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We all agonize over text messages that the people we want to be with send, and over the text messages we may or may not return. There's a new dating advice website HeTexted.com, capitalizing on that confusion and insecurity, masking itself as a way to help women decipher text messages from boys with crowdsourced responses. Sounds fun! The problem is, underneath the hilarious back-and-forth texts and glimpses into other people's dating mishaps and misunderstandings, it's actually all about making fun of how "clueless" women are when it comes to men (and the site only has texts submitted by women, as related to their dating interactions with men). So it basically exploits our moments of relationship indecision, turning them into something to laugh at rather than actually helping—even though helping is what the site claims it's about.
"We set out to create a place where you could finally find some answers, advice, and usually, a game plan—all from people that are totally unbiased," explains the sites About section. Alas, those "answers" and "advice" are too easily reduced to three possibilities: "he's into you," "he's not into you" or "verdict is still out," making it a place to mock those "sad girls" who don't know he's just not that into them. It's a ready meme rather than actual advice. And while sometimes the crowdsourced responses play pretty accurately, and perhaps all of this is to be expected when people send in their text conversations for the whole Internet to see, and, yeah, some of the guys come off badly, too, there's still something uncomfortable about watching women be judged as making fools of themselves in front of men and other women.