Website asks you to rate fashion sensibility of unwitting pedestrians

Styleblaster is a website that takes photos of people walking down a street in Williamsburg and invites visitors to click a top-hat icon if they think the hapless pedestrian is fashionable. (Via The World's Best Ever)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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John Vance

Seems to be a proliferation of “legal but creepy” stuff happening lately.
awjt

I’m pretty sure someone already set up a webcam to snap passersby and let people rate them, a la Hot-or-Not.
http://www.tavie.com Tavie

Another reason to avoid Williamsburg.
deviceofmind

Pretty sure how Zuckerberg got his start
http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux

Are we certain this is legal?
- trackofalljades
  
  Why wouldn’t it be? It’s a public space. How is this any different than a webcam on the top of a college building that you can grab control of on a web site for 60 seconds and drive around zooming in on whatever you want? There are hundreds of those.
moop2000

Check it out, you can see the data lines from their motion capture setup here:
http://styleblaster.net/p/5096 Just keep clicking back and you can see all the original testing images.
http://profile.yahoo.com/6N333DMINCVNLBR62BHWABJ6AQ Tom

What is the point of having a website that allows anonymous people ridicule other anonymous people? And you know that is what will happen.
- hymenopterid
  
  It’s not nearly as mean as I thought it would be. You can only vote people up.
- DevinC
  
  The site doesn’t have any commenting feature I can see. It looks to be a good faith crowdsourcing experiment.
  - ChicagoD
    
    Nah. It’s a good faith opportunity to see if there are any hot chicks in your hood.
http://twitter.com/AbelUndercity Abel Undercity

I want to see a bunch of circus clowns flipping the camera the bird.
- awjt
  
  Or a clown in an Izod
arsphenamine

The web site’s author needs to have his colonoscopic exam video rated accordingly, pertaining as it does to the author’s most prominent attribute.
IntotheNightSky

I have to say, I’m impressed with how people are hacking the system.
http://styleblaster.net/p/9901
- http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
  
  Also http://styleblaster.net/p/10566, http://styleblaster.net/p/10563… I’m guessing this will only increase
Jeremy Pickett

Hasn’t Bill Cunningham been doing this for the New York Times for, what, 40 years? Bill obviously isn’t anonymous, but he doesn’t get people to sign releases when he photographs them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cunningham_(photographer)

I watched the documentary of him on Netflix, it was really good.
http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/billcunninghamnewyork/
- rattypilgrim
  
  I think, for the most part, Cunningham’s subjects are aware of what he’s doing, they know who he is, and while they may not sign releases, it’s a feather in their caps to be chosen by him for possible inclusion in his gallery of photos.
  Not knowing you’re being photographed is a different story. That said, street photography is one of my favorite genres. Maybe it’s the fact that these photos are being posted on a website which must be generating money, for the world to see, unbeknownst to the subject is what creeps me out.
  The people who visit art galleries and museums to look at photos are relatively small and art-centric compared to the potential number of creeps who can view these online.
  - Jeremy Pickett
    
    I vaguely recall from the documentary one of his subjects exclaiming something to the effect of, “if you don’t stop taking my picture i’ll break your camera”, so i don’t know if everyone is appreciative. and isn’t the nytimes around to make money as well?
    
    i’m not trying to be difficult, but i just see more similarities than differences, that’s all.
    - rattypilgrim
      
      I wouldn’t be surprised if someone threatened to break Cunningham’s camera. I see similarities, too. I think it’s the hidden camera aspect that bothers me even though, as I said, I love street photography which also doesn’t ask permission of the subject, usually. I guess there’s already enough snark and just plain meanness on the internet and Styleblaster is ripe for it, though so far it seems it hasn’t happened.
      
      Maybe the best solution as already stated is to at least blur the faces in the images.
DevinC

The site doesn’t have a commenting feature for trolls to snark off in, and there’s no way to vote someone down. The pictures appear to be generated automatically, by a motion sensor-activated camera, without discriminating.

All the site does is ask if you think the subject’s outfit is stylish, and tell you what other people think (in an absolute and not relative sense.) Unless there’s some reason to object to publicly posting pictures of what people look like in public, I don;t see what’s assoholic or intrusive about this.
redstarr

Since it only allows positive recognition, I’m cool with this. At first glance, I thought it might be a chance for folks to be mean spirited and that it’d be a lot more like “People of Walmart”. But it only allows you to be nice. I wouldn’t want the whole internet to be able to weigh in on my fashion choices for just walking down the street if they could be cruel. But a little unsolicited “You look stylish.” would be pleasant.
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  What about the horror of seeing no hats and hearing crickets when you land on your own picture?
http://twitter.com/moxthezebra Mitchell Slenderman

They could at least blur peoples faces if its all about the fashion anyway. Still creepy to show up on the internet when you are not aware you are being photographed.
big ryan

its fun to click ‘previous picture’ really really fast to create a fun animation effect
http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

It was shockingly refreshing to see the outcome of something that only allows positive ratings. A lot more innocent and non-threatening than what I was expecting. It goes to show that the internet, being extremely free and open (and that’s mostly great), has the nasty side-effect of a near-constant barrage of snark, anger and insults.

Also, the absolute winner (most popular) fully deserves the title. Yowza!
bunkyboar

You say its all harmless, but one guy lost his leg to this scam: http://styleblaster.net/p/9893
niktemadur

Here’s a guilty pleasure along the same lines, although with willing subjects:
http://la.racked.com/tags/street-scenes
http://twitter.com/bsdf asdf

stylin! http://i.imgur.com/gy5Z2.jpg
Steeevyo

Look up ‘Lorca Dicorcia hassidic Jew’ which gives you an idea what a severe beating the makers of this website will get if somebody gets really pissed at them for unknowingly publishing their picture.
benher

Life on this planet sure has gotten interesting over the last decade!