The world of internet dating deals another soul-crushing blow to non-supermodels: fatties and uglies can now be sorted out and removed from people's OkCupid profiles. But isn't that what happens on a daily basis, in real life?
Today, the internet had a little fit about political correctness.
After The Kernel published a story about how OkCupid now allows its members to pay more to remove ugly people and fatties from their potential matches, sites like Gawker, Daily Mail, Time, Uproxx, and about a bajillion other sites posted about the topic, as if it were news. We're calling bullshit.
None of that, now
Okay, here's what we're going to do. We'll report the story to you as if it were news, then tear ourselves apart by explaining why it's just the internet's retaliation at itself for not being interesting today. At the end, you can decide if you care.
So, OkCupid just installed a feature that allows you to pay to keep people with undesirable body types out of your life. You can pay even more to keep people whose faces make you cringe from ever reflecting light into your eyes and creating horrible disturbing images in you brain. Basically, you can de-select physical features that would make your penis flaccid even after popping Viagra all night (or your metaphorical penis, ladies). There's also a feature for the site's "A-List Members" which allows them to choose how hot they want their partner to be, with the help of a five-star rating system. Look:
So, this means that if you're poor, you don't have the options to lurk hotter members, and if you're rich, you don't have to subject yourself to any butterfaces or butterbodies (look it up). And this has everyone freaking out. We are, as The Kernel editor James Cook puts it, in an era of "tolerance and political correctness," after all, and OkCupid's new fatty filtration system is anti-tolerant.
Here's why the attention this has received is bullshit.
1. People filter fatties and ugly people with their own eyes, all by themselves, in real life. If the internet never existed, people who are overweight and not too easy-on-the-eyes would still recieve far less attention than the Tom Bradys and Adriana Limas of the world. These people don't stand any better or worse chance of getting hit on on OkCupid than they would in real life. So what OkCupid is doing with their new program, is what people do anyway, on the streetz and in da club.
2. No one seems to be acknowledging that you can also filter out thin, beautiful people. Not everyone is turned on by rail-thin waifs and bulging Schwarzenegger bodies. Some people like a little meat on them bones. Some people would purposely want to filter out more attractive people because they know they're out of their league. Some people like a girl that looks a little homely, or a guy that's smarter and funnier than he is Brad Pitt-ish.
3. People should be able to search for what they want. That's the whole reason internet dating exists; so you can tailor your matches to exactly what you're looking for. It's not "intolerant" or "politically incorrect" to know what you want in a partner, you're just being you, and that's a rare quality of internet daters.
So we say go ahead, be the shallow dickhead you are. We're not going to judge you for it. Instead, we're going to spend the next hour or so searching for people who are "used up," because we really have no idea what that looks like and we're dying to know.
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