Kill Your TV

By Mix 104.7's afternoon guy, Jason Parker

I must apologize to all who read Kill Your TV in last month's issue. In short, my article lacked true substance and direction and was the result of procrastination, which among cursing, drinking and gambling, is one of the undesirable personality traits I possess. Enough groveling. I ****ed up, I'll admit it.

I cannot promise that this will be the best article you will read this month, as I usually find the Dharma Bum to be of much higher intellectual quality, but I think you'll find it entertaining to some degree.

This month I want to talk to you about an addiction. This addiction is very strong. It has already taken hold of a number of people I know, myself included. It's not deadly, it costs nothing, and 99 percent of you will get addicted to it the first time you try it.

Is it drugs? No. Is it alcohol? No. Is it sex? No. Is it fun? Yes. "What is it?" you ask. It's a group of websites I was recently introduced to, on which you can judge people anonymously. The one that got me hooked is www.amihotornot.com. You might hear us joke about it on the airwaves at Mix 104.7 occasionally. Come to find out there are several other websites just like it, including www.amiahottie.com, www.amihot.com, and www.amisexy.com.

There isn't anything gimmicky about these websites because they are simple. They display pictures of people and you rate them on the scale next to the picture. Based on your own personal taste you can give them a rating of one through 10. That's it. You don't have to pay to utilize the site, or buy anything, and you can literally sit for hours and hours looking through pictures of people and rate them anonymously.

So if you think somebody's picture is absolutely putrid, you can select a low rating. And on the flip side, if you see a picture of a hottie you can help feed their ego with a 10. How can this be so much fun and so very much entertaining? I don't know. It just is.

I that think psychologically we all judge each other on looks. Even those who are together because their personalities click, have to admit that there was some sort of initial attraction that got them wanting to get to know each other in the first place. No matter how much of a holier than thou "It's what's on the inside" kind of an attitude you pretend to have, you'll find these websites to be great sources of endless hours of entertainment.

It's human nature to admire beauty or the lack thereof because beauty is subjective, which allows anyone and everyone to participate. What is desirable to one person isn't to another and so on and so forth. So if you like tall Scottish women with pigtails covered in haggis, it's your right to feel that way. You laugh at my Scottish woman covered in food, but there are all kinds of pictures on these websites. Tall people, short people, skinny people, fat people, sexy people, ugly people, and sometimes people whom you can't tell what their sexuality is.

They didn't attain these pictures by surfing the net and copying them from personal home pages. These pictures are submitted by people who actually want to know what the world thinks of them. To me, that's gambling with self-esteem. I know of one Mix 104.7 personality, who put a picture of themself on one of the sites calling it "a joke just to see." After a few weeks their rating was a 5.8 and they couldn't believe that they weren't more desirable to the public. They were honestly bummed out a little bit that they weren't getting the numbers they thought were applicable.

However with good old-fashioned American tenacity, they put up another picture and are very happy to let everyone know that their new picture is up to a 9.2. It's not me by the way, as I really don't want to know what the world thinks of me. I fear that I might take it to heart if I'm a dud and let it go to my head if I'm a stud. It's human nature once again.

There are some pictures on these sites that I'm almost positive the person who is actually in the photo has no clue that their image is floating in cyberspace. On www.amihot.com, you can click on the picture and get the person's bio. Some pictures accompany very interesting biographies and information. Some of these are ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends exacting revenge upon their past lovers.

The reason I think this, is because occasionally you'll see a candid picture of a girl who looks like a goodie two shoes high school cheerleader boasting that her ideal evening includes a bottle of whiskey, condoms, the football team and bondage. You'll also occasionally see a guy who admits he's a player, has a 1-inch member, and likes beer, gerbils, underage girls and Playgirl magazine.

It really doesn't matter why their picture is on these websites, just that it is out there to be looked at and judged. It doesn't matter if you're single, married, engaged, in between relationships, gay, strait, bi, or taking the vows of abstinence, viewing thousands of pictures of anonymous people from around the world is very addicting because it appeals to your inner most human mechanisms.

Looking at people can often times be like looking at artwork in a museum although I really can't think of a time I got a rise out of viewing the Mona Lisa.