…and this is a 
Darwin Dating
Category: Stupidity
Posted on: March 9, 2007 10:02 AM, by PZ Myers
Ready for another perversion of Darwin's ideas? Take a look at Darwin Dating.
Sick of dating websites filled with ugly, unattractive, desperate fatsos? We are.
Darwin Dating was created exclusively for beautiful, desirable people. Our strict rules and natural selection process ensures all our members have winning looks.
It's not at all original — it's a rehash of the "hot or not" formula, where people submit pictures and readers can click through and rank them — and all they've added is this inane association with evolution. Well, that and perhaps the most smugly egotistical, self-congratulatory copy for being superficial that I've seen on any of these sites. The juxtaposition of the claim that they are "beautiful, desirable people" immediately after slamming all those ugly losers out there is priceless.
Their pseudoscientific rationale is also creepy and ignorant.
In 1859 Charles Darwin proposed the theory that living beings evolved through a process of natural selection where the fittest, healthiest and most attractive beings bred with each other to further their species. It has become difficult for the modern attractive human to find other modern attractive humans. Darwin Dating has been created to better the lives of attractive people and to encourage them to find other attractive people with whom they can breed.
Attractive people are at a disadvantage on normal internet dating sites. They have to wade through a plethora of ugly people and ugly people pretending to be attractive in order to find someone who matches their own attractiveness. Our strict rules and natural selection process makes Darwin Dating the perfect medium for attractive people to find other people of their own kind.
Darwin Dating is a site for 18-35's only. The male sex drive peaks at 18 and the female sex drive peeks at 30 making 18-35 the perfect breeding age bracket.
They've confused natural selection with Darwin's theory of sexual selection, and even that has been distorted into a caricature of itself. No, Darwin's theory is not about how mates are selected on the basis of photographs.
They also really need to look up meaning of the word "attractive". I don't think attractive people have much problem attracting attention; on the other hand, shallow, desperate, boring people who look good might want to hawk themselves in a venue that doesn't let anyone look deeper than the skin, and voila, Darwin Dating has a market.
They also say this:
Charles Darwin was a genius, but unfortunately very ugly. It is ironic that he wouldn't be able to join Darwin Dating!
What's really ironic is that Charles Darwin was brilliant, held deep friendships throughout his life, was a caring and devoted husband and doting father, and he was rich, yet a site that claims to have an algorithm for finding excellent mates admits that it would reject him.
Comments
"In 1859 Charles Darwin proposed the theory that living beings evolved through a process of natural selection where the fittest, healthiest and most attractive beings bred with each other to further their species. It has become difficult for the modern attractive human to find other modern attractive humans."
Interesting... so they are basically arguing that attractiveness (as they define it) is detrimental to reproductive success. Otherwise the "hawt genes" would have spread more widely, and over time it would become less, not more, difficult to find attractive mates.
I guess that they also have not noticed the very common occurence of very, very attractive women pairing up with not physically attractive (but rich and/or powerful) men.
Posted by: MJ Memphis | March 9, 2007 10:19 AM
Isn't this essentially the same rationale as Mensa uses? Gathering people with high IQ test scores so they can breed?
Posted by: Tim | March 9, 2007 10:23 AM
No, no. Mensa gathers people with high IQ scores so they can pat each other on the back about how much smarter than everyone else they are, while simultaneously trying to prove themselves just a wee tiny bit smarter than their fellow Mensa members. They're far too self-congratulatory to breed. You know, always giving themselves a hand...
Posted by: G | March 9, 2007 10:34 AM
Christ Jesus, I quit Mensa because the people I met there were boring, arrogant, full-of-themselves twaddlepates. You're not telling me I was seriously supposed to breed with them, are you?
Posted by: speedwell | March 9, 2007 10:35 AM
Funny, they don't seem to say anything about having lots of babies 'n' grandbabies...
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | March 9, 2007 10:55 AM
"No, Darwin's theory is not about how mates are selected on the basis of photographs."
