« may 30, 2001 - 12:18 ayem | Main | 30 May 2001 - 12:08 pm »

Dear -273 readers, I come bearing good news. It seems that there is yet another outlet to vent your frustrations on the world by telling other people that they are not attractive, and that venue is Face the Jury.com. After seeing a news story about this original website on the St. Louis local news, I thought it was high time to get in on the action. After perusing the profiles of the current denizens (and rating a few of them), I signed up for an account and posted myself for judgment. I urge you to view the site yourself to sign up and get the full experience, but in case you are lazy or afraid of what the viewing public may think of you, here is a synopsis of how it works:

1) pick a screenname. If you're a girl, you are required to have the word "hot" or "sexy" (sexy should have a variable number of x's, however) in your name, as well as the number 69. My chosen screenname was crhill1979, my IM name.

2) choose a picture to submit. They are trying to crack down on fakes, but many still slip through the cracks. If you are a girl and want to be rated highly, it is preferable to take pictures of separate parts of your body and post them individually. If you are a guy, you must have a picture of your abs. Either way, your picture must be blurry, out of focus, or ripped straight from a modeling site. My picture was my senior pic from high school.

3) rate yourself. It doesn't affect your overall rating, but it lets people know if you are full of yourself. I rated myself a 4 out of 10.

4) write out a short profile of yourself. If you're a girl, you should be "fun", "cute", and "enjoy hanging out at clubs with my friends". Guys should be "athletic" and "enjoy outdoors stuff". My profile mentioned that I am a CS major.

5) describe your turn-ons. Girls are required to be turned on by guys with nice abs, as well as guys with a good sense of humor. Obviously all these girls are lying, however, as in real life girls are turned on by "guys with greek letters on their shirts". This actually does turn up in a few turn-on sections. This was the only section I took semiseriously, as people who read this may IM or email me and I would be afraid of anyone who emailed me that they were also turned on by "sock puppets" or "armadillos", thinking that I had put those down for real.

6) describe your turn-offs. You can never be too blatantly obvious. Guys that smell are apparently a big turn-off to girls. One guy put that he was turned off by "consumerism", yet in his picture he is wearing a "Transformers" shirt. This struck me as slightly hypocritical. Hypocrisy is one of my turn-offs, but I forgot to put it down. Instead I mentioned Crazy Town. I don't want any girl to be my butterfly. Sugar. Baby.

7) submit and wait 6 hours to be approved. Apparently they don't accept fake pictures, nudity, or cartoon sketches. It's too bad. About the cartoon sketches I mean.

Once you register, a whole host of features are opened to you, such as being able to post to the Face the Jury forums. There are 2 types of threads you can start in any of the forums:

1) "[insert screen name here] is sooooo hot!!!!111 u want 2 cyber?"

Literally translated: "I can't talk to people in real life, but now I am online hiding behind this screen name and fake picture I took from an Abercrombie ad. Now I am the coolest guy I know."

2) "[insert screen name here] is a fake! let's see a salute."

A "salute" is where someone who has been challenged of posting a fake picture of themselves takes a picture of themself flicking off the camera and posts it to the forum, thus proving that they are who they say they are. There is an entire forum devoted to weeding out fakes, it reminds me very much of McCarthyism. If only those actors and politicians had a webcam, they could've taken a picture of themselves flicking off Joseph McCarthy and mailed it to him, therefore clearing their name and retaining their job.

So as I mentioned before, I signed up for the site in order to more extensively research this feature story. You can rate me and read profile here: http://www.facethejury.com/profile.asp?user_name=crhill1979

After one week, I'm not too impressed with my rating of 6.023. I attribute the low score to a few reasons:

1) I'm a guy, girls get more overall votes.
2) My picture does not show off my abs or chest.
3) I'm not very attractive.

I've also been posting in the forums, and overall I'm not very impressed. There are about 15 to 20 people that dominate the forums, posting hundreds of times per day, engaging in chats that range from calling each other hot repeatedly to soft-core cybersex. One thing that is definitely not a requirement for posting to facethejury is any coherent spelling ability.

Rational thought can also be checked at the door. Here are some highlights from the profiles, turn-ons, and turn-offs of a few of the girls that reside at facethejury:

"[profile] I'm in inspiring model"---'FoxieJess18'
"[turn off] Guys who are concieded"---'angel58'
"[turn on] A guy who likes Slip'n'Slides!"---MamieBeth
"[profile] if you rate me then email me with that little thingy up
there"---dorkarific
"[turn off] GUYS THAT INSTANT MESSAGE WITH WOW NICE RACK"---SPOOKEI
"[profile] the silent crazy type"---Alissa

Frankly, some of these people frighten me. And the saddest part is that they dominate our economy and therefore our popular culture. I made a post to the forums that referenced the book 1984, and was first questioned "what do u mean by 1984?" then told that "I can't believe u read that i just got the cliffs notes". Are these flaming idiots the future CEOs of major corporations, or just career Gap cashiers? In five years if our country has gone to hell in a handbasket it will not be the fault of George W. Bush, but the fault of sites like FacetheJury.com that allow such a collection of idiocy to grow and prosper. Goodnight.

---

Chris Hill is a senior CS major at Washington University in St. Louis. He hopes to some day become one of those beautiful people. This is his third -273 guest post.

Posted by Chris on 30 May 2001 at 1:00 AM