Josh's New and Hot (Week 5)

Okay, fellow Darwin Safarians(ists, ators???), I'm here tonight to report a gross misuse of the Darwin trademark. I know Dani put a blurb about this at the end of her post, but it really deserves a full exploration. If you haven't already been recruited, this week's new and hot is darwindating.com, a site where you must be both new and hot to survive . Check out a Chicago Tribune article here.

Apparently, too many dating website have become clogged with an overbundance of the fat, ugly, and nerdy, posing a dire risk to all the attractive people in the world. According to the about section of their website, "Attractive people are at a disadvantage on normal internet dating sites. They have to wade through a plethora of ugly people and ugly people pretending to be attractive in order to find someone who matches their own attractiveness" and thus "it has become difficult for the modern attractive human to find other modern attractive humans." What is their proposed solution to this terrible injustice? Have users create profiles that will be judged by the public for "atractiveness", and then extend or deny invitations to join the elite community of beautiful people.

Backing up their claims with evidence, they claim that "in 1859 Charles Darwin proposed the theory that living beings evolved through a process of natural selection where the fittest, healthiest and most attractive beings bred with each other to further their species." Hmmm, I don't remember most attractive being in the Origin of Species, but then again, what do I know? I'm one of those unattractive peons who violates one of the many physical taboos like "fat rolls, hairy feet, out of date fashions, or disproportionately large ears." How did I ever arrive on this planet with my flawed genes (or "jeans" since apparently those could get you kicked out too). In all seriousness though, I feel that Darwin would find this a gross misuse of his name. Although sexual selection has been speculated as the cause to the stratification of different races, I'd say that that theory is treading on thin ice.

I find it terribly interesting that one of the superficial flaws that they point out are "Out of proportion noses", since it that very prejudice against noses that almost lost Darwin his chance to go on the Beagle which would have sabotaged the history of the theory of evolution forever. Where would this site be then? However, I feel that someone might have already pointed out to them that their site would exclude Darwin since they do keep a picture of him on the about page with the caption "Charles Darwin was a genius, but unfortunately very ugly. It is ironic that he wouldn't be able to join Darwin Dating!"

I'd say that it is especially appalling that they start out the about section with the sentence "We live in an ugly world. War, disease, famine and ugly people seem to rule our daily lives." Finally, someone is acknowledging that ugly people are right up there with such irksome realities like famine, disease, and war. Given the choice between eliminating ugliness and ending the war, I'd have to be with Darwindating on the ugliness roundup.

Perhaps this site is actually one big tongue-in-cheek experiment. I can only hope that they are collecting the personal information of thousands of dolts so that they can have telemarketers call them at obscene hours of the night and bombard their mailboxes with offers from an herbalist with crisco-styled hair. Am I asking too much?

Unfortunately, I think I am, since I did, in fact, sign up like every person in America who has every seriously considered buying a roasting machine from Ron Popeil. Check out my profile at the following link and give me a positive vote. In the meantime, try clicking on some of the cool advertisement links they post on their website.