It is one of those days that you find yourself distracted enough to going surfing via your email subscriptions. You find yourself going "what the hey;" let’s see where this takes us.
So yesterday, this journalist, in a quest for knowledge and keeping tabs on Internet marketing scams, signed up for a new site called Urban Daddy. This offering was sent to through, Cinevegas which is an indie film festival that’s has undoubtedly reached the top five each year continues to bring prestigious openings and a high quality slate of film makers looking to show their visions to the world in Las Vegas.
With that now in perspective, this is what happened on day two. Another email arrived, but this time it was direct from Urban Daddy.
It had this amazing story in it, the title, “About Face, The World’s First Face-Rating App.”
This got all the squirrels running on their little treadmills in the brain, and some interesting thoughts came to mind.
The program was called Vanity, and there was the link to go see this facial rating system. Click, and off to the Vanity web page with a tiny clip of the Mona Lisa (representing vanity?), and a You Tube video. And then below that ‘buy now’ green button.
So now after two emails, the second with a story, to a web site to buy one single product,you get welcomed to the Internet marketing zone, at its best. It was one-two-three, click buy.
Now the marketing was now analyzed we find we have stumbled into something truly intriguing, even fascinating, in a “I told you so” kind of way.
In Las Vegas, casinos now use facial recognition software to pick out gambling cheats. An industrial use for certain and highly advanced. That is until Vanity showed up and reared it ugly head.
This new app for your IPhone, is a hottie rating system scoring on a scale of one to ten. Just snap a photo and use the blue dots to highlight facial feature and presto you get a hottie rating score.
“How attractive is Adriana Lima on a scale of 1-10?” Next slide, “Lets ask your IPhone," is how the You Tube video starts out and then it goes into a demonstration, finally encouraging you to buy the app.
Now with all the preface work done for you, let’s get into this one for you, our Digital Journal reader.
The question that first comes to mind is, “Is this the best application for this kind of technology, a facial hottie rating system?”
The second question, “Couldn’t we find a better use for this, like maybe a criminal recognition system.”
This latest new app for IPhone is a reflection of the problem in society, of judging people by their physical appearance. Whether its age, race, gender, sexual preference, or the size of ear lobes we are constantly looking to create barriers of exclusion for someone who does not appear to look like us.
Oddly, Vanity is an appropriate name for this app. How vain have we become as a people, to actually think of this, let alone create it, then market it, and then sell it.
They make it sound and look so cool on the video, there’s Adriana Lima with her lustrous blue eyes, nut tan skin, and perfect egg oval shaped face. There is really cool sounding music too. A woman singing a sultry French song that only someone who could speak the language would understand. But it sounded so sexy, so this had to be good. Right?
Las Vegas locals have a saying when they refer to some of the high dollar restaurants and happenings, “That’s or where the beautiful people go or have.”
Beauty, according to what we have been told, at some point in our lives, “is only skin deep” or the all time classic, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Now you can have a Vanity app on your (eye) IPhone that can make sure you can discriminate against your fellow man or woman.
That’s pretty much the crux of what this is all about, this article.
Today, this journalist stumbled on to a new way to discriminate against his fellow man or woman on an IPhone using a Vanity app.
That’s just what the world needed, another way to discriminate against people who are different or do not meet a certain standard of physical appearance.
This all sounds like some horror science fiction, alternate reality, if the Nazi’s had won and ruled the world scenario.
The pursuit of the perfect human, or this case, a rating system for hotties, falls into the technology category of, “what will they come up with next, flying monkeys?” At least you can rate their hotness from 1-10 if they do, on your IPhone.
Final word, this is not a cool thing, it is just isn’t right. It is a sad reflection upon our society.
That’s just my opinion.
How about a rating system app for opinions? Free speech, now that's a whole other kettle of fish.
