hotornot.com > Reviews (47)

For some reason, everyone seems to be talking about this site which gives you the opportunity to "rate" out of ten, photographs of people wanting to know what people generally think of their looks. Sounds like it might be a laugh, eh? Erm, well I have had first hand experience of it...

Recently one of my so called friends emailed me the "Am I Hot Or Not" URL along with a user name and password with the instructions to log on and check it out. They didn’t tell me about it and I was a bit dubious but decided to have a look anyway.

When I arrived at the site, I saw a large photo of what I would say was not a bad looking guy. There was a chance to rate this person’s looks on a scale of one to ten by clicking on a ratings bar at the top of the screen. So I gave him quite a generous rating and the next page loaded with a smaller version of the photo with his rating and also a new, larger photo in the centre of the page waiting to be rated.

However, I decided that my taste must be very questionable as the first man who I had given a high rating to, only had an overall rating of 5.6 which is just about average for this site. Wondering exactly what this site was all about I continued rating for about three or four photos and then remembered the login and password.

Not knowing what to expect, I logged in and realised my aforementioned friend had decided that it would be very funny to upload my photo for a laugh. And to make it worse, it was a horrible one and had already been rated over 350 times. Aaarghhhh!!

The site itself is very basic and plain with most of the screen taken up with the photo waiting to be rated and a few adverts. It also loads quite fast despite some photos being quite large. There is a statement saying that the site does not accept pornographic or offensive photos, celebrity pictures or photos of children or pets. There is also a link to click if the above photo breaks the rules of the site and I would assume the photo would then be checked and removed.

Although I cannot see the appeal myself, I have been told that the site is strangely addictive with people spending ages rating photos. I have also been told that it is much more fun when you are drunk. There is a choice of rating men only, women only or both and some photos are quite funny.

In a lot of the women’s photos, they really seem to have made an effort and many look as if they have been taken professionally. However, the men’s photos in many cases leave a lot to be desired with quite a few taken while in the pub or after a few pints!

As I have said before, I can’t quite see the appeal of the site but it might be worth having a look at as everyone seems to be talking about it. But be warned, people seem to be very harsh raters with a lot of ratings below five. I would say that if you got a six or above, you would be classed as being not too bad looking whereas eight or nine would just be drop dead gorgeous. As for those below four, I personally think that most of them should be rated higher but I have been told that my taste is *very* dodgy!

I suppose there are four main ways in which to use the site:

1) For the sheer enjoyment of looking at other people.
2) As a "taste test" to see how good your judgement is in comparison to others. If you find that you keep giving 9 or 10 to those with an overall rating of 3 then you have to ask yourself "is my taste really up my nether regions or what!?!"
3) Upload your own photo to see what everyone *really* thinks of you as no one will ever tell you face to face.
4) Be a nasty friend and upload everyone else’s photos just "for a laugh".

I still cringe when I think that other people who have reviewed this site may have seen my awful pic. So I don’t think I’ll be putting a photo up on my profile for a while now until I get over the embarrassment.

Now excuse me as I have quite a few of my friends photos to upload!!