Review of an app that tells you how many women are in bars

My friend Lessley Anderson has a piece on The Verge about testing out SceneTap, an "app that lets you see what bars are full, and what percentage of the patrons are female." She invited along a professional pick-up artist coach named Mike Smooth.

SceneTap said The Wreck Room was 35% women, average age 23, and 65% men, average age 32. Pretty accurate, though Smooth guessed the female percentage to be a notch higher.

According to SceneTap, the app makes these determinations via a camera positioned at the bar's front door. Facial recognition algorithms predict age and gender based on things like space between eyes, and then, says the company, the footage is instantly erased.

Smooth wasn't too concerned about privacy: "When you're in a public place, there are cameras everywhere," he said. He was more skeptical that the algorithms could know whether a chick was a chick. "This is, after all, San Francisco," he said. If they did, it would be a boon for ABCs bootcamps, which turn students loose in bars to practice approaching and charming groups, or "sets," of females. Instructors need to know where there is a high density of women, said Smooth, "because students crash and burn for a few sets before they get it."

A night on the town with SceneTap

• [chgoliz]

  How useful that will be….oh, wait.

  Is there a counter-app for those females who don’t want to be part of a practice run for an up-and-coming “pick-up artist”?

  • [Chesterfield]

    No. That would be cool though. There could settings for pick up artists, panhandlers, hare krishnas, and petition signers.

  • [s2redux]

    Can’t steer you to an app, but this simple incantation usually does the job: “Thanks pal, but one asshole in my pants is enough.”

• [robcat2075]

  ” professional pick-up artist coach”

  … and those who can’t, teach.

  • [seyo]

    I really hate that expression, because it’s so stupid and untrue. The best doers also tend to be teachers, and the best teachers also usually happen to be the best doers. Of course there are always exceptions, and I can’t speak to whether or not Mike Smooth is one of them. But “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” is utter and complete bullshit, usually spouted by immature morons who should have paid more attention in school.

    • [Rezeya Montecore]

      Yeah, fair enough, but in the case of people in the speed-seduction scene, I think the snark is more justifiable than in cases where people are teaching something worthwhile.

      But now that you mention it, yeah, I can understand your annoyance — it is kind of a thought-terminating cliche, isn’t it?

    • [penguinchris]

      It’s stupid and unfair to universally apply that cliche to all teachers. But it isn’t without any truth – depending on what kind of teacher we’re talking about of course.

      At universities, the people who are good at research are published frequently and get a lot of grant money and so on – and they teach maybe one course a semester, if that. Some people aren’t that great, ultimately, at doing research. They get the bulk of the teaching work to the point where many hardly have any time for research. Assuming they even got to the research university level in the first place – many end up, disappointed but hopeless, in schools without much of a research focus.

      Your own analysis points this out – you say the best doers are the best teachers. Except they’re busy doing all the time and don’t have much time for teaching, so the less-talented doers do most of the teaching. Hence the cliche you’re replying to.

      As for pickup artists… considering how intrinsically scummy the entire idea is, I do wonder how successful they actually are as individuals (especially since “success” is defined as a one-night-stand with the kind of woman who is susceptible to pickup artists). Considering who I presume the clientele for this type of class is it must not be that difficult to convince them to pay you money even if you’re just making shit up and never get laid yourself.

    • [ocker3]

      It really depends, some people just go BA/MA/PhD without any serious industry experience, others (like my Dad) went BA/MA/MA, now he’s a Senior VP and got asked to guest-lecture a class at the state U. He could very easily get a job teaching if he wanted to quit the long hours he currently does at work, but he loves the work.

      I’ve had IT lecturers who were fresh from getting their PhDs and were quite a bit green, I’ve had other IT lecturers who had 20-30 years of industry experience and could code like it was breathing.

• [Michael Curran]

  Could the camera be upgraded to detect Axe body spray and spray on tan as well?

• [benher]

  Wait a minute. I was under the impression that this dopey app was on it’s way out last week, when all the bars who installed those Orwellian Sleezetap-cams became afraid of all the bad press re: privacy issues? 

