#patook

To all my Ace- & Aro-spec friends - and anyone else that might be interested - I highly recommend you check out this new platonic friend-making app called Patook!! 

I’ve only just started using it myself (for less than a week) and I’m not 100% sure about whether it will be helpful to me or not, but it’s still early days with fairly few users. But as it gains users, I have little doubt it’ll become very popular!

And here’s some especially great news:

There's zero tolerance on flirting. We perma-ban everyone who tries it. If the flirt detector (FD) doesn't catch it, then you can use the "..." button on the top right and "report the conversation as flirty". We update the FD every week based on those reports (as well as any false alarms) so it's continuously evolving. (Tony)

And if you try to send a message that isn’t flirting but it still gets flagged that way, Tony is always happy to hear from you to try to improve the flirt detector’s algorithms & improve your user experience. 

Would you like some even better news??? 

Creator Tony has asked me to boost Patook on Tumblr and as an incentive for you to join, has given all us the coupon code “FEMINISTING” to become a Premium Member!  Apparently, says Tony, “the main thing with premium is that it gets rid of the ads, and then adds some stuff like ‘check if message was read’, extra profile ranking boost, recall messages, reset swipes.” 

So these are all good things, amirite? 

It's like tinder but it's strictly for platonic friendships! There's so many options for filling out your profile, including a few dozen gender options and several orientation options. You can even sort your matches so you only see people who are not attracted to your gender, or so you only do/don't see matches of certain genders.

If you want to message someone but you don't know how to start there's a conversation assistant that has like a dozen prompts for what to start with! And you can't send pictures (I don't think), so there's no surprise grossness when you think things are okay. And their no flirting policy is super strict, so anyone reported or blocked for that sort of thing gets deleted right off.