We’re a mere three lines into our conversation, barely leaving time for an exchange of pleasantries, and we have already reached the “You look like you smell nice” point. I’m pondering just what is an appropriate response to this when “Where’d you go? Putting on makeup?” pops up. More silence from me, then: “Someone as pretty as you should be more confident,” dovetails into “OK, fine, I just thought you liked the attention.”
This is normally the point where I’d leave the conversation but I’m cutting this particular guy more slack than usual because he’s not actually a guy at all. Instead, he’s a chatbot, flying the flag for casual internet misogynists everywhere.
Designed by Joanna Chinn and Bryan Collinsworth, two students at the New School in New York, d.bot comes fully loaded with a database of information used to give him his “personality”. All the information comes from real responses derived from women’s interactions on everything from Tinder to online dating sites and forums.
Chinn explains the idea on her website: “The project is intended to address in a light-hearted way, the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes and the ease with which disrespectful and patronising comments find their way into everyday conversation.”
There’s an odd cognitive dissonance involved; even though I know d.bot is not “real”, that somehow doesn’t make his casual sexism any less annoying. Perhaps it’s because he is, as Chinn says, an amalgamation of the demeaning, frustrating interactions women put up with.
These are conversations that forum user and blogger Beate Noss finds all too familiar: “It’s the first warning sign when you’re chatting to someone – you leave to make a cup of tea and find he has made up this scenario where you are blanking him. And then comes the guilt trip. There’s this sense that if you are a female online, guys are entitled to your attention.”
So can d.bot help? Alex Brown, co-founder of GamerDating, a new site designed for – you guessed it – gamers to find love, sees some merit in its approach: “One of the questions we’re most often asked is, ‘How do I approach a girl online?’ Apps like d.bot keep it light and educational in terms of what not to do. Safe dating spaces should be the default, not something unusual.”
What d.bot demonstrates, then, is the softer side of sexism, an insidious “drip, drip” of misogyny. Interestingly, if you stick with the app for long enough, you start to see more blatantly offensive replies.
An argument, perhaps, for walking away sooner rather than later, especially if your conversational partner doesn’t have the excuse of being programmed that way.
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