What? Haven't you read On the Origin of Hotness by Means of Photographic Selection?
I'm disappointed. I had thought that Darwin Dating might be an evolution-themed version of Intellect Connect. Sadly, no.
Posted by: Joshua | March 9, 2007 10:55 AM
Please tell me it's a joke site.
[sigh]
Posted by: CalGeorge | March 9, 2007 10:57 AM
Actually it sounds like a rip-off of a somewhat succesful Danish dating site ("Beautiful People"), but the Danish site at least doesn't try to justify it.
Posted by: Kristjan Wager | March 9, 2007 11:00 AM
I'd be interested in seeing their criteria for attractiveness. Like, if it was up to me to select women that qualify and Ann Coulter had a pending application I would reject it based on her personality. She's too old, anyway, for their criterion.
All that aside, even if they had gotten it partly right and based it on sexual selection rather than on natural selection it seems to me that generational movement on attraction characteristics would move too slowly to keep up with the rapidly moving tastes of the populace. So, by three or four generations of inbreeding among the "beautiful" people their kids may be judged too ugly to be selected.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich | March 9, 2007 11:03 AM
Actually, stuff like this has been of some concern of mine since some years ago. I always wondered if natural selection was still at play (in any significant way) for Homo Sapiens in these modern days. If so, I wondered where it would take us. To the path of superficiality and stupidity, or to the path of supreme intelligence. Maybe we'll finally split into so-so looking smart peeps, and beautiful and dumb species?
Posted by: andyo | March 9, 2007 11:04 AM
Twenty "bottom" people on Darwin Dating:
http://www.darwindating.com/vote/bottom20.php
Twenty "hottest" people:
http://www.darwindating.com/vote/hottest.php
Pardon me while I go throw up.
Posted by: CalGeorge | March 9, 2007 11:04 AM
Two things:
1 - don't knock this 'Darwin Dating' site; it's self-selecting, and it keeps some really shallow people where they belong... in the shallow end of the gene pool;
2 - Mike Haubrich's comment carries a disturbing implication that, but for her objectionable personality, Ann Coulter would be attractive.
Call me shallow, but... [shudder]
Posted by: Robin Wilton | March 9, 2007 11:08 AM
Because people trolling internet dating sites for hot partners are actually looking for reproductive success... (In general, the decoupling of reproduction from sex has pretty much bollixed all the simpleminded metrics of attractiveness, of course.)
One potentially interesting observation for those top- and bottom-20 pages: the "hot" women are scored as more attractive than the "hot" men by what looks like about a full point on a 4-point scale, and the "non-hot" women are scored as less attractive than the "non-hot" men by about half a point. I don't know exactly what this says about local perceived norms, but it definitely says something.
Posted by: paul | March 9, 2007 11:20 AM
"Online Dating Minus Ugly People"
Hmmm, if they're all so dammed attractive, how come they can't find a date except via teh intertoobs? Isn't internet dating only for *gasp* ulgy nerds? Maybe their slogan should be:
"Online Dating, now with even more attractive shallow jackasses!"
Frankly I'm surprised they even knew who Darwin was. Let's hope natural selection opts these idiots out of the species sooner rather than later.
Posted by: Jim Wright | March 9, 2007 11:22 AM
I think the "ugly" description of Darwin comes from the most commonly seen picture of him as an old, sick man. I've seen pictures of him as a child and youngish-middle-aged man, and he looked like an average guy, no stud, but pleasant looking.
The bottom 20 are mostly victims of bad photos, and bad makeup on a couple of the women. Seriously, if people have to be beautiful to mate successfully, where did all the average faces come from?
Posted by: Rugosa | March 9, 2007 11:23 AM
Sites like this make me wish I was a hacker.
Posted by: Vitis01 | March 9, 2007 11:27 AM
Darwin possessed outsized eyebrows like the eaves of a thatched hut, which strikes me as a little unnerving, but not repulsive.
