Sexy Images used to Game StumbleUpon?
Well, I don’t really approve of this, but it is pretty funny - this person has only voted for 1 website in their entire month on StumbleUpon, but has 67 fans. How did they do it? I think the picture is the (unfortunate) answer. [UPDATE: a commenter notified me that this member is up to 69 fans].
How did I find this person? Well, ‘Poohbaby‘ (what the heck does THAT mean?) messaged me as shown below. My inbox on SU is remarkably spam free, and I hope this isn’t the beginning of a trend.
Al Ebaster said,
July 20, 2007 @ 5:03 pm
I’ve noticed a lot of this — not even sexy images, just good-looking girls who have more fans than page ratings. Sex is going to sell forever, it seems.
John Lampard said,
July 20, 2007 @ 5:07 pm
Poohbaby - so, is she a friend of yours then?! ;) She looks a wholesome sort to me, so I’m sure her screenname takes after her lifelong admiration of Winnie the Pooh and nothing else!!
Seriously though these sorts of avatars are all over the social networks, and nine times out of ten the profile belongs to a male!
Perhaps she could stumble us though…?
Plutark said,
July 20, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
That’s fucking freaking me out. Spammers are coming on stumble. And pervert had ever been there as well. Just need to see the correlation between girls profile and boys ones…
beatlegirl said,
July 20, 2007 @ 10:04 pm
Funny. She has 69 friends now.
People in the Sun said,
July 20, 2007 @ 10:53 pm
So I’m searching for the scam here. I figure, she(?) does that to get people to her make-money-quick site, which is probably the only site she clicked the thumbs up for. But no… She likes Douglas Adams. Not enough sites with Stephen King quotes (or Julia Roberts)?
I’m still with you, though. Something here is not right.
kroq said,
July 21, 2007 @ 12:17 am
I agree, it’s not obvious what she’s selling - but it seems like there must be something! What I wonder is: do the (probably many) people who are male but use female avatars everywhere start to think differently about their own gender or sexuality?
pesto said,
July 21, 2007 @ 1:56 am
maybe it’s gay males that want to trawl for guys to have internet sex with? sex seems a likely reason for bothering to ‘just say hi’ to (presumably only male) stumbler after stumbler …
The-Bozz said,
July 21, 2007 @ 6:16 am
Yeah, it’s pretty common. It’s also a bit sad that we fall for it. Seems that men in SU need more social life.
Perhaps later, just one stumble more…
itsmeserious said,
July 22, 2007 @ 2:40 am
I dont know what to say really, but it not something I approve of.
AllSux.com » Why Go Out of Your Way to Trash a Fellow Stumbler? said,
July 23, 2007 @ 3:53 am
[…] Negative reviews are a great feature on StumbleUpon - some people use them to criticize stuff think don’t think is up to snuff, while others (like me) try to reserve the ‘thumbs down’ for spam-filled sites or pages littered with lots of in-the-way ads. So OK, I wrote a post about how people using female avatars seem to get a lot of ‘friends,’ even if they aren’t Stumbling many pages: […]
Matt Keegan said,
July 23, 2007 @ 7:35 am
I’ve seen the same too. Unless, all the good looking chicks have decided suddenly to stumble. MyBlogLog is full of these types of photos/avatars too. Guess what? It seems to be working.
Noadi said,
July 23, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
There’s a reverse to this that is just as irritating. I’m a girl and I have a photo of myself on my stumbleupon page and I am constantly getting irritating messages hitting on me. I actually get more messages of that sort here than on MySpace (even though I use the same photo for both). If it gets much worse I’m going to have to replace my profile photo with a picture of my cat or something which I don’t want to do because I like that photo.
kroq said,
July 23, 2007 @ 1:50 pm
Wow, that’s really unfortunate. You can set your profile so people can’t contact you, but that’s an unfortunate thing to have to do - to cut yourself off. That’s a really excellent counter-point though - this is certainly a double-edged sword. It would be nice if StumbleUpon added spam filters.
MC said,
July 25, 2007 @ 10:40 pm
I hate it when people like that write me a message asking me to add them as a friend because with no stumbled pages, well, I get nothing out of that.
Victoria said,
August 9, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
I’m a chick and my photo is a little…unusual. Me with a gun. I have close to 5,000 stumbles. But I don’t have that many fans. So sad. Yeah right!
Chandler said,
August 9, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
I have noticed this as well - many profiles which feature pictures of attractive young women and almost no content - yet tons of fans. I wanted to test the hypothesis you mentioned, so I decided to switch my own Stumble Pic from me (a guy) to a reasonably attractive young woman. So far, my hits and fan levels are about the same - but I haven’t been messaging anyone, and my image is just regular-old-attractive, not half-naked-supermodel. Maybe the difference comes with the spam and overt sex images?
adluv said,
August 10, 2007 @ 7:30 am
I have a pic of myself with a LITTLE bit of photoshop to make myself more alluring but I still only have 2 fans and 1 review and Im on all fxxkin day clicking away. Ive come to the conclusion that ALL stumblers are men and not gay either!!
brian said,
August 10, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
Poohbaby now returns “No Such Username” from Stumbleupon. :)
Chandler said,
October 6, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
Me again, from two posts up. I ran my profile as a believably attractive woman for about two weeks - and there was no change in views or fans for that time. I wrote about 100 reviews in that period, so it’s not like I was invisible. My conclusion is that the reason these “women” receive so many fans is that they are also spamming people with requests - I’ve received a good few of these myself.