Beautiful people, ugly Web browser—plus Wired item's not-so-pretty 'tude toward cyberbullies

The BeautifulPeople.net site, a dating service and social network for lookers approved by enough screeners, drew a well-deserved verdict from Wired as one of the six lamest social nets on the Web.

Curious, I dropped by. Notice the preferred browser? Internet Explorer, of course—even if I doubt that BeautifulPeople.net would grant Microsoft’s Bill Gates a membership despite all his billions.

Ugly cheapskates?

There. Doesn’t that make you feel all the better for having chosen Firefox or another open source alternative to Internet Explorer? No respect for Firefox users, eh? At least one book-related site has already dissed Firefox surfers as cheapskates because so many of us block obnoxious ads. Nothing against IE folks, of course. TeleRead welcomes all browsers, both the human and software varieties, ugly and beautiful.

Looking ahead to the world of e-book-based communities, I suppose it’s only a matter of time until a new kind of “Facebook” materializes with BP criteria for participation.

Some ugliness from Wired itself

A much less appropriate site for Wired’s “lame” designation, even as a joke, was StopCyberbullying despite the writer’s recognition of it as “A safe place for frank discussions on the topic of Internet bullying.” Under the “Who you’ll meet,” Wired said, “Pussies,” and under “What’s annoying,” the magazine said, “Dare to call them pussies, and they’ll gang up on you mercilessly.” So cyberbullying isn’t a problem among schoolchildren and, yes, in adult life, too? It’s one reason why the TeleBlog maintains an anti-troll policy.

I hope that StopCyberbullying draws an apology from Wired—ideally followed by a thoughtful feature story on the cyberbully problem, which, yes, ultimately could show up in interactive e-books, including comics and other genres favored by many young people.

No, there ought not to be a law against beautiful people sites, or Mensa sites for that matter, but I wonder if in a sense the very existence of BeautifulPeople.net is at least a subtle form of cyberbullying.