Posted by: speedwell | March 9, 2007 11:28 AM
I'm coming in late on the MENSA issue (I tabled it for later... ha! ha!), but I only joined so that I could put the fact of my membership on my college application forms. Then I let my membership lapse, and haven't revisited since.
The keggers were fun, though...
Posted by: Tony Kehoe | March 9, 2007 11:31 AM
Anna Nicole was actually quite a babe when you looked at her physically alone, but, despite making millions of dollars and becoming a household name, she had only 2 kids and again, only one is still alive. I have some friends that are butt-ugly that already have half a dozen kids.
Guess who wins?
Posted by: Lago | March 9, 2007 11:36 AM
Wasn't Darwin a Christian?
Posted by: The Physicist | March 9, 2007 11:36 AM
There are at least two other dating services that have evolutionary pretensions:
Natural Selection Speed Dating
http://www.pocketchangenyc.com/speedating.aspx
"Women want money in a man, men want beauty in a woman - this is a factual force of nature. Women don't ask "So, what does he do for a living?" because they're interested in his personality and guys don't ask "is she hot?" because they're concerned with character. Guys know that money buys them the car, the house and the trophy wife. This genetic cleansing is how the wealthy stays beautiful."
Good Genes
http://www.goodgenes.com/
"WELCOME TO GOODGENES.COM, THE INTRODUCTION SERVICE FOR THE IVY LEAGUE, ET AL.
GoodGenes.com is an exclusive introduction network. We provide opportunities for single graduates and faculty of specific universities and colleges to meet well-educated members of the opposite sex."
Posted by: Colugo | March 9, 2007 11:39 AM
Any dating site that isn't intended for singles living in the area in and around Darwin, Australia (or any other state/country) shouldn't call itself this unless they want to be ridiculed. Apparently for them, intelligence isn't a trait worth selecting for...
Posted by: Mena | March 9, 2007 11:46 AM
I think the answer is yes, absolutely. We like to believe that technology has stopped natural selection cold in its tracks, but something to remember is that H. sapiens has been around for a geological eyeblink, and technological societies have been around for a fraction of that time.
The variables for selection may be slightly different from what they were several thousand years ago; technology and economics play a huge role now as population barriers (the haves don't often hobnob with the have-nots), whereas traditional barriers like geography are almost irrelevant. Whether that remains the case for the next few hundred thousand to million years is an open question, but ultimately I do foresee one or more splits in the human population that result in different species. It won't be on the order of the Morlocks and the Eloi, certainly; you won't have some noble, civilized, hyper-technical Aryan super-race vs. subliterate, ugly troglodytes (although the Morlocks were the technologically advanced ones; ponder that for a minute, and you realize the Darwin daters are setting themselves up to be cattle, which is fine by me). There will be differences, but nothing that drastic.
Posted by: John Bode | March 9, 2007 11:49 AM
And here I thought this post would be about Darwinian pick-up lines. Now I'm disappointed. :-(
Posted by: Blake Stacey | March 9, 2007 11:49 AM
I wonder if you could skew the site's attractiveness rankings with a judicious application of information warfare. I.e. submit a high volume of pictures of ugly people to saturate the bottom rankings: the objective would be to drive up the rankings of the "less" attractive real users, preventing them from being dropped from the site - thereby giving them a chance to mate with more attractive people. -or- conversely, submit a high volume of pictures of really attractive people (photoshopped if necessary), thereby driving down the rankings of actual attractive people who otherwise would have ranked near the top - with the objective of reducing their mating opportunities with other attractive people, making them desperate and thereby increasing the changes that they'll mate with ugly people.
I'm just saying. Look how shallow these people are, how hard could it be to manipulate them using their own site and system? Could be a fun exercise.
Posted by: Jim Wright | March 9, 2007 11:51 AM
Was a christian. But later in life considered himself an agnostic.
Posted by: Steve_C | March 9, 2007 11:51 AM
Robin Wilton:
I'm shuddering too. Maybe together we can achieve some kind of shudder-resonance effect and make the whole world tremble.
