23 hours ago
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It’s an all-out doxxing war of the sexes.
First, women using a new app called The Tea to snitch on their dates’ “bad behavior” and publicly shame their exes.
Then, a hacker exposed thousands of the women’s driver’s licenses and selfies — sent to the app to verify their identities — in an apparent attempt at revenge.
The Tea App, first released in 2023, reeks of our cultural instinct to name and shame, rather than work out interpersonal issues. But the vicious hack proves dating discourse has pitted men and women against each other like never before.
The woman-only app is 1.7 million users strong. Snap a pic of yourself, send in your ID, and you’re off to gossiping about local bachelors.
It lets ladies share stories about predators and cheaters, sureThey can also conduct background checks. That’s all good and nice. But the app makes clear it’s for gossip in addition to safety in their own advertisements.
“Get the tea on your date,” the app store listing reads. “Avoid dating red flag men.”
Women could rate past flings with red flags or green flags. One can scroll through a library of mens’ faces to see what comments other users have tagged to their profile.
Some of the warnings seem legitimate.
One man in Oakland, Calif., is presented with a pic and text saying he is a “rapist and likes to drug and beat on women . . . He raped many young girls and women by drugging them. Do not take drinks off this man,” accompanied by a news report showing he, or at least someone with the same name and age, had been convicted of sexual assault.
But several men claimed to have false accusations tied to them on the app, including one who called a defamation lawyer about his listing.
Another alleged that a Tea user falsely accused him of asking to borrow her car to go to CVS, then taking it for three days.
“Out of all the guys in the world, they put me on The Tea app. I don’t even talk to girls,” another outraged TikToker claimed. “What they said about me was even crazier . . . like I don’t know how to speak English. I’m literally speaking English right now. Basically they were just on there and bashing me for no reason.”
The vast majority of men appear to have more red flags than green, and many complaints seem to revolve around ghosting.
Most often no proof is offered, so anyone with a vendetta could theoretically spread terrible rumors about guys they don’t like even if they were, say, just a co-worker. And since guys aren’t allowed, there’s only ever one side of the story — which has prompted many complaints.
Some men have infiltrated the site. TikTokker SanchoTV posted a screenshot of himself on the app which has 21 red flags next to his name, saying it was “Made it on the Tea App” and “crazy,” with a video of him smiling and celebrating.
Surprising enough, the app was founded by a man. According to its website, Sean Cook watched his mother get catfished and was inspired to create the platform. It exploded in popularity this summer, shooting to the No. 1 spot in the App Store.
Its newfound popularity ruffled a lot of feathers, culminating in the hack of the platform.
On Friday, the app confirmed 72,000 images were leaked online, including user selfies and photo IDs.
404 media, who originally reported the breach, trace its origins back to 4Chan, a far-right, male dominated message board site.
4Chan users absolutely tore apart the user-uploaded selfies with incredibly cruel comments.
Some combed through the leaked photos to craft compilations of particularly unflattering photos women took from the comfort of their home, never expecting they’d go anywhere but a database somewhere in the cloud.
One person — apparently with a lot of time on their hands — even created a website where visitors could vote on which of two selfies was more attractive. The result: a very brutal leaderboard.
The doxxers of The Tea were getting doxxed themselves. But both sides of the whole debacle are wrong. Women can save their snide comments about dates for drinks with their friends, instead of public shaming forums.
And men putting selfies of women — private citizens — on blast online are downright cruel.
We’re losing the plot. Since when did dating become an all-out gender war? Instead of loving each other, we’re dunking on one another.
English (US)