Tea: The App That Lets Women Rate Men Like Used Cars—What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Ever wished we lived in China or an episode of Black Mirror where social credit scores determine whether you can participate in society or get yeeted into social Siberia? You’re in luck. “Tea,” a new “dating advice” app for women, gives you the whole package for free. 

Well, let’s be real, it’s capitalism, baby. If you want to pursue psychotic stalking hall monitor energy in an amateur rather than a hobbyist capacity, there’s a subscription for that. This is definitely going to age well and heal the gender divide. “Are we dating the same guy? Ask our anonymous community of women to make sure your date is safe, not a catfish, and not in a relationship,” the app’s description boasts. 

Though the app has been around since 2023, its recent virality online has boosted its popularity. The app’s ludicrous premise and potential for abuse is outdone only by its even more ridiculous origin story—born from a "deeply personal mission" thanks to founder Sean Cook bearing witness to his mother apparently hitting it off with criminals.

What it offers is a digital vigilante squad, accountable to no one. Screenshots are disabled. The screen reportedly blacks out if you try, and users are kept anonymous. Despite this built-in privacy feature for its petty users, the same courtesy is not extended to its potential victims of reputation destruction, gossip, manipulation, and social exclusion; all patterns of female antisocial behavior. Women on this app can "access a nationwide forum of posts" and "set alerts for a man's name” so they “never miss any tea about [their] potential date, ex, or partner.” 

What it offers is a digital vigilante squad, accountable to no one.

The app allows women to run background checks, reverse image search, and look up phone numbers, as well as advertise men as walking red or green flags. Chivalrous, funny, respectful, pays for the date, and calls back? Green flag. Toxic, jealous, dishonest, and dating multiple women? Red flag. Any anonymous scorned lover with a grudge and a WiFi connection can now upload photos of a man she wants to vet to the mob of other similarly petty, paranoid women, like a human carfax—a can of worms I can assure women they do not want to open. 

The goal is to promote transparency and accountability for social crimes like philandering, infidelity, abuse, toxicity, the list goes on (assuming that honesty and integrity are the cornerstones  of such an app’s user base). Users seek “tea” on unsuspecting men, hence the app’s tacky name, from a community of women who, I’m sure, have no female intrasexual competition-related incentive to lie and deceive so she can have him for herself.

This isn’t new. It’s the natural evolution of the petty, vindictive behavior already festering in Facebook groups like “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” or TikToks seething that West Elm Caleb is playing the field. While these women do sometimes find out that the men they’re dating are up to dishonest, seedy behavior, they’re just as easily breeding grounds for dishonesty, malevolence, toxic revenge-seeking, and false allegations. 

Tea combines the worst elements of female digital vigilantism from online forum culture and merges it with the invasive, objectifying sadism of Zuckerberg’s Facemash (the Facebook precursor that let Harvard students rank fellow female students’ hotness using photos taken without their consent) and the anonymous cruelty of apps like YikYak, AskFM, and Formspring, all of which have been breeding grounds for gossip and harassment. 

The result is the final boss of modern horrors: a surveillance-state social credit system policed by unreliable narrators. It's yet another death knell to already fragile heterosocial dynamics. The fact that it’s soared to the #1 downloaded lifestyle app on the US app store, surpassing one million downloads, doesn’t bode well for what I've argued is a small subset of women ruining relationships for everyone else.

Though many of these downloads can be attributed to morbid curiosity, disdain, or investigative reporting, the fact it exists at all, let alone is earnestly used, is beyond dystopian. We're past Orwell aphorisms here. This is a psyop to end all psyops. I’ve had it. Anyone who intentionally corrodes the delicate trust between men and women, romantic or platonic, is a literal enemy of humanity itself. 

They want us distrusting and resenting each other until we're so blackpilled we prefer intimacy simulations with chatbots or Blade Runner-esque sex dolls. The only solution is confronting and shutting down antisocial behavior wherever it arises, whether from men or women, libbed-out feminists who’ve been one-shotted by Andrea Dworkin or redpilled playboys who’ve been sipping Andrew Tate’s kool aid.

A word of warning: I can promise my fellow women this is a Pandora’s box you don’t want to open. When these sorts of antisocial tactics are emboldened and excused, any concept of benevolent sexism goes with it. That means no duty of chivalry will be holding men back from weaponizing their own form of reputation destruction against women, where it hurts them most. 

I’ve already seen men stewing on Twitter, thinking up new retaliatory tech proposals for apps that will target women for their reported level of promiscuity, where they land on the hot/crazy matrix, whether they’re libbed out or based. The sorts of “red flags” men look for in women are bound to be a lot more socially damaging and psychologically poisonous: body count, accusations of histrionics or personality disorders—hell, forget red or green flags. Maybe they’ll skip the niceties for the “fatty or not” ranking.

If you’re all game for the female version of this, on what basis can you really oppose this equally regressive power play? If you avoid these behaviors entirely, you can have a principled leg to stand on in opposing them. As for how you can avoid dating serial cheating abusers in the meantime, part of that issue comes down to assortative mating. In some sense, it might literally be a “you” problem. 

There’s a certain selection effect taking place in the dating world which you can observe on shows like Love Island. These people seem well-suited to each other for a reason. A 2023 study in the journal Nature Human Behavior found that couples share 89% similarity in traits with their partner. Low human capital selects for low human capital. I have to guess there are other ways to cultivate discernment besides doxxing strangers with other mentally disturbed women. But if men have their own list of red flags for women, I’m willing to bet “has downloaded the tea app” is ringing in at number one right about now.

The inevitable downfall of this company might turn out to be much funnier than the obvious ethical violations blowing up in their face. The app relies on a system of identity verification to “legitimize” its users, requiring the submission of a selfie to verify you’re a woman. Backlash is already forming for the app’s verification system letting men in wigs slip through. 

Of course, the app will find itself stuck between a rock and a hard place if it wants to balance protecting female safety and security by barring men access to the app while avoiding committing “transphobia.” Stay tuned.