Theassbook.net may be able to remedy the lack of online flirting options available through Thefacebook.com. While facebook users can employ the ambiguous "poke" feature to interact with digital friends, students with accounts on Theassbook.net can tap, pinch or smack the virtual asses of other students around the country, as well as send personalized "booty call" messages.
A self-proclaimed parody of Thefacebook, Theassbook describes itself as "kind of like Thefacebook's evil twin. The dirty-minded one."
Theassbook has features that parallel several of thos of Thefacebook -- friends have become hookups, "poking" is transformed into "tapping that ass" and instead of interests, users list fetishes.
The site is most popular at the University of Chicago, where junior Yitzhak Wasileski created it to earn points for the school's Scav Hunt 2005, an annual scavenger hunt. The 283 items on this year's list included smoked fish jerky fudge (2 points) and a juror selection survey from the Michael Jackson trial (6 points). The item that inspired the website was described only as "http://www.theassbook.net," and was worth 28 points.
As of Tuesday, the site had 1669 members at 134 schools. Almost 700 of those members were University of Chicago students, and about 60 were at Dartmouth.
The ideology behind the concept, according to the website, is that "people spend too much time interacting over the computer instead of in real life. The goal here is to put people in a face-to-face (or, if they prefer, genitals-to-genitals, or genitals-to-face) situation."
Though Theassbook is similar to Thefacebook, hookups, unlike friends, can be one-sided -- one user can hook up with another, but that user does not necessarily have to be hooked up with the first, and does not have to accept any invitation -- new hookups appear instantaneously.
Users can search through members at all participating schools, based on criteria that include fetishes, special skills and turn-ons.
Abi Medvin '07, who lists "expensive sheets" as one of her fetishes, said she is confident that Theassbook will become a serious rival for Thefacebook once more Dartmouth students join.
"I think it will be much more popular than facebook. With assbook, we get to do it all over again while procrastinating for finals, with the added bonus of the possibility of actually finding someone to hook up with," she said.
Medvin maintained that the possibility for pairing off exists but doubts that Theassbook will change Dartmouth's dating culture.
"I don't know if I'd really go out on a limb over assbook, but I must say I think it would be fun to entertain offers," she said. "Maybe in the winter -- you know, it's cold."
