HOTorNOT was the first time millions of people ever saw themselves reflected through a digital mirror, only to find the internet’s perception of them staring back. Most of the internet remnants of HOTorNOT’s formula are stripped of their precursor’s nuances.

But tech has a tendency to spiral beyond its original intent. HOTorNOT’s legacy is marred by the hindsight of today’s more progressive and jaded culture, understandably wary of anything that had a hand in setting the foundation for some of the worst aspects of the social web. The rating scale of the main website functioned similarly to the dating app swipe, back when ubiquitous smartphones with touch controls sounded like sci-fi. Instead of extensive bios and questionnaires geared toward long-term commitment, HOTorNOT limited you to a picture, short bio, and keyword tags that reflected your interests. HOTorNOT’s Meet Me helped make casual online mingling for younger folks mainstream, originating “double match” opt-in communication that required users express mutual interest before being able to message each other. Dating sites like already existed, but back then they were seen as options for an older or “desperate” crowd.

Soon after finding instant meteoric success, HOTorNOT then invented the most foundational concept of online speed-dating through the Meet Me feature (opens in a new tab), a proto-Tinder over a decade ahead of its time. Sure, we may have gotten rid of the 1 to 10 rating scale, but likes on Instagram selfies still essentially serve as an implied aggregated score of exactly how hot or not the internet thinks you are. It was the genesis for revolutionary concepts like the public profile at a time when uploading pictures of yourself was seen as an oddity or risk, when Facebook wasn’t even a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye. In ways big and small, HOTorNOT’s DNA is embedded into almost every major platform that defines how we interact online today. However, the deeper you dive into HOTorNOT’s history, the more surprised you'll be by the thoughtfulness bubbling below its shallow surface - and its fundamental impact on internet history. It's now seen at best as superficial and crass, at worst as problematic and potentially offensive.

Twenty years later, it’s a conceit that smacks of the juvenile “edginess” of the early web. Before MySpace, before Facebook, before Twitter, before YouTube, before Instagram, before Tinder - there was HOTorNOT (opens in a new tab).Ĭreated on a lark in 2000, HOTorNOT became what we’d now call an overnight viral hit by letting people upload pictures of themselves to the internet so total strangers could rate their attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10.

Hot & Spicy by P.T. Macias