Say hello to the sleazebot
The least appealing thing about dating apps is that they inevitably connect you with unenlightened men – the sort that lead with ‘You’re so much hotter than all the other girls around here’, mansplain with gusto, and exit on a note of entitlement that will probably leave you feeling disturbed.
A new chatbot has rolled all the casual male chauvinists you’ve ever encountered online into one sexist sleazebot. The d.bot simulates @TinderNightmares-worthy conversations with chilling accuracy, which is basically as bleak as it sounds (try it for yourself) but also deserves a little cheer. Why? Because sleazebot serves to highlight how common it is for women to experience subtle mysogyny online, and might just make some perpetrators check their behaviour. We’re looking at you alphamale662.
Graduates from a New York City university, 29-year-old Joanna Chin and 32-year-old Bryan Collinsworth, are the brains behind D.Bot. As Chin explained on her website; ‘The bot draws from a database of responses derived from women's actual interactions in online and offline dating… The project is intended to address in a light-hearted, humorous way, the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes and the ease with which disrespectful and patronizing comments find their way into everyday conversation.’
True to real life experience, if you ignore jerk-bot it gets nasty: ‘Why don’t you want to talk to me… do you have a boyfriend or something?’, ‘I feel like I’m doing all the talking here’, ‘you should know I could be talking to lots of other girls’. ‘OK, fine. I just thought you liked the attention.’ Cue sigh of recognition.
