This is simply brilliant. The escalation from a typical nerd's "I've optimised my social life" post to absurdity had me in stitches.
Just measure how far you had to read before thinking "ok, I get it, he is joking".
I had to get to the part about the Odesk virtual assistant.
I could conceivably see someone utilising OpenCV to "try" to measure attractiveness. I could also see someone trying sentiment analysis with NLTK... but farming it out to a low paid worker is just insane.
OKCupid used to have a feature for "choose my best image". Users submit two images, then rate other people's images. One of your images is presented alongside one other image from some other user, and someone else has to pick which one they like most. OKC then used their stats to give some analysis to it.
It was sort of great, except there were usually too few people to get any kind of sensible results.
It's easy to see that this could be a useful approach.
I'd hope that is the furthest anyone would have to go to se the absurdity. I'd be interested if anyone made it past that before noticing it was a joke.
Like people say, "I created a presentation on my Macbook", as opposed to "my iPhone".
Agreed, the tendency of people to refer to their phones/computers by their marketing names is much, much higher among Apple consumers.
The internet already has no small part in satisfying most of
my other needs.
Pro-tip: It's rarely idiomatic English to call someone "a female," unless you're purposefully trying to compare her to an animal.[1] Female is a species-neutral term (like "breeding"). When talking about humans, it's proper to use the anthropic term "woman."
[1] My observation is that women refer to men as "male" much less often than the reverse, but when they do they often intend the comparison to animals.
I'm also surprised about how often I see English-speakers talk about "females" rather than "women". I vaguely suspect that might say something profound about an aspect of American culture that's deeply wrong about how it views women.
For female, it's less clear. Calling a 20-something a 'girl' might be viewed offensively as diminutive. Calling college students 'women' can also seem awkward casual contexts (it's perfectly fine in most).
I'm pretty sure that was the whole point.
Since when? All the women I know use "man" or "men" (or informally, "guy"), correctly when referring to a male member of the human species. My wife might say: "my supervisor on this matter is a man." A disproportionate number of men I know incorrectly use "female" when they mean "woman." E.g. one might say "my new boss is female."
> There is no female analog to 'guys'. Males under age 18 -> boys. Males 18-35 -> guys. Males over 35 -> men.
There isn't an obvious alternative to the word "female", as calling a, uhm, "female" of younger age a "woman" can potentially be awkward, so referring to her as a female is simply the next best option. I suspect that it's because of this reality that the word "female" is increasingly more accepted as a safe and normal pronoun.
I'm 30 and I haven't seen this be the case anywhere ever.
I have encountered some people who condescendingly use "boys" when they want to disparage adult men. It's always bugged me even when I was a teenager, although for some reason all the gay men I know use it. I think a similar dynamic exists with women and "girls".
I find myself using "female" occasionally, not to refer to women I would date but because English doesn't have another good word for "feminine humans of an indeterminate age". I occasionally use "chicks" for similar reasons.
I would infer it more as a sign of pseudoscientific language than as a comparison to animals, and the pseudoscientific tone is appropriate in the context of TFA.
The male gaze.
Protip: the male in the story became the robot. And critiques of language usage is the first step to oppression.
Aaaaand that's one more tally under the "women can be rather objectifying and crass themselves" column. Keep it classy.