The new app lets strangers rate your face

0:00Saturday, September 26, two of combat sports most dangerous strikers collide. Bear Knuckle. Liverpool's own down in the Gorilla Till goes to Moore with Cuban Powerhouse LL soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bear Knuckle Midowent Championship of the world is on the line. When the rating champ Dave Varedneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger, Jack Demeek Cleaver-Colin, BKFC 94, Till versus Romero. Watch it live only on the zone. Sign up now at thezone.com. News talk breakfast with Anton Savage in association with air. Let's talk about this new website, Study of Us. It was created to explore human attraction. Very simply, upload a picture yourself and others will then decide if you were attractive or not, at producing a percentage, which will be extremely tomorrowizing for people like me if they were to do it. Counseling psychologist and lecturer until you Dublin Leslie Shoemaker's on the line.

1:00Hi, Leslie. Morning. How are you? I'm grand. I'm refusing to do this for obvious reasons. But it just gave me the realization that the internet has now officially run out of ideas because this was what Zuckerberg had originally in college, which was hot or not. Remember that and you decided whether or not from your university ID if you were hotter if you were not. Unfortunately, that is, that happened when I was in college and it's happening in workplaces every once in a while. I'll notice an article in the papers where a WhatsApp group, unfortunately, it's typically men who are doing that and rating their female colleagues. So it's something that's been around for a long time. Just Zuckerberg sort of exposed it. Yeah, I put the same thing. It's just it's obsessing. If you, you'd have to be some kind of narcissist to upload your picture, wouldn't you? You know what? It's a great question because that is my first question. What is the motivation?

2:01I mean, sure, they're going to be people who do it for the crack fair enough. But I think a lot of vulnerable people are going to be doing this. People who are putting a false sense of security on their looks as being the end all to, you know, everything. If I look good, then the world is good. And just such a narrow way lens of looking at the world. And the funny thing is if you were to do it when we were in college, one might say, what looked good, then is different to what looks good now. And it's much more of a male thing. The whole looks maxing, you know, socken in your cheeks and kind of, you know, doing what Zoolander would have called his classic pose is way more significant now than it would have been back then. Looks change and perception of beauty certainly changes as well, doesn't it? Absolutely. I mean, it's really funny. I've had a couple of feeds pop up on my phone and it's proms, American proms from the mid to late 1980s, which would be my generation.

3:01And I'm just laughing because I mean, the big hair and the big, fluffy dresses and lots of hairspray. I'll just leave it at that. And we thought that that was absolutely magnificent back then. Amazing. I was still is, by the way, just in case you're wearing hairspray this morning. Oh, it looks to change in terms of what society deems. This is what we're looking for. The one thing that worries me about this though, this website called study of us, you upload your photographs, strangers rate you in return. And if you accumulate enough credits by swiping, it promises to tell you how attractive people find you. And then you get credits and then there's quizzes. It's actually been a gambling built into this as well as the worst of everything. Well, again, the algorithms, I mean, packed Zuckerberg. I mean, we know that these sites are built with algorithms that hit into the pleasure centers of the brain. So they're very clever in that regard to keep us there and doing activities.

4:03We know the care at the end of the stick is, oh, how beautiful am I? How good looking to people see me. But, you know, first and foremost, I'm accurate at the pictures. I mean, with AI people are doing all sorts of alterations. There's that the other thing is really doesn't matter, you know, because there are people who are more interested, perhaps on activities, you know, sporty people want to be with other sporty people. You know, there is more to developing a relationship and being around other people than just our looks. And the reality is, you know, this whole area of looks maxing, you know, look, normal things, go to the gym, you know, wash your face, take care of yourself. Those are really normal things. And we know that when we take care of ourselves, we feel better about ourselves. But the whole world of looks, maxing is quite creepy in my world. Oh, sorry. You know, that's creepy. This is creepy. And you know what we're going to do, Leslie? Just not going to bother with it. Let it be in all the website that fades into obscurity that none of us ever

5:03partoken. Leslie, you make a good look with the hairspray this morning, counseling, psychologist and lecture until you talk. And thanks very much for joining us. News talk breakfast with Anton Savage in association with air weekday mornings at seven news talk conversation that counts.