With Valentine’s day only a couple of weeks away, it’s only fitting that Boston transit riders will now be able to celebrate that hunky guy sitting across from them on the subway. BostonTCrush, launching on January 31, will encourage transit passengers to snap photos of fellow riders and to post them online for all to admire. The site’s intentions are honorable, co-founder Stephen Motion told The Boston Globe. Its goal is to flatter straphangers, not embarrass them. “The nature of our site is to celebrate people that are attracted to other people and maybe are too shy to say anything,” he said. “All the photos are complimentary; all the comments are moderated, so there’s no opportunity for someone to say anything libelous … against anyone.” Boston joins London and New York City, which both have subway crush sites available. Consistent with the other cities, BostonTCrush will only allow photos of men for now, but the developers want to add women’s photos eventually. The challenge is to ensure that the photos don’t lead to harassment. “What BostonTCrush.com, SubwayCrush.net, and TubeCrush.net don’t want to do is encourage any behavior that would threaten or make anyone feel uncomfortable in any circumstance,” Motion said. Link to full story in The Boston Globe.
Photo credit: Susan Bregman
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Thanks for you comment, Mike. You make some good points. I suppose that anyone can snap a photo on the street and post it on his or her Facebook page, but setting up websites for the purpose does raise questions of privacy. I believe there is an option to remove your picture, but as you said, you have to actively check the site to make sure you’re not represented. The question of harassment is also of concern. As far as I can tell, that’s why these “crush” sites are limited to pictures of men (recognizing, of course, that men can also be victims of harassment), but the developers are thinking about opening the site up to both genders.
Susan, unfortunately the very existence of the these “crush” websites can be found to be threatening by survivors of sexual assault. This was brought to bear for me early this morning as I rode one of our vehicles and listened to a young lady relate to one of our operators the details of unwanted physical contact from another passenger moments earlier. I’ve also reviewed some of the comments on the Boston site, and while none of them seem to cross the line into outright vulgarity (yet), there are few that just peg the creepy meter. Individual agency is something that any sexual assault survivor values dearly, as it is that which is lost when one is violated, and these sites essentially say that individual agency either doesn’t exist, or only exists if a person actively trolls the site and looks for their image, placed there by someone else against their will and without their consent.
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