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Monday July 29, 2002 - 9:43 p.m. I have found the one single thing that has renewed my faith in mankind as a whole, and it happens to be a web site. The web site is www.hotornot.com. Please, stay with me on this one. (I will not actually be linking to the site here, for no other reason than I don't want to, really. If you truly have a driving need to go check it out, I suggest you copy and paste. Sorry, babies.) I used to work at a dot com and as such, spent an ungodly amount of time looking at various and sundry web sites. This usually wasn't a part of my actual job per se, but it was a pasttime that I enjoyed guiltily, along with a handful of other co-workers that had two important similarities with me: they (1)were easily amused, and (2)possessed a comparable level of maturity. We could never quite get enough of this wonder we call the Web. It's amazing, we always thought, what exactly you can find. Oh, I have lists. Lists and lists of things we did come across. A-maz-ing. And sort of sad, really. My point being, I was introduced to this little gem, www.hotornot.com, through this game we played. In case you aren't familiar with the site, it's just a forum to which you can submit your photo and receive an anonymous and collective answer to if you are, in fact, hot or not by way of a number score, 1-10. As far as I can tell, the web site takes each vote and averages out the bad boy and then feeds you your score. It also feeds your score to anyone that calls up the site, is randomly served your picture, and votes on it. Like I said before, please stay with me on this one. I never paid much attention to this site while playing the web site cruising game. I wanted to get past it - a really rather tame entry on our list - to something that could really get me/my bile going, something like Aurora Dawn's site, which I will not be giving you the URL or speaking any more if it at this time. Aurora Dawn is an entirely different, and excrutiatingly horrible, story. But the other day I actually came across my list and there it was on there, www.hotornot.com. Out of nostalgia for a time of heady innocence and out-of-control, pointless spending on business plans that basically imploded the instant they were conceived, I dialed up the site to see if it was still there. And it was. After a moment of rapture, I mindlessly started clicking through the pictures, doing a little browsing, doing a little - dare I admit it? - voting. And suddenly I realized why my co-workers devoted so much time to this one particular site during our games. It is damned addictive. But also sort of sad. My time at the site ended up sounding a lot like this: [sad, clucking sound] "Oh, geez. Why? Why do people do this?" [The man in the picture is obviously 85, wearing a sweatshirt proclaiming "Heaven don't want me, and Hell's afraid I'll take over!" He has no pants on, but - thankfully - is wearing briefs, although in a questionable state of cleanliness. He is also wearing one sock and a party hat. A dog is sprawled on its back nearby, proudly showing its "assets" to all who care to check them out.] [I click decisively on "10"] And here is where I start to notice something strange. The screen reloads, showing me a new photo as well as the old gentleman's average score. He's got a 9.8 out of a possible ten. Mankind, you hath redeemed thyself. It was a full-out pattern, babies. I checked. Any and every time a photo instilled in me that same sense of "Oh...oh..." [tears welling up], and I would click on 10, the page would reload and there it would be, 9.7, 9.8, 9.9 out of a possible 10. Amazing. Wondrous. Callooh! Callay! I chortled in my joy. Although, as a final note, when we posted the picture of my boss' head grafted onto the body of a Backstreet Boy, he only received a 6.8 in the day and a half before he found the photo (don't ask) and angrily - and as violently as is possible, when carriying out such an act - had it removed, weeping and gnashing in frustration, embarrassment, and confusion. I thought he deserved at least a 7. But what can you do? Glad you stayed with me on this one. G'night,
-Mlle R
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