  • [P.F. Bruns]

    Then the press got distracted.  I just await the day that the app sends some dumbass to a lesbian biker bar.  After all, given that women everywhere deserve a good laugh at pickup artists’ expense, it might as well be done right.

• [Mona Tara Morgan]

  Don’t want too many dicks on the dance floor.

• [Navin_Johnson]

  Mike Smooth, black hair spiked with product.

  Can it be tweaked to display a douchebag warning?

  • [SedanChair]

    Mike Smooth

    There it is, I found the warning!

  • [P.F. Bruns]

    Perhaps a little icon of a clown.

• [Nire]

  Wow.

  “He was more skeptical that the algorithms could know whether a chick was a chick. ‘This is, after all, San Francisco,’ ”

  Thats more than a little transphobic.

  • [Benjamin Terry]

    Acknowledging the existence of trans people in San Fran does not necessarily imply phobia.  Believing he is phobic would be satisfying because it would fall into the “Pickup artist is a douchebag” narrative though.

    • [Nire]

      yeah, but ‘make sure that chick was a chick’ is definately transphobic.

      • [Rezeya Montecore]

        I found myself starting to play devil’s advocate here, on the grounds that I genderbend a lot and can see how somebody could genuinely find it frustrating, trying to find a partner that appeals to their preferences on the gender spectrum, especially in a town that’s very queer-friendly. 

        But then I realized that would put me in the position of defending a self-styled pickup artist named “Mike Smooth,” and frankly, the statistical odds are so high that he’s a transphobic douchebag, and the odds are so high that you and I would agree on everything else — if you’re trying to advocate for the dignity of transpeople in the first place, so I decided to thank you and give you a hug instead. :)

        • [Nire]

           being trans myself its a *tad* hard not to stick up for us when things like this come up :T

        • [TacoChuck]

           For what it is worth, in my opinion gender based pejoratives like “douchebag” don’t help  when we are trying to talk about having equal respect for all types of people.

        • [Giorgio Hans]

          @twitter-398859493:disqus  Perhaps you can stop seeing controversy where there isn’t any. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be with a woman who is female biologically, and SanFran is a city with much less prejudice than the rest of the nation when it comes to sexual issues.

      • [TacoChuck]

        It sounds much more sexist to me than transphobic.

        • [Nire]

           no, it sounds like ‘make sure those women are REEEEEELLY women’

        • [TacoChuck]

           I’ll reply to myself since I don’t have a reply option to Nire’s posts.

          If they had said “women” instead of chicks it would be less sexist.

          But in this case using a diminutive, animal term in reference to women is sexist.

          I honestly don’t know if it is transphobic to want to make sure a woman is a woman if you are generally attracted to women and are going to spend time getting to know someone because you feel attracted to them.

          I didn’t hear anything that was derogatory towards transgenered people in the comment, just that the person would like to make sure the person is a woman because in this case the person is attracted to women.

          However, given the general disregard for people as real, full human beings as evidenced by the sexist comments, I wouldn’t be surprised if the person was also homo- and transphobic.

        • [Nire]

           it implies we aren’t ‘real’.

        • [Giorgio Hans]

          I’m fairly certain that it’s neither.

        • [Wreckrob8]

          @Nire I dunno. I think that if anyone accused me of being or not being a ‘real’ man my first reaction would be ‘what the fuck does that mean?’ The use of the term ‘real’ obviously has so many connotations in the head of its user that any further communication seems impossible. The word real is problematic either way.

    • [travtastic]

       There’s no other reasonable interpretation in this context.

      • [Benjamin Terry]

        The only sure interpretation I can see is that he is looking for someone XX, which seems like an acceptable preference to me.  After that I’d have to speculate based on his hair care products or something.

      • [Marja Erwin]

        Some trans men, especially late-transitioning trans men, might have atypically ‘feminine’ facial structure, causing false positives, and some trans womyn, especially late-transitioning trans womyn, might have atypically ‘masculine’ facial structure, causing false negatives? An algorithm which tries to derive sex from facial appearance is likely to create problems, regardless of whether someone is an ally or a transphobe.

