"Beautiful people" dating site boots uglies

In an era where superficiality has risen to an art form, let the snark begin.

BeautifulPeople.com, a dating website that says it caters to "beautiful people" got infected by a virus that allowed, well, less-then-gorgeous-looking folks to sign up last month, according to Britain's Daily Mail. More than 30,000 folks who normally wouldn't have made the grade signed in - but were later weeded out, according to the paper.

In the interview, an executive representing the website offered an apology of "sincere regret" for any embarrassment.

Dating site for cute people says Brits are ugly
Social network nixes users who 'let themselves go'

But this is one of those oh-so-conveniently cute Internet stories that just makes one stop and wonder if it's really on the up and up. Suspicions were raised by the security firm Sophos, which suggested to the tech website The Register that, indeed, this was nothing more than a PR stunt - one presumably designed to get people, such as your humble scribe, to write about the website, and others to see if they could make the grade and sign in. For the record, the website was down for much of Monday for what it reported to be a software upgrade.