Keeping up appearances (amihotornot.com)

Member Name: judithritchie

Product:	amihotornot.com
Date:	01/05/01 (54 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a laugh if it isnt taken the wrong way, free, dating service available it seems although i dislike this idea

Disadvantages: adverts offers and merchandise unavailable to the UK

I don't do a lot of pointless and directionless surfing, as I don't really have the time, but I just revisited a site I used to visit when I was rich with free time - www.bored.com. And as I browsed through the sites posted, I happened upon a link to the site - hotornot.com.
The chunk of text beneath the link simply said"Look at photos of men and women and rate them on a scale of one to ten, or submit your own picture to be rated by others." I had to check this out to see if it was for real!

And it was! I just couldn't believe it!

The website initially loaded up with a picture of a female in the centre, and above the picture was a ratings bar, numbered 1 through to 10 on which the site viewer rated the opinion on a 1 to 10 scale. Thankfully someone had helpfully added a bar beneath the numbers, scaling 10 as HOT and 1 as NOT. You must click above the number at which you rate the person rated in the picture, which will automatically load you another picture to rate. The idea appalled me for all of 10 seconds, but I must admit that I soon became quite involved in judging!

Once you have voted for the person featured, another site automatically loads up with a new picture centred in the page ready to be voted. And on the left hand side of the page is a box with a small view of the previous picture you rated, clearly showing what the average vote it, reminding you of your vote, informing you how many people have voted for that person and also adds when the person who submitted the picture (presumably the person featured int he picture) last logged into the service to discover their results. The voting bar for the pictures remains at all times above the picture being voted. Above this picture you also have a drop-down menu allowing you to see pictures of women, men or both so you have control over who you want to view.

The site is littered with advertisements, presumably the main way this site funds itself
assuming visitors will click on links. For those in the UK these ads aren't really relevant as they're all for those in the US or in Canada, as I found when I clicked on a link for a camera giveaway. The links are widely varied, for competitions for holidays and laptops, to cheap holidays and student credit cards! I guessed that the site owners were pretty desperate for cash too, as you may notice below the box showing the picture of the person you last voted is a little message saying: "We need your help!!! Please contribute $5" as a link, from Jim and James, the site runners. If you click the link it takes you to a secure Paypal connection to donate money, as they claim the site costs a lot to run, and there is no obligation to give money to view or submit pictures.

You do not need to register to view the pictures as I had originally suspected you might have to. However if you want to submit a picture for the scrutiny of the entire world, you need to register but it is free.

I am quite ashamed to admit this, but I love this site! It must be the malicious part of us bored surfers showing its ugly head who want to assure ourselves that we look normal, but also checking out the other votes' results could give us an idea of what society sees as pretty or as ugly. There's a risk of abuse by people submitting pictures of people they either like or dislike as a cruel practical joke, but unlike sites geared towards this such as mateinastate.com this site is perfectly clean, as I have seen no pornographic or generally obscene pictures. The site has a clear request for clean pictures only to be submitted.

However, something struck me as a bit odd when I noticed the link above one of the previous pictures "Click here to meet me". I don't think all the pictures have this option, but the general idea was that if you registered and submitted a picture of yourself, rated a picture of someone you liked and the
n clicked onthis link, read what they had said about themselves and decided to meet them and clicked to meet them, that person is informed that you want to meet them. If they rate your picture and like you then you can make contact somehow. It was at this moment I thought I had stumbled inadvertently and perfectly innocently onto an online dating service, and it was under this category I had searched for hotornot.com on Ciao!!! However it doesn't seem to apply to most pictures! When you submit a picture you can choose to activate this service!

The site also offers you the chance to purchase Hotornot merchandise, with Tshirts and mugs featuring a picture of the HotOrNot 1 to 10 voting box with the large bold words "Tell me, am I hot or not?" blasted over them. Unfortunately only available for those US or Canada citizens who fancy one!!! The site also have a newsletter available soon for people to subscribe to if you plan to be a regular here. Personally I don't - I just don't have the time!

The site must be pretty popular as it has had over 700 Million votes counted and 1,100,000 photos submitted according to the site which may explain why the pictures can take a while to load up, or this is more likely due to the pictures submitted being of varying sizes. I must admit there is a dirty charm to it. My advice is, whether you decide to review some pictures or submit one, take it lightly as a joke and resist the urge to humiliate your sister, mate etc. - the same could be done to you!!!

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