So say the Summer Interns at OKCupid, a free matchmaking site which is also known for its innumerable quizzes. More exactly they write to tell me: “We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid’s most attractive users. The scales recently tipped in your favor, and we thought you’d like to know.“  Now, the Summer Interns did not just stick their heads together and look at the pictures.  Rather they are known for their imaginative software tools that analyze things that are hard to analyze: “How can we say this with confidence? We’ve tracked click-thrus on your photo and analyzed other people’s reactions to you in QuickMatch and Quiver.”  (Those being two of the more rapid-firing matchmaking tools, and thus – I surmise – more likely to be influenced by superficial visual attraction rather than the subject’s religious pr political affiliations.)

This would all have been slightly more favorably received if I had recently added the picture, but it has been around for a while. Thus, the most rational explanation for me making into the the “above average” looks is that the average has fallen.  In other words, there has been a recent influx of people even uglier than me, which is a rather disturbing thought, and certainly not cause for celebration.  Cerebration, perhaps.

What happened?  Did they get kicked out from Eharmony or whatever the non-free alternatives are called? Did they just give up?  Did the economic downturn disproportionately hit the less good-looking men?  (Actually, almost certainly yes.  Humans being the idiots they are, good-looking people are paid more and promoted more readily, so it is no stretch to imagine that they are not the first to be fired either.) Or some compromise of the above, such as with money being tight for everyone, the less glamorous slunk over to the budget alternative.

In either case, the world continues to be unfair to the less facially gifted: “You will now see more attractive people in your match results. You’ll also be shown to more attractive people in their match results.”

This is not quite as non-sequitur as it looks, because pretty people tend to pair off, all other things being equal.  Of course, all other things are not equal, especially for men.  A smart or rich man can make up for a crooked nose, while women have a harder time avoiding the superficial judgment.  (Though I suppose a smart woman is generally better at playing dumb than a less smart one, and so evolution stumbles erratically forward. Or something.)

But the most striking part of the whole thing is how utterly useless it is.  You see, the reason I am there in the first place is that I took a “What superhero origin are you?” quiz back when City of Heroes was in development. (By the way, I believe I came out with “magic origin”, though it is about 7 years so my memory may not be exact.)  Never finding out how to delete my account, I have kind of hung around.  But given the backstory, it seems highly unlikely that I am ever going to date anything less than a Superwoman.  And those, you may remember, are in rather short supply in my world.