Not from the Onion

A dating site that only accepts beautiful people has had to remove 30,000 people who were admitted because of a computer virus...  This literally sounds like The Onion. I decline to give the site publicity, so I won't mention its name here. In other news, I may have to move to Sweden.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/20/dating-website-beautiful-people-members

 

my favorite quotes:

"We have to stick to our founding principles of only accepting beautiful people – that's what our members have paid for," said Greg Hodge, managing director of [the site]. "We can't just sweep 30,000 ugly people under the carpet."

…

 

"We got suspicious when tens of thousands of new members were accepted over a six-week period, many of whom were no oil painting," Hodge told the Guardian.

The brutal axing of the 30,000 hopefuls is not the site's first brush with controversy. Last year, about 5,000 members were removed from the site after they had appeared to put on weight during the Christmas period.

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This month, the website triggered anger in Ireland when it said that Irish men were among the ugliest in the world. This was based on the reasoning that only 9% of male Irish applicants to the site were accepted. Only 20% of Irish women are accepted, compared with nearly 70% of Swedish women who sign up.

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Conceding that the latest set back was a "very embarrassing day", Hodge said he felt "very sorry" for the "unfortunate people who were wrongly admitted to the site and believed, albeit for a short time, that they were beautiful".