Seriously. She ain't pretty. She's an argument for the theory that poison in the soul will destroy the body. I take solace in the fact that Bjork could beat her senseless with one hand playing the vibraphone.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | March 9, 2007 12:08 PM
Of course, the obvious question is...
If the humans on the site and using the site are so damned attractive, why do they need a web site to facilitate dating? Doesn't the use of a computer dating service automatically swing the winner-loser meter toward the "Loser" end of the scale in a pretty harsh way?
Posted by: Evolving Squid | March 9, 2007 12:28 PM
Pretty vapid narcisisstic people that just can't seem to find other pretty vapid narcisisstic people? Sounds like they're lacking social skills.
I suspect thay have trouble with conversations that last longer than...
"Hi, you're hot! What's your name?"
"HI! You're hot too. My name's Taylor. With two Rs"
Posted by: Steve_C | March 9, 2007 12:38 PM
Anna Nicole was actually quite a babe when you looked at her physically alone,
Hie thee to an eye doctor. ANS always looked like the south end of a north-bound basset hound from the first time I saw her in Playboy over a decade ago until the pictures released to the media taken just before her death.
ick ick ick.
RealDolls are much more physically attractive than Anna ever was... as a bonus, they probably have a better personality than she did.
Posted by: Evolving Squid | March 9, 2007 12:40 PM
Sorry Squid, but Anna Nicole was not ugly physically at all. To say so is to state your opinions about her as a person, and attach these ideas to her looks. Yes, we can see people as ugly because of who they are as people, but we should at least be honest.
Posted by: Lago | March 9, 2007 12:49 PM
"I take solace in the fact that Bjork could beat her senseless with one hand playing the vibraphone."
Björk could blow her head off with a single sonic blast. The only reason she doesn't is the potential collateral damage. And because some people would consider it murder.
Posted by: Rey Fox | March 9, 2007 12:54 PM
No, she was a 3-bagger before I had ever heard anything about her personality. Learning about her personality only confirmed that she was ugly through and through, instead of just skin deep.
I never, ever saw how anyone could consider her physically attractive. A completely fake (bleached and surgically altered yet still saggy) body, often obese, usually overtanned with a horsey face. All four women currently showing on the front page of Darwin Dating are better looking than Anna could ever hope to be, and those are just cheesy snapshots - not the professionally engineered photograph presentations to which Anna had access.
Posted by: Evolving Squid | March 9, 2007 12:59 PM
The justification forth the site seems to be so absurd that I don't see how anyone could take it seriously. It's hard to tell if it is a joke site or not though.
Ironically, infertility doesn't merit a banning from the site. So it doesn't seem they follow through on their lame reasoning.
-Drachasor
Posted by: Drachasor | March 9, 2007 1:05 PM
I always wondered if natural selection was still at play (in any significant way) for Homo Sapiens in these modern days
Man-O-Manischevitz are you stoopid! Homo Sapiens don't breed! You should have said hetero Sapiens!
What a maroon!
Posted by: Mooserm | March 9, 2007 1:13 PM
This is one of the most unethical websites I've ever seen.
Posted by: Nathan Perrier | March 9, 2007 1:29 PM
In defense of the creators of Darwin Dating, I get the impression that they're sort of tongue-in-cheek about it. However, it seems that those trying to join are quite serious.
Posted by: Eric | March 9, 2007 1:48 PM
http://swiftcity.wordpress.com/2007/01/27/google-maps-sydney-flyover/
We also run a spoof dating website "For Attractive People Only" DarwinDating. So we figured we'd create an ad for that. Jodie and Michael dresed up in their wedding outfit under a large sign which read: " We Met on DarwinDating.com. P.S. We're Hot". Both statements are lies but we thought it would be fun!
Posted by: andarm16 | March 9, 2007 1:57 PM
Oh, great. Just a look at that website violates Godwin's Law. Goodie, goodie, another straw himbo to counter...
I wonder how many of their marriages will end in divorce, thus winning, shall we say, a marital Darwin Award?
