hot or not |

Sometimes, when my best friend and I were bored in college, we’d sit around and click through a trashy Web site you may know as HOT or NOT. The site is basically just a gallery of dopey participants who have uploaded a photo of themselves, with hopes that they’ll score high on the Hot or Not Richter Scale (10 being ScarJo or Ryan Reynolds, 1 being Gollum).

Probably not a 10 on HOT or NOT. (Photo via inquirer.net)

Fast forward 5 years (oof, is that really how long since college?)… Now, the self-declared “Google of online dating,” OK Cupid wants in on the superficial action. According to The Consumerist, several online daters on the site report receiving a message alerting them that they were among the site’s most attractive users! And! They could now start seeing fellow hotties that are held back in a “reserved” section of the site.

(Screen shot via TheConsumerist.com)

The Powers that Be over at OK Cupid told these lucky users:

“We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid’s most attractive users. The scales recently tipped in your favor, and we thought you’d like to know…

Your new elite status comes with one important privilege:

You will now see more attractive people in your match results.

This new status won’t affect your actual match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match’s answers. But the people we recommend will be more attractive. Also! You’ll be shown to more attractive people in their match results.”

Hrmmm… Let’s take a moment to step back and wrap our heads around this one. What makes some goon over at OK Cupid qualified to pull HOT or NOT ratings out of thin air and decide who is in the top percentile of hotness? Is there some kind of advanced degree in Attractive Human Studies that one might obtain? Furthermore, does this reflect how we are increasingly DOOMED to live out our adult lives as if we were still in junior high, scribbling in slam books? Ugh.

For the record, I met the love of my life by online dating. On JDate. Yeah, he was a total hottie in his photos, but they had been scanned, so the quality was grainy. For all I knew, the shots could have been taken in 1997. Who knows if he’d have passed OK Cupid’s Attractiveness test? Also, if I had based my decision to talk to him on his photos, I probably wouldn’t have been blissfully happy in love for the last three years. And what if someone Behind the Scenes at JDate decided I wasn’t hot enough to be in his search results? We’d be out of luck then, too.

Seems to me, if you’re looking for love and not just eye candy to shtup, serious online daters oughta get out of Cupid’s line of fire…

Thoughts? Do you think it’s just a marketing ploy? Is it totally legit, because we’re all truly superficial anyway? Should hotties only date hotties?

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