(no subject)
A while ago I signed up to OkCupid. There is one picture of me (the top half of this one, which has a slightly odd perspective going on), my profile says I'm looking for friends, and I tend to remember it exists about twice a year so I'm virtually inactive on it. The first two points are the relevant ones.
Today I received this email from them. Email in italics, my comments in plain text.
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.
Uh, I've only ever had the one picture on there. How did it suddenly become more attractive?
How can we say this with confidence? We've tracked click-thrus on your photo and analyzed other people's reactions to you in QuickMatch and Quiver.
Oh, right. Clearly the only thing that could be influenced by is attractiveness. Not, say, fascination as to why the top of my head is apparently worth photographing, or curiosity as to what exactly I'm staring at so intently. (Answer: a cup of really fantastic hot chocolate. Mmmmmm). Anyway, by this metric it would seem that a car crash is objectively more attractive than a field of roadside poppies. Good to know.
Your new elite status comes with one important privilege:
This sentence makes me profoundly, enormously, uncomfortable. Seriously, who the hell says that? DO NOT WANT.
You will now see more attractive people in your match results.
They felt this was so important a privilege that they upped the font size and highlighted it. Oh yay, I will be spared looking at photographs of potentially ordinary-looking potential friends. I just typed three sentences along the lines of "what the everloving hell" and gave up in favour of: words fail me.
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.
Words... are still failing me, here.
Also! You'll be shown to more attractive people in their match results.
So the whole site gets tiered into "pretty" and "not-pretty"? This makes me feel slightly ill.
Suddenly, the world is your oyster. Login now and reap the rewards.
Right, because the only barrier to the world being my oyster before was having to decide for myself who's sufficiently good-looking to be my friend?
Go ask an ugly friend and see.
Could some of my ugly friends step forward, please? Anyone? No? You'll have to identify yourselves, you see, because I tend to think of my friends as all rather lovely.
Basically, their position seems to be:
There is an elite class of objectively, scientifically-identified, beautiful people who have privileges like not having to associate with everyone else. This should make you happy because you're in it!
And you know, that doesn't make me happy. Not even a tiny little bit.
Today I received this email from them. Email in italics, my comments in plain text.
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.
Uh, I've only ever had the one picture on there. How did it suddenly become more attractive?
How can we say this with confidence? We've tracked click-thrus on your photo and analyzed other people's reactions to you in QuickMatch and Quiver.
Oh, right. Clearly the only thing that could be influenced by is attractiveness. Not, say, fascination as to why the top of my head is apparently worth photographing, or curiosity as to what exactly I'm staring at so intently. (Answer: a cup of really fantastic hot chocolate. Mmmmmm). Anyway, by this metric it would seem that a car crash is objectively more attractive than a field of roadside poppies. Good to know.
Your new elite status comes with one important privilege:
This sentence makes me profoundly, enormously, uncomfortable. Seriously, who the hell says that? DO NOT WANT.
You will now see more attractive people in your match results.
They felt this was so important a privilege that they upped the font size and highlighted it. Oh yay, I will be spared looking at photographs of potentially ordinary-looking potential friends. I just typed three sentences along the lines of "what the everloving hell" and gave up in favour of: words fail me.
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.
Words... are still failing me, here.
Also! You'll be shown to more attractive people in their match results.
So the whole site gets tiered into "pretty" and "not-pretty"? This makes me feel slightly ill.
Suddenly, the world is your oyster. Login now and reap the rewards.
Right, because the only barrier to the world being my oyster before was having to decide for myself who's sufficiently good-looking to be my friend?
Go ask an ugly friend and see.
Could some of my ugly friends step forward, please? Anyone? No? You'll have to identify yourselves, you see, because I tend to think of my friends as all rather lovely.
Basically, their position seems to be:
There is an elite class of objectively, scientifically-identified, beautiful people who have privileges like not having to associate with everyone else. This should make you happy because you're in it!
And you know, that doesn't make me happy. Not even a tiny little bit.