And how confusing will that be?
Posted by: Kristine | March 9, 2007 2:03 PM
Squid says: ""No, she was a 3-bagger before I had ever heard anything about her personality. Learning about her personality only confirmed that she was ugly through and through, instead of just skin deep.""
This is a "3-bagger" with a "Horse face"? :
http://infostore.org/info/690010/Anna%20Nicole%20Smith%20006.jpg
Also, your bit about her hair does not take into account Anna was attempting to be a throw-back to the days of Marilyn Monroe, and Jayne Mansfield. Anything you've said about her applies double to them, and they are considered some of the sexiest women ever (And I would certainly agree to that when it comes to Jayne Mansfield)
Posted by: Lago | March 9, 2007 3:05 PM
That's just utterly funny. There's an old adage: "Beauty's only skin deep, but ugly's to the bone!"
I found this to be alternately amusing & startling:
http://darwindating.com/about/rules.php
If you fit into any of these categories, let's face it, you're ugly, but you aren't alone. Darwin Dating isn't for you but don't despair, there are plenty of ugly fish in the sea and they're all on every other dating website out there!
I'm curious as to what qualifies as 'weird pubic hair'. What, it's straight or something? Too long?
Posted by: Krystalline Apostate | March 9, 2007 3:42 PM
All in the eye of the beholder, I guess, but the pictures don't have much to say about the overall attractiveness of these people. First thing I wonder is what percentage of them have 'teh stupid gene'. MENSA wankery aside, smart people of whatever educational level usually don't have much in common with, well, the '85s' of this world.
I'm reminded of a clip I saw of Jessica Simpson, eating out of a can of "Chicken of the Sea." "Is it chicken? Or tuna?" Honestly, some people couldn't find their backsides with a spotlight and both hands, and when I meet them, I tend to RUN AWAY!!!!
Posted by: Tlazolteotl | March 9, 2007 3:49 PM
"Darwin Dating has been created to better the lives of attractive people and to encourage them to find other attractive people with whom they can breed."
To what end? It also lists saggy boobs (or saggy anything) as one of the things not allowed. How 'dawinian' is it when you can artificially lift stuff, straighten your crooked teeth, suction off your fat, enhance your lips, boobs and whatever, tweak your flappy ears and aquiline-up your nose? I mean, you're still saddling your offspring with what you were born with, after all!
Posted by: twincats | March 9, 2007 4:25 PM
Don't knock 'em. Those eyebrows are what kept the pixie dust out of his eyes.
Posted by: Kseniya | March 9, 2007 4:52 PM
lol. you actually took it pretty seriously
Posted by: JC | March 9, 2007 5:13 PM
Da, Tovarishch.
Well, yah. Vibraphones are heavy!
Oh - you mean the other hand. :-)
Ooh!
Celebrity Death Match!
Bjork vs Ann Coulter!
Tori Amos vs Phyllis Schlafly!
Kate Bush vs George W. Bush!
Dixie Chicks vs Toby Keith, Michael Savage, amd William Dembski!
Shonen Knife vs Fred Phelps, James Dobson, and Rush Limbaugh!
Jenny Lewis vs C.S. Lewis!
Posted by: Kseniya | March 9, 2007 5:48 PM
Cibo Matto (Know your chicken!) vs. Michelle (chickenshit!) Malkin
Posted by: Tlazolteotl | March 9, 2007 6:23 PM
Trembling already.
That's not a horse face, but it's ugly nonetheless. What mutation do you have in your pattern-recognition genes? Looking at that photo makes me feel like its facial expression. Yuck.
Posted by: David Marjanović | March 9, 2007 7:21 PM
"She's an argument for the theory that poison in the soul will destroy the body. "
Which is itself the fatal flaw with this site. Someone's attractiveness depends heavily on their personality, in different ways before and after you know them. Some of the ugliest people I've known have been among the most beautiful, and vice versa.
