The agony of the virtual beauty pageant

December 19, 2000
Web posted at: 2:59 PM EST (1959 GMT)

In this story: Plump journalists in white T-shirts RELATED SITES

By Paul Sussman
CNN.com Europe Writer

LONDON, England -- When I was at school my friends and I used to play a particularly unpleasant, and foolish, lunch-break game entitled Crusher.

Crusher, basically, was a test of endurance. The idea was that you lay on the ground and then one by one your friends lay on top of you, slowly crushing you until you could not take any more and cried out for them to stop, the winner being the one who could withstand the most squashing for the longest period of time.

It was, like my slug collection, just a passing phase, and one that I quickly grew out of.   Or at least I thought I had until a few weeks ago, when I signed up to a new Web site and suddenly found myself reliving that old playground scenario of seeing just how much pain I could endure before eventually cracking under the pressure.

The site -- www.amihotornot.com -- launched in October and is like Crusher. It is a sort of self-inflicted torture, the difference being that whereas Crusher tested you physically, with the Web site it's your ego that gets inexorably flattened.

The brainchild of two unemployed Californian college graduates, www.amihotornot.com gives people the opportunity to upload anonymous photographs of themselves that are then judged on a scale of one to 10 by other Web users, thereby giving you an idea of how attractive -- or unattractive -- the rest of the world considers you to be.

The hope, of course, is that you will receive a constant succession of high scores, thereby boosting your self confidence and generally making you feel better about yourself when you look in the mirror each morning.

The reality, unfortunately, is slightly less encouraging.   From an initial rating of four, which I gave myself in the misguided belief that things could only move upwards from there, I have spent the last five weeks watching in increasing desperation as my average score has steadily plummeted, like a stock exchange in freefall The last time I logged on, about five minutes ago, I was languishing at the 1.5 mark, making me "hotter" than a paltry six percent of the site's male users.

To add insult to injury, among those who the general public consider more attractive than me are an elderly man in a shower cap, a Stalin lookalike and a chimpanzee.

Despite such ongoing humiliation, however, the whole thing remains curiously compulsive.

I have found myself logging-on numerous times each day, both to check my own rating and also to pass judgement on other people's pictures (the pain of being told that you're ugly by complete strangers is at least partly mitigated by being able to tell other complete strangers that they're ugly too).

The site has definitely struck a chord. It now receives more than 25,000 page views per day, and carries almost 4,500 pictures from people around the world.

Its two founders, who are known only as Jim and James, have been staggered by its success. "We never expected anything out of it," said James in a recent interview with the U.K.'s Observer newspaper.

"It was just a clever idea for a funny site. Now, suddenly, we are deluged with e-mails and phone calls."

James, incidentally, has his own picture on the site, with a rating of 6.5.

Although it is intended as just a bit of light-hearted fun, there are some who see inherent dangers in this sort of trial-by-Web.

"There are self-confident people who just do it for a laugh and a giggle," says British psychotherapist Gladeana McMahon.

"And they'll be fine, as will the real narcissists, who even if they get a low rating probably won't believe it anyway.

"The problem comes when you get people who have signed-up looking for comfort and reassurance and then end up scoring very badly. It could really damage their self-confidence."

CNN.com's Paul Sussman: How would you rate him?

It's certainly dented my self-confidence, although it's a relief to find there are people who rate even lower than me (how the person with the site's lowest score must feel I don't care to imagine).

And of course there's always the hope that things might improve.

Maybe the 301 people who have voted on my picture so far are just prejudiced against plump journalists in white T-shirts. Maybe there's going to be a sudden late rush of people who understand how attractive I really am.

In fact maybe it's time to log-on again, just to check.

Am I HOT or NOT?

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.