I sent Pitt a paper tody, September 25th, I wrote 6 months ago and then I received this text, "Dude if you don't start a blog and post that I'll never forgive you. I'm tearing up as we speak." So in order to save our friendship, here is the Hot or Not piece I wrote:
The following is excerpts from an interview with a person who will remain anonymous:
“I had no desire to start rating people on hot or not, my buddy showed it to me and we ranked people for about fifteen minutes, then went to dinner,” Dessa speaks frankly. “I don’t really like to talk in depth about this because I don’t think people understand fully why I have taken the time to establish a system for ranking people on hotornot.com. I believe people think the only reason I sight “rules” is to deflect my shallowness. I am not shallow and I don’t feel a need to defend myself, that’s why I don’t really like talking to people about my system. I did not create this system in order to allow myself a guilty pleasure. I created this system to allow my mind some understanding; this website began to consume my life.
“As I began visiting hotornot.com I became more and more frustrated with the entire website. How could people put themselves through this torment? Who visits this website, don’t they have better things to do with their lives? What satisfaction can one get out of being judged by complete strangers? I began visiting the site more and more, like it was some kind of gas station chocolate donut that you know is way too sweet, but you can’t stop from taking another bite, then another, then another. As I continued on the website my questions started changing. How can people vote so highly for people on this website? Why are my rankings completely different than everyone else’s? Is there something wrong with me? Am I really this shallow? Hotornot.com has given me a complex.
“It was at this crossroad that I knew I had to do something. There was a fight going on inside of me; the mathematical or analytical side of me could not understand the rankings by others, while my humanity was called into question. I needed to understand why I was ranking like I was. In attempts to understand this, I created my system. I’m not going to say these rules are complete, these are rules Leon and I came up with that worked well, and helped us correctly rank people. In order to correctly rank people you must first have an understanding of how to use hot or not responsibly. Basically this breaks down into two sections: 1- Understanding how to judge a picture. 2- Understanding how to use the numerical scale. I’ll first explain the rules for understanding how to judge a picture on hotornot.com.
“One, these people submitted a photo to be rated, you are not barging into someone’s quiet life and insulting them, they are asking for your opinion. The reasons they are asking you your opinion is because they need an objective opinion with which to gage themselves. If they wanted a compliment they would have asked their parents.
“Two, you are rating the person in the picture. This sounds like a simplistic rule, but it has various meanings, all of which need to be applied. A- You must assume this is the best picture the person has, that is why they have uploaded this photo to be rated. You cannot look at a picture and say, ‘they could look good if they…’ If the person in the picture does not look good, you must rate them accordingly. You cannot rate a person based on potential. B- Similarly you cannot allow your emotions to come into play, you must rate the person in the picture. Often times you will feel bad that someone’s picture is on hot or not, whether they’re not attractive or just awkward, this cannot be your concern, you have been asked to rate this picture.
“Three, rate consistently. Do not be flippant with any pictures you see, no matter how tired or bored you are, rate each picture with a genuine judgment.
“Hot or not is based on a one to ten measuring scale seems so easy, there is no way anyone could get this wrong, right? Though it may be one of the most simple judging scales, the one to ten scale may be the most defamed scale in society today. I realize this seems like an overgeneralization, however there are two fundamental flaws most people have problems with. The first is not understanding, or not taking seriously, the one to ten scale. I’ll give you some examples how the one to ten scale is misunderstood or misused today. It has become the standard within society that when someone is asked, ‘how hungry are you?’ the answer is given, ‘on a scale of one to ten, I’m an eleven.’ I know this seems like a mere trifle, but this is where the undercutting of the scale begins. Usually, when people are driving around, trying to figure out where to eat, someone will pop up with, ‘well, how hungry are you?’ This question is often time followed up with, ‘on a scale of one to ten, I’m a ten.’ Let’s think about this for a second you’re telling me that there is no chance for you to get any more hungry. Are you one of those starving kids our parents told us about when we didn’t finish our food? Seriously though, think about it, on a scale of hunger, what is a real ten? Personally, I don’t believe I have ever got over a seven on the hunger scale; I have never had to consider stealing food, I’ve never fainted, and I’ve never eaten out of the trash. Is this semantics, yes, but is there a purpose, yes. If people can’t tell the difference within something as common as hunger, how can they tell the truth on an abstract concept like beauty?