Posted by: David Harmon | March 9, 2007 7:26 PM
Only the Spanish language can adequately express the proper reaction:
GOR GOL GLOUUC ¡GROJFF!
Posted by: David Marjanović | March 9, 2007 7:28 PM
I don't buy it. Too much social mobility, and especially, too much inter-class sex. Even aside from prostitutes you have all those rich people having affairs with, or even getting married to, their secretaries, gardeners, housekeepers, mechanics, etc., which are generally from the working classes. Some of those people won't be using contraception and some of the ones that try to use it will fail.
In order to allow enough genetic differences to accumulate for true speciation you wouldn't just need MUCH stronger determination of a person's social class by their parents' social class, despite the modern tendency to *increased* social mobility as tech level increases. You'd also have to have far less sex between people of different social status, which I don't see ever happening in a population of humans. Humans screw around far too much to speciate sympatrically (and with our present level of technology, anywhere on the same planet is "sympatrically").
Wells most likely knew this too, but stretched the facts to make his point.
Posted by: Chris | March 9, 2007 8:10 PM
Which is itself the fatal flaw with this site. Someone's attractiveness depends heavily on their personality, in different ways before and after you know them.
This has been experimented on as well, with pretty striking results (given the small sample sizes).
See: The effects of nonphysical traits on the perception of physical attractiveness: Three naturalistic studies, by Kniffin and Wilson, Evolution and Human Behavior 25 (2004) 88-101, available online as a pdf (I didn't link, because my browser crashes with pdfs)
Posted by: Carlie | March 9, 2007 8:27 PM
David said: "That's not a horse face, but it's ugly nonetheless. What mutation do you have in your pattern-recognition genes? Looking at that photo makes me feel like its facial expression. Yuck."
Yeah, women who get asked to pose in Playboy are so so often ugly, and thank God for mutations in "pattern-recognition genes" that allows Playboy to stay in business.
Dave, there is simply no way she could have been called physically ugly, and it is childish to make such claims due to her personality...
Posted by: Lago | March 9, 2007 9:09 PM
It's impossible to judge a woman's attractiveness by citing her Playboy photos. Those pictures are so doctored and airbrushed they might as well just start generating them with a ray-tracer.
The fakeness makes perfect sense, really, given that Hugh Hefner's "empire" is all about copping an image of sophistication and manliness, rather than having anything even remotely resembling actual sophistication and manliness.
Posted by: Dan | March 9, 2007 10:25 PM
Carlie, someone ran into a case like yours with the pdfs at work today, and I overheard the tech telling the user to clear the temp files from the Acrobat cache; apparently when it gets to a couple tens of thousands of cache files or so it balks.
Posted by: speedwell | March 9, 2007 10:27 PM
"I have some friends that are butt-ugly..."
Not any more...
Posted by: the amazing kim | March 10, 2007 12:10 AM
"Lebensborn Dating" would be a more appropriate name for that site.
Posted by: sparc | March 10, 2007 12:15 AM
Didn't they pick the wrong member of the Darwin family to name their site after? It seems like it should be GaltonDating.com
Posted by: BillCinSD | March 10, 2007 2:06 AM
Excuse me, I have next to no idea about her personality, and I maintain she's ugly. That's not scientific, but true. :-)
Posted by: David Marjanović | March 10, 2007 12:00 PM
'GaltonDating' is especially appropriate for the 'Good Genes' site, which helps the elite hook up with the elite on the basis of being alums of first tier universities.
On the topic of Galton and beauty, he accidentally discovered something about human beauty in his eugenics-inspired quest to discover alleged criminal types and sickly types: beauty is found in averageness.
Seed: 'Beauty is in the processing-time of the beholder'
http://tinyurl.com/2dfhbu
Galton: composite portraiture
http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/nclc375/galton/
more
http://tinyurl.com/ywg4r8
Posted by: Colugo | March 10, 2007 1:06 PM
The site is silly, but not as stupid as all those things which mention quantum mechanics for spurious reasons.
Posted by: Keith Douglas | March 10, 2007 11:15 PM