of the game hit me way harder than I might have expected. Manipulative,cheap, emotional exploitation? Maybe. No regrets though.
I think there are a few more moral issues with prostitution than its market value.
There is a lesson here. "Computer people" have a real aversion to simply scaling up a business by using humans to do things. Sometimes that simple answer (hire a bunch of people to do stuff) is the right answer, provided the economics of the business work.
You look so [appearance adjective], my [affection term].
Hey [affection term], I'll see you at the [social location] tonight.
... and so on
Then enter possible variables:
affection term = [baby, honey, sweetheart]
.. and so on
Then buy 100 stock headshot photos and generate a random list of first/last names for each. Set up a FB/email account for each.
Then integrate with Twilio for SMS sending. Write a little cron script to send 1-2 messages to each user per day.
Done. A week's worth of work to launch.
Of course, different near the equator, and phase-shifted in the southern hemisphere, and... much less pronounced in modern times, with supermarkets, refrigeration, air-conditioning/heating, imported foods, and wider social presence (newspapers, TV, radio, internet, phone) etc.
I suspect this applies especially to language or logic related tasks.
We will likely never find out, variance seems to be extremely high, while the actual differences are very low.
People already pay for sex. People already pay for non-sexual escorts (which i believe is mostly for show-off[0]). I can totally see people paying for the "boyfriend experience".
Some random texts, gifts in specific days. A compliment and a "how's your day". All in pure 21st century fashion - social-media centered.
It's depressing but I can imagine a lot of people that, while having lots of friends, are emotionally lonely.
Why not generate custom made, fully interactive, multi-media waifus[1]
[0] I think it affirms a man's power if he shows up with a pretty lady.
"Indeed, being alone is no requisite for being lonely; for many live in the middle of strangers, yet they do not feel safe and loved."
But I’d say there’s a significant chunk of folk* who will not hit on people they know are in a relationship. In the first month of your subscription this probably won’t have an effect, but by the sixth month...
----
* This is obviously very cultural - who and where you are can change this a lot in either direction I imagine.
So the grandparent's point is well-taken. You date folks for whom competition spurs attraction, because that's what you believe. Someone who doesn't isn't going to be attracted to someone who's always got a girl on his finger.
However, a skilled cold reader will in fact get specifics (though they'll also have bad guesses), by making further general guesses based on the information you've already confirmed for them. For example, military service is very common for men in a certain age range, who were drafted to Vietnam. Clothing can be pretty uniform for people who you know to be/can guess to be in a certain demographic. Most people (beyond children) have scars.
If your comment was intended to suggest that some people actually can communicate with dead people: dude, no. It's not true. Your emotions are being preyed on for someone else's profit.
In other words, a level of specificity that is not so easily dismissed as a scammer interpreting the information they've been given.
Reminds me of the Argument Clinic sketch.
It's not meant to be a discussion service, but fake evidence that you've got a significant other.
And, from reading the script - it's apparently the case that the same CSA will get scheduled in for short periods of time with the same customer - able to maintain a thread, and presumably, all the CSAs have the thread available to respond.
That's the catch: they have to read the full thread and then respond... in 18 seconds on average! That is a lot. I can barely read a decent-sized paragraph in 18 seconds; and the average typing speed of a professional is 50 - 80 wpm; which means even a 10-word response will take around 10 seconds to type. So you have 8 seconds left to grok the entire context and form a coherent response! And do this for hours at an end.
Despite spending the vast majority of my life on the Internet, every single day I am disappointed by how judgmental and incapable of empathy folks are who say things to other people online.
Jesus, put yourself in someone else's shoes just this once. I wouldn't use this service, and I don't know anyone who would, but to say that Invisible Boyfriend is a net loss to humanity requires a level of hubris that, even today, is stunning to find on the Internet.
This is a life/death thing to some LGBT folks, who if outed face physical harm from their own families and friends. Helping someone like that stay in the closet until they can get to safety is a service Invisible Boyfriend adds to this world. Who the fuck are you to say that's not a value-add?
