The Face of Mediocrity

A friend of mine recently regaled me with an unfortunate experience she had with an online dating site a few months back. She was using the site pretty regularly, and after a while of hit-or-miss dates, she received the following email from the site's blog author: 

"We're doing a feature on attractiveness and users think you're attractive. We want to feature your profile in our blog which discusses how to make your profile more attractive to other users. It will probably peak a lot of interest in your profile, do you agree? May we feature you?" 

After reading the email and feeling pretty damn good about herself, my friend thought why not? So she granted them permission and thought nothing of it. Fast forward to three weeks later - she then receives a facebook message from a random guy she went to high school with and has not seen or talked to since (gotta love those out-of-the-blue messages), saying "I stumbled upon a link to a dating blog that you happened to be pictured in.  Your initials confirmed it and your facebook picture looks kinda familiar. Did you contribute to this blog in any way other than providing your photo?" and attached the article to the message. The article, as it turns out, was indeed about attractiveness. 

Unfortunately for my friend, she was misled, and not labeled as an example of attractive users but rather as an "average" looking user. They were kind enough to say "As for the photos at the bottom of the curve, it didn't feel right to write someone and say 'can I use you to illustrate the concept of ugliness on my blog?' so you'll just have to extrapolate." The article continued on about how important looks are on these sites, and that beautiful people are more successful daters. They gave graphs and stats and advice about how to go from being average to above-average in the looks department. Needless to say, my friend was not all that enthused that she was now the famous face of mediocrity for online dating. 

To add insult to injury, sure enough some other people we know also saw the article. Dating sites can be cruel. 

Recently, she received yet another email from the site informing her that the scales have tipped in her favor and she is now in the top half of the most attractive users and as a result of her new elite status, she'll see more attractive people in her match results. Phew, what a relief that is!