University student unions always seem to be in uproar about something or other. Student publications from universities such as Oxford, Warwick and Wessex have recently featured angry opinion pieces against the growing popularity of a website called www.ratemash.com. I am inclined to agree with the writers.
Ratemash is a website targeting uni students where you can rate people you find "hot". It somehow siphons people's Facebook photos and displays them so that users can indicate whether or not they find that person attractive.
"Ratemash sorts out your nightlife", it announces on its home page, with a hyperlink to "find your university". The voting results in two leader boards for each university – one for boys and another for girls. A friend found himself on the list of "Hottest guys of all time in the University of Cambridge" and seemed moderately pleased about it.
It's possibly flattering if you figure in the leader board, numbered one to 50. Having a glance through the "Hottest girls" list, I spotted my pretty friend Aarya, who was in my school in Dubai and is now at Cambridge. When I showed it to her, though, she declared that "this is the creepiest thing ever". It turned out Aarya hadn't heard of Ratemash before I showed her the list and had definitely not "entered" herself in what is essentially a sort of beauty pageant. She hadn't posted her photos anywhere except Facebook and wanted to know how a stranger could put up her name and photo for a contest she had no interest in.
We have all long resigned ourselves to being judged by how we look. On average, people like beautiful people better. That's just the way the world works. It's easily demonstrated by going through photos of American presidents or winners of television talent shows. Most have even teeth and symmetrical faces, because that's what people vote for. But, surely, those with supposedly irregular features are not less adept at politics or singing?
We can't stop society subconsciously calculating our worth based on attractiveness, but rating websites take objectifying young people to a whole new level.
Oh, it's all just for laughs? Try telling that to highly strung, hormonal students who didn't even make the list; perhaps we should curl up in a corner to cry, then book appointments for Lasik and a nose job.
Or maybe it will blow over. Facebook started off as a ratings website, after all, but it got over that murky beginning to become a useful networking tool. Ratemash bugs me because it seems a gross invasion of privacy – it's unacceptable for the website to pick up photos without permission and use them for public consumption. This is the start of a slippery slope: if it can put up people's photos, names and universities, it can possibly use the information for seedier purposes.
Perhaps we could stop using Facebook to avoid our details being misused, but we find out about university events, extracurriculars and academic schedules through Facebook, so it's impossible to give up. It's high time the big guys at the helm, those running social networking sites, supply the answers.
The writer is an 18-year-old student at Cambridge who grew up in Dubai
artslife@thenational.ae