EMILY SAIDEL: Beautifulpeople.com should be congratulated for setting a standard, as inconsistent as it may be with different members having different concepts of beauty, and sticking to it, rather than choosing the politically correct option of quietly ignoring the complaints.
ZOË RICE: The whole point of niche marketing is that for a given product, you know what the audience is. On my facebook sidebar alone I see ads every day to “Meet Christian Men,” “Find Black Singles,” “Marry A Millionaire,” “Meet Your Big and Beautiful Match,” “Wed Jewish.” So if a site that seeks to offer nothing more than “beautiful people” decides you are no longer beautiful…well, you should have known what niche you were getting into to begin with, no?
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: Personally, I think that a lot of what I find attractive in other people, I put there myself. It’s not necessarily there to begin with.
AKIE BERMISS: I don’t know much about internet dating. Or how its really any significantly better than just the luck-of-the-draw that most of us utilize when picking a mate. But I do know one thing: the internet is a skeevy place — and you’d best be very wary when crossing technology and matters of the heart. For while technology allows the better angels of our humanity to flower and proliferate without deference to distance — it allows the same freedom for our worst demons. Yes, while the internet certainly helps us to donate money toward aid in Haiti, it also makes it easier to buy harvest organs on the black market (hypothetically…) It is the same internet which — in 2008 — helped to elect President Obama, that — in 2009, provided his right-wing detractors with the ability to hobble health care reform and climate control efforts.