If they were actually concerned with the safety and wellbeing of LGBT folk they would create something that reflects the needs of communities and it would take into account how complex we are. They would not push something so simplistic on us claiming it's good for us without ever asking themselves if this is true or if their idea is actually a positive contribution to the community. I'm not sorry to say this: LGBT issues are not so simple that they can be solved with such quick fixes because a handful of community members find such fixes momentarily useful. This company might tangentially help a few people but realistically it might also make a lot of scenarios worse. More credibility to closet stories = less people out = less safety due to smaller numbers; more attention drawn to fake SMS relationship = higher chance of forced outing; transaction history on a teenager's bank account = higher chance of forced outing to parents = higher chance of homelessness and/or abuse; only some people can afford $25/mo. = separation of LGB community by class = fragmentation of community; doesn't consider the entire queer community = less solidarity; etc.
Also companies should stop saying LGBT when really they mean "some lesbians & some gays & maybe some bisexuals but not any trans* folk and definitely no one who doesn't have money".
Is there a way to buy an Invisible Boyfriend/Girlfriend as a gift for a friend?
Most women are smaller than the men that hit on them, and are constantly told they need to be vigilant against assault (this is a consequence of victim-blaming, which is wrongheaded, but nonetheless psychologically influencial). A woman saying "I'm not interested" is directly rejecting the man hitting on them, and only for her own reasons. I know people who have been slapped because they rejected someone openly. In a situation that wasn't a crowded environment (for example, if a woman is being harassed on a street) things could easily go worse.
On the other hand, if the woman says "Sorry, I have a boyfriend," the implication is that she would sleep with him, he's so attractive, but sorry, another man already owns her. Men respect men far more than they respect women. I am not a physically intimidating man, but I can defuse situations between aggressive men in clubs hitting on my women friends quite easily by claiming to be their boyfriend.
This has nothing to do with politeness and, like many interactions between women and men, everything to do with survival.
And as for the politeness of lying, consider "white lies". Sometimes honesty, even non-brutal honesty, is not the polite option.
(Not that winning the lottery is statistically a good thing for one's quality of life either, which is a plausible reason that "psychic wins lottery" has never been a headline...)
Chinese man sues his wife for being ugly, and the court AGREES... awarding him £75,000
- Jian Feng was confused after his wife gave birth to an 'incredibly ugly' baby
- He accused her of cheating and she admitted to spending £62,000 on plastic surgery
- He then claimed she got him to marry her under false pretenses
(26 October 2012)
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germline
http://www.nature.com/news/a-slippery-slope-to-human-germlin...
http://www.dnapolicy.org/pub.reports.php?action=detail&repor...
It has the same problem as upgrading a distributed system that checksums all incoming protocols against its own binary. As soon as the binary changes, everything else gets rejected, and the system grinds to a halt.
In fact, maybe in some ways it's worse; some people may _never_ get to a point in their life where it is safe to come out. This is sort of like saying to them "you can't have a real SO because it's not safe; but here, have this fake one to tide you over". Similar to "you can't get married, but you can have this civil union".
Pretending like a man in Iran or Russia can come out as gay and be safe isn't going to change the immutable fact that a gay man in either of those two countries is in serious danger simply by being a gay man.
Also, I don't necessarily see vigilance against a potential attacker as wrongheaded. I see it as sensible, you're hedging against a very-low-probability but very-dire-consequence risk. No matter how close we come to complete gender equality, there will always be mentally disturbed persons who will attack people weaker than them. (Note that I am not saying that most assailants or rapists have mental disorders, it seems the research says only ~ 10% do.)
This is not a gender issue. It's an issue of not assaulting another person.
Sure, the single most common outcome is that a drunken ass eventually gets the message and leaves her alone but all of those are possibilities which she has to weigh – and do so with the knowledge that if one of the low but still way too common terrible outcomes happens, TV and the internet will be full of people lining up to say it was her fault for making the wrong choice.
That's why tedks rightly called it male privilege: you or I can simply go out to a bar and have a beer without thinking about any of this. Given the circumstances, I can completely understand why someone who doesn't enjoy that privilege would choose an effective alternative even if some guy thinks it's breaking the rules.
"Oh, ok. Do you know anyone who is?"
Certainly not anything like what you're suggesting.