Members Lucky Posted June 20, 2011 Members Posted June 20, 2011 From SFgate.com: Folks at the beautifulpeople.com will tell you that hanging with the beautiful crowd has its perks - until an angry ex-employee crashes the pretty-people party with 30,000 of his or her ugliest friends. The exclusive dating site reports it was targeted by a virus aptly called "Shrek" last month, allowing thousands of so-called "ugly people" to set up profiles on the site without approval. Usually, the site's members vote on whether applicants are worthy of a beautifulpeople.com profile. "We got suspicious when tens of thousands of new members were accepted over a six-week period, many of whom were no oil painting," site director Greg Hodge said in a prepared statement. (If you think that's a little odd, read on.) About 30,000 users reportedly got a not-so-polite rejection email informing them their profiles would be shuttered. "Sorry to inform you, you're not beautiful enough," the email stated, according to one report. "We have sincere regret for the unfortunate people who were wrongly admitted to the site and who believed, albeit for a short while, that they were beautiful," Hodge said. "It must be a bitter pill to swallow, but better to have had a slice of heaven then never to have tasted it at all." The flippant tone of the statement - and beautifulpeople.com's history of publicity stunts - has some calling the site out for faking the virus. After all, this is the same site that once falsely reported it was making users reapply for membership after the holiday season because too many "let themselves go." Graham Cluley, a blogger for Naked Security, wrote: It's a fantastic piece of chicanery, of course, designed to boost awareness of the dating website, get them many thousands of pounds of free publicity with little risk of damage to their reputation. But beautifulpeople.com managers maintain that's not the case. They're blaming a disgruntled ex-employee for the "Shrek" virus. From the site's statement: The origin of the 'Shrek Virus' is still being investigated internally. It was initially thought to be one of the 5.5 million BeautifulPeople.com rejects, but further investigations point to a former employee who placed the virus before leaving the team in May. Despite wreaking havoc with the application process, member privacy and security was never breached. And that's just convenient enough to make the world skeptical. Beautifulpeople.com proudly claims to have rejected about 5.5 million applicants. But now: "BeautifulPeople.com has set up a hotline on 1 (800) 791-0662 to help recently rejected applicants deal with the hard news and can give tips for those wishing to re-apply. " I'm guessing tip No. 1 goes a little something like this: "Become prettier." Posted By: Amy Rolph (Email) | June 20 2011 at 03:21 PM Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/hottopics/detail?entry_id=91399#ixzz1PrMJepMe Quote
Guest gcursor Posted June 20, 2011 Posted June 20, 2011 Yea I heard about this too and posted the article link on TWITTER. It is sad however it is a realistic fact of the world we live in today. Although being beautiful has lots of benefits, I'm always shocked that "beautiful" people have their issues as well. Sometimes I would look at somebody and think to myself, "Wow..he must have everything he ever wants." However getting to know people often shows you that these people don't lead happy, carefree lives either. I remember once seeing an escort years and years ago now who told me, "Everybody has problems..they just have a different set of problems is all." I'm sure that being beautiful comes with some of the same disadvantages that being rich has. You never know who you can trust...always wondering what somebody really wants. Even when you're in a relationship, you worry about somebody being more beautiful than you who will catch that person's eye. Although I may pine to be a beautiful person, I understand that these are people..just like everybody else. Quote
Guest CharliePS Posted June 21, 2011 Posted June 21, 2011 I remember once seeing an escort years and years ago now who told me, "Everybody has problems..they just have a different set of problems is all." I'm sure that being beautiful comes with some of the same disadvantages that being rich has. I am reminded of the famous (OK, possibly apocryphal) conversation between Fitzgerald and Hemingway, in which the bedazzled romantic Fitzgerald opined, "Ernest, the rich are different from us," to which Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money." I'd be happy to experience being a beautiful young man for awhile and see if I could handle his problems. Quote
Members lookin Posted June 21, 2011 Members Posted June 21, 2011 Hell, even the Shrek virus passed me by. Now that's ugly! Quote
