Ugly Meter iPhone App Tells You How Hideous You Are

Decades ago, Snow White’s evil stepmother gazed into a magic mirror and said words you no doubt know by heart: “Mirror mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairst of them all?” Now, ...
Ugly Meter iPhone App Tells You How Hideous You Are
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  • Decades ago, Snow White’s evil stepmother gazed into a magic mirror and said words you no doubt know by heart: “Mirror mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairst of them all?” Now, imagine that instead of a magic mirror, the evil queen had been using an iPhone. Got it? Now imagine that instead of answering “Snow White,” the mirror iPhone had answered, “Certainly not you. Aren’t you due for your rabies shot? Woof!” If you can imagine that, then you’ve got a pretty good idea of what Ugly Meter for iPhone is all about.

    Using your iPhone’s front-facing camera, Ugly Meter does pretty much what the name tells you: it rates how ugly (or hot) you are. It rates you on a scale of 1-10. Contrary to what you might expect, being a 10 is not a good thing. It turns out that the ugly meter is kind of like golf: the lower your score, the better. Of course, the app isn’t content to give you your score and leave you to wallow in your misery. Oh no, Quasimodo, you’re not that lucky. Just for good measure, it pours a little salt in the wound with messages like “You’re so ugly, when your mother went into labor the doctors went on strike,” or “Wow you’re ugly, is your doctor a vet?” or “If ugliness were bricks, you’d be the Great Wall of China.” I, apparently, am “so ugly you couldn’t get a date off the calendar.”

    Of course, the app doesn’t appear to actually measure anything. Or, if it does, it doesn’t use any standard of beauty that actual people use. The Daily Mail put the app through its paces and found that while Angelina Jolie scored a 2 (remember, low is good), other similarly attractive people fared far worse. Brad Pitt, for example, scored a dismal 8, while British Prime Minister David Cameron beat him with a 7. Meanwhile, singer Cheryl Cole and actress Dannii Minogue got pretty dismal scores.

    So basically, the app is a random insult generator that pretends to look at your face for a few seconds. No big surprise there. Unfortunately, however, not everybody is pleased with the results they get. It seems that the creator of the app, Joe Overline, has been on the Howard Stern show a couple times talking about his creation. As you might expect, the first appearance gave the app a huge boost, prompting over 220,000 downloads, which earned around $400,000.

    During that first appearance, though, the app gave Ronnie the Limo Driver, Stern’s limo driver, bodyguard, and head of security, a score of 0. This, combined with some other comments made by Overline later, made Ronnie a bit… grumpy. Okay, maybe “grumpy” isn’t the right word. Maybe “furious” would be better. At any rate, Overline’s return to the show sparked quite the confrontation with Ronnie, who apparently believes Overline rigged the app to score him a zero, including a little profanity-laden shouting from both sides, and culminating in Ronnie actually spitting in Overline’s face. You can check out a rundown of the show here. You can also hear the audio of part of the confrontation embedded below. Check it out, but be warned: the language isn’t exactly safe for work…

    The app is available for $0.99 in the iOS App Store. Go check it out, if you’re brave enough.

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