When Emily joined "Bangme.net", an internet picture rating site that was referred to her by her friend Kathleen, she was still under the assumption (instilled since birth on her psyche by her mother) that she was the best looking girl in the world. When she logged on to the site a few days later to check her rating, all her illusions were shattered, to the point where she wanted to slash her wrists with the jagged pieces of her broken heart.
[caption id="attachment_365" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Emily almost pulled off the coup of the online dating world"]
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Bangme.net is a site, similar to several other online projects, where people can post their picture and rate images that others have posted. A large amount of people visit the site to feel better about themselves, because, lets face it - some people are pretty fucking ugly.
Having never had sex, Emily says that she has plans to one day, and that bangme.net "seemed to be a very good way to meet wholesome people" who would see her for her inner beauty, which is enormous (interestingly enough, so is her frame).
Emily decided that her life could not be considered complete until she had achieved a rating of at least 50%, which in her mind would make her "bangable".
At this point of the story is where Adobe Photoshop entered into the visual equation. Emily asked friend Brian K. White, a graphic designer who runs the internet website
Glossy News, to touch up her picture to make her more attractive.
White talks about the process: "At first I thought she was kidding. When I realized that she was serious, I told her that there was only so much I can do, I mean you can't turn a Yugo into a Ferrari. When she burst into tears and grabbed the butcher knife in the kitchen, I told her I was only...um...kidding. Yep, what a big kidder I am! Ha ha! Say, can you put down the knife, sweetie?"
[caption id="attachment_366" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Emily's knight in ugly armor"]
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White realized that this wasn't just a minor touch-up, this transformation would be akin to making Keith Richards look alive. He broke out his copy of Photoshop and opened the picture that Emily provided. After 7 and a half hours, he hadn't gotten anywhere, and he was about to suggest a blind dating service, when he stumbled onto the solution. "I realized that if I fucked up the picture to the point where you couldn't even tell if the subject was human, there was a remote chance that somebody might want to have sex with her.
Using the message board aspect of the site, Emily found her current fiance Brad, who also used Photoshop to enhance his picture to "look sexy for all the hot ladies out there". When Emily met Brad, she discovered that he was just as ugly as she was, although one minute and thirty seconds later, she was no longer a virgin. Brian White is happy for his friend, and with the role that his computer skills played in helping her find true love.
"It's great that she found love, I'm so happy for her. But I've already told her that she better use birth control, I mean they're great people, but their bringing a child into the world would most likely bring upon the apocalypse."
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