New Delhi: A dating website meant exclusively for beautiful people has been caught on the ugly end when it received tremendous flack for ‘dumping’ 30,000 of its members for not meeting the mark.
The site allows members to date or dump other members ruthlessly if they are not good looking enough. The main page of the site says-
- Do looks matter to you, when it comes to selecting a partner?
- Do you want to guarantee your dates will always be beautiful?
- No more filtering through unattractive people on main stream sites...
And at the end of the website, it declares-
Too ugly to sign up? Click here to browse BeautifulPeople as guest…
Clearly they don’t mince their words!
Last month when BeautifulPeople.com was attacked by a computer virus, ironically called Shrek- the character that proves that looks don’t matter, some claim standards slipped and around 30,000 new members gained admittance. The website claims that the virus was planted in by an enraged ex-employee or an angry reject.
Now, in a move which has made those rejected become uglier with rage, they have been unceremoniously booted off at a financial cost of more than $100,000 (£62,000) to the site's operators say media reports.
The website is firm on its founding principles, thus ‘dumping’ the ugly lot is a necessity that required the site to pay out $112,500 in refunds to 4,500 of the 30,000 who had paid $25 a month for membership of the site. The others were still on a free trial period.
The brutal axing of the 30,000 hopefuls is not the site's first brush with controversy. Last year, about 5,000 members were removed from the site after they had appeared to put on weight during the Christmas period.
Managing director Greg Hodge explained that Norwegian women and Swedish men have the greatest chance of being accepted into the club, while Brazilian and Danish men are also popular – along with women from Sweden and Iceland.
Conceding that the latest set back was a very embarrassing day, Hodge told the media that he felt very sorry for the unfortunate people who were wrongly admitted to the site and believed, albeit for a short time, that they were beautiful.
He attempted to make peace with the rejects. He sent them all a very carefully worded email, trying to be as sensitive as possible but naturally many of them are finding it a bit of a sting to have been rated beautiful by their peers only to lose the accolade overnight he said. The site's operators have set up a counseling helpline to ease the pain of rejection.
So would one not be tempted to feel belittled when rejected so obviously by the Denmark based website and hopefully learn to not count entirely on looks?
No. A 31-year-old Australian nanny living in Los Angeles, was rejected after two weeks of being accepted said that she was getting along really well with an American guy and were to go on a date. But after being bummed off the site she has decided to get a makeover and professional photo shoot before reapplying to the website. She is not averse to believing that he could be the one and is even willing to use Photoshop to get back on the site and get in touch with him again, say media reports.
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