“The second obstacle in correctly ranking people on hot or not is overcoming something that is basically ingrained in American youth. The one to ten scale is misused many times because people in a America think more along the lines of school grading instead of standard deviations. Put simply the mathematical rules for standard deviations show how rankings should be dispersed through each “standard deviation.” Without going into the specifics, basically 68% of all people fit within the first standard deviation. If the mean of the scale is 5.5, then 68% of all people should be rated between 2.5 and 8.5. The next standard deviation is 96%, this means 96% of all people should be ranked between 1.5 and 9.5. This means the ranks of 1 or 10 should only be given out (on average) one time with every one hundred people you rate. This concept might be easier to understand if I give an analogy. Imagine you have a piece of wood ten inches long, make the board every inch and number the inches, right in the middle of that board hammer a nail. Around this nail place an elastic band, this band is the difficulty in ratings. The most you can pull this rubber band before it will snap is five inches, so the extremities are very difficult to achieve because of all the tension in the stretched rubber band. It is easy to stretch the band back to four inches, or up to seven, because the rubber band is not stretched to capacity. This is how you should view your rankings, don’t give out high scores unless they are truly warranted. So why then do people naturally give out (on usual) between seven to ten, or a one? The simple reason is because people either want to be nice or not take the time, however the real reason is far more imbedded and part of the human psyche. From an early age almost every person learns how they are going to be graded on in school, most people who have been removed from school for years can still give you the breakdown: 94-100% is an A, 90-93% is an A-, 86-89% is a B+, and so on until 0-59% is failing. There is a very good reason teachers must use this equation for basing grades, however this equation does not work for everything, if this were the case the one to ten scale need not exist, it would be replaced by the one or six through ten scale. This seems like such an easy concept but it’s hard to explain to people in real life.
“Rules of thumb, or problems with hotornot.com. The idea of explaining the ratings system to other people, girls in particular is not a fun event. After I had spent many hours on Hot or Not, I found it harder to lie to girls. After you have set up so many rules in one aspect of your life it is hard to keep them from carrying over into other parts without feeling like a total hypocrite. When a girl asks me if I think a girl is hot, she often says, ‘what would your rate her on a scale of one to ten?’ Girls are easily offended by the accurate usage of the one to ten scale, so how do I answer this question? To me there are guidelines to go by: the girl commonly referred to as ‘Sarah plain and tall’ is a five, she hasn’t done anything to stretch the rubber band forwards or backwards. A girl who is a six is someone who is above average, but probably still not someone I would call attractive. A girl who ranks as a seven is a girl who I would not hesitate showing a friend, she has what I’m looking for in a girl. Eight, nine, and tens are a little more tough, they all seems to be gradations to what extent I would go to try and make them mine. Eight is the first ranking of a girl that I’d put myself on the line to get. Nine is a girl who I would lower my pride and do things I wouldn’t normally do, even things I usually find embarrassing. Ten… all bets are off, I’d stop breathing for a ten. The problem with this is, once I determined these rules for viewing a website, it was hard to separate viewing a website and living a life. The fundamental difference is people aren’t asking me to judge them in life, in fact most would be upset if they knew this is what I was doing.
“I’m not going to go into the issues of writing on pictures and other Paint aided photographs. Just know without exception, Paint “enhanced” photos hurt your score.
“So what do I do? Do I not obey the rules that have served me well, the rules that have set my mind at ease? I have spent so much time on these rules, I have to keep them, but this way of life doesn’t bring joy or happiness, it just brings separations.
“I’ve stopped looking at hotornot.com.”
6 comments:
Unfortunately, I believe there is a fundamental flaw in your friend's statistical analysis. The 68% and 96% that is covered by one and two standard deviations respectively assume that there is a normal distribution and a representative sample. Any time a sample requires self-reporting, there is immediately a bias introduced. My feeling is that the true 1s and 2s are much less likely to post a picture than say the true 9s and 10s. As a result, the distribution would not be normal and instead would be skewed right. This would change the shape of the distribution and resultingly the area covered by two standard deviations.
Also your friend is assuming a mean of 5.5. Just because that is the midpoint of the scale does not necessarily make it the mean.
But overall great article and I support whole-heartedly the principle of the article.
I read this in class and could not help laughing out loud. I had to cover my face so the prof. wouldnt see
Dude, that is literally the first time in my life an idle threat worked. You are an effing funny dude. By the way, why we are on scales...if you asked me how bad you had to pee on a scale of one to ten, I'd say you're an eight
Oh man, I remember when it all began. The time that we invested on that website... I'd like to think that it helped shape us into better people. Fantastic article, my friend.
I actually started a blog account so I could comment on how hilarious of a read that was. Man, well done.
Danny,
You are officialy exhausting! Who knew all of these things are going through your head when you are talking to people? Don't worry, even though it made me tired...I still laughed out loud!
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