BeautifulPeople.com is a dating website that prides itself on the exclusivity of its membership. The website has a rigorous process whereby they weed out all applicants who they feel do not fulfill the beautiful people mold. However, a recent virus known as the Shrek virus allowed applicants to skip the ruthless process and begin canoodling with the “beautiful people,” on the website.
According to The Guardian, The Shrek virus allowed nearly 30,000 new members to gain access to the website without undergoing the rigorous application process. The Shrek virus gets its name from the animated film “Shrek” that focused on the idea that looks shouldn’t matter. Now, as the 30,000 members that gained admittance are booted off the website, many are left angry and offended.
The website lost more than $100,000 in order to boot the 30,000 people that gained admittance to the site via the Shrek virus. The company has even set up a helpline with counselors to help the “not beautiful people,” move on after being rejected from the website.
Greg Hodge, managing director of BeautifulPeople.com, argued that the company needed to stick to its founding principles of only accepting beautiful people because that’s what the paying members signed up for.
The website boasts that “beauty lies in the eyes of the voter,” and thereby allows members to rank new members with a traffic light scale whereby red means “absolutely not,” and green means “beautiful.” Pictures of members are shown next to information about their weight, height, and body type. The members are also asked if they own a car or a home, along with their zodiac sign.
The 30,000 people that were recently booted as a result of the Shrek virus are not alone in the companies’ brutal enterprises. Just last year, nearly 5,000 members were removed from the site after they gained weight during the Christmas season. Last month the website angered all of Ireland when it said that Irish men were among the ugliest in the world.
On average one in seven people are rejected from the site which hosts 700,000 members in 190 countries.
