Katharina Buczek
And if it’s happened to you, you may have been left wondering how many other women’s inboxes were cursed also.
Well, according to a new survey of over one thousand U.S. self-identified males and females conducted by the dating app Flirtini, practically everyone has fallen victim to a pickle pic at some point or another.
In fact, seventy percent of women reported that they had received an unsolicited picture; meanwhile, sixty-seven percent of straight men revealed they had been sent unwanted explicit photos, too.
The demographic most affected by this explicit photo epidemic, though, is gay men– eighty-eight percent of whom have clicked on their inbox and come face-to-face with a jumpscare and a half.
All pickle jokes aside, though, the survey also found that these unsolicited photos are wreaking more havoc on people’s minds than you might initially think.
Over forty-three percent of women opened up about how receiving explicit images or texts actually negatively impacted their mental health.
And if this fact is representative of the greater U.S. dating pool, then explicit photos could have disastrous implications.
So, after combing through these findings, Flirtini decided to develop a new “c*ckblock feature”– in which AI neural network technology detects any explicit photos and prevents them from being sent to users.
“Any woman who has actively dated in recent years has either been subject to unsolicited images or known someone impacted. Flirtini is not opposed to consensual x-rated sharing,” explained Flirtini’s spokesperson Sarah Segal.
“It’s just not content the dating app chooses to support on its platform for obvious reasons.”
In addition to the new AI feature, the dating app has also rolled out tools that allow users to only reveal personal profile details once they feel comfortable.
