It's called rate.ee. Likely inspired by some picture site from another country, it has become insanely popular in Estonia.

Today I talked to my sister about it. She, like many others, is slightly addicted to the site, (having submitted her own pics? and) rating other people.

My opinion is that the reason why the site's so popular is that people post pictures of themselves to hear others say "You're so cute!," and give them a high score on the 1-5 point scale, make them feel happy about themselves and raise their self-esteem. The second and third reasons are that some people want to interact with others - friends from school, or maybe make new friends - and some just want to have sex.

She furiously disagreed about the self-esteem part. She said that that definitely isn't the reason why it's so popular. We argued a lot about it. She's very stubborn when it comes to arguments.. possibly the most stubborn person I know. Well, as weird as it might seem, the argument ended with her telling me that I'm an idiot and a f*g and that I think well only of beautiful and fit girls. