Girlfriend X is the vanguard of a new type of program: relationship management software.
From Girlfriend X's homepage, we learn that one of the program's features is Booty Yield.
Now, imagine that you have a dedicated accountant who constantly evaluates your Booty Yield so you can determine whether any particular woman is worth the time, effort and money that you’ve invested. Are you starting to get the picture of what GirlFriend X is all about? |GirlfriendX.com|
The program not only keeps track of how often a guy scores, but has fields for all sorts of activites.
In addition to storing each woman's contact information and picture, the Girlfriend profiles include a Score Card where you track her sexual preferences, her menstrual cycles and how she styles her pubic hair.
The Yield Generator calculates your cost-per-hookup and rates the overall maintenance cost of the girl, based on the cash outlay per sexual encounter. It uses cost and activity data from your ongoing Date Log, and weights anal sex and threesomes higher than oral sex and hand jobs. |Wired|
Setting aside for a moment how incredibly offensive the entire booty yield concept is, I think the privacy (destruction) implications of this software are breath-taking.
Last night I was reading Jeffrey Rosen's book The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America...and I can only imagine what would have happened if Girlfriend X would have been around when Bill Clinton or George W. Bush were in college.
You know Ken Starr would have subpoena'd GirlfriendX for Bill Clinton's records. And if you can subpoena former Senator Bob Packwood's diary to shed light on a sexual harrassment case...why should Girlfirend X be given any more protection?
Information shared with a third party over unencrypted internet channels seems like a low expectation of privacy...
GirlfriendX sounds like a cheap hack of a program, but I think Regina Lynn is correct that given the popularity of online dating sites, it is only a matter of time until they begin integrating relationship management software into their interfaces.
Good news for the tabloids, I am sure.
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