        • [travtastic]

           And the imminent danger here is what, that there’s transgender peoples out there trying to trick totes-hetero dudes into having sex with them? Are there so many trans people at Club Example that’s it going to ruin statistical models, and hence cause a legitimate error in the functioning of the app?

        • [Giorgio Hans]

          @travtastic:disqus  Yes, trav, that is exactly the concern. There’s nothing wrong with people who are strictly attracted to biologically female women, I and many other transwomen would appreciate if you stop pushing back progress by insulting them.

• [Ramone]

  “…says the company, the footage is instantly erased.”

  No way anything could go wrong there. Nope.

• [deviousasti]

  Relevant:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wl_uQOABxg

• [Max]

  This is pretty lame. Using cameras on the door is going to limit the range of pubs that use the system. How long before we see one of those in Smalltown, Middleenglandshire ? I’m guessing years.
  I was expecting some sort of orwellian uber social media data gatherer that aggregated check-ins with GPS and detected gender and served up the results.

• [DocPop]

  I just have to point out that this isn’t “an app to see how many women are in a bar.”. I don’t really care one way or another about the app, but I understand that there are more uses for it than finding where the ladies are. 

  • [Rezeya Montecore]

    Respectful counterpoint:

    Last summer, my family bought me an appliance from Japan that makes toast… and turns into an aerial drone to take photos of *your* wife and kids.

    The fact it takes photos of your wife and kids is still creepy enough to be worthy of commentary, no matter what fantastically crisp and even toast it turns out.

    That’s a very unsettling feature for any appliance to have, no matter what else it does, and IMHO it’s fair to describe it as “that stalking machine” rather than “that toaster”, no matter what the Engrish on the box insists its primary function is. :)

• [Jupiter BFPOE]

  God bless the free market system that feeds on the base instincts of humans for the betterment of society. ENABLING STUPIDITY THROUGH COMMERCE!!!!!

  • [Finnagain]

     AND YELLING!

• [jenjen]

  I would actually welcome an app that let me check in on how packed my favorite bars are.  So that I could find out where I could still get a seat somewhere. 

  • [penguinchris]

    Yeah, focusing on the douchey uses for the app kind of obscures the point that the basic idea behind apps like this isn’t that odd and could be useful for a lot of people. I’m not a going-to-bars person… but those few times that I have been to bars it was never what I was expecting.

    If there were a way to reliably know what the crowd was like at bars and clubs before you decide where to go, I’m guessing a lot of people would be interested, not just douchebag pickup artists. In fact if the data was good enough it would segregate the douchebags and douchegirls into their own bars and clubs – something that happens anyway, of course, but unless you’re intimately familiar with all the venues in town it’s hard to tell before you go even if you read Yelp reviews etc. because the crowd can vary wildly night to night.

    And, yeah, basic information like how crowded a place is right now would be quite useful. Goes for restaurants and the like too, not just bars.

• [jwkrk]

  Tie the app into the millions of government “security” cameras and now we’re talking…

• [Jim Saul]

  How about an app to let you know how many pickup artists are in a bar?

  You could do that without a camera. A microphone sampling the general conversational murmur for douche-like sub-banter might work.

  Or just a chemical sensor for the miasma of semi-predatory despair.

  Or UV sampling for evidence of the relentless masturbation of the doomed.

• [bnschlz]

  obligatory
  http://xkcd.com/1027/

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    When I was teaching yoga at 24 Hour Fitness (three of the least pleasant months of my work life), I discovered that the personal trainers are taught to wander around the gym and trash the members who are training on their own as an incentive to get them to sign with a trainer.

• [Daemonworks]

  It also incites rage in the community at large.

• [David M]

  Only problem – as more men use this app, it loses its effectiveness. That’s because they will flood to those bars with lots of women, eliminating the advantage it provides.

  • [CLamb]

     Yes, but aren’t those bars with the highest proportion of women likely to be lesbian bars?

• [Aloisius]

  If the language/target demographic for this wasn’t hard-up men, I would get behind this. I don’t like going to packed bars or bars with too many testosterone filled men, but the language they use on their website clearly demonstrates that this is primarily targeted toward the very people I’m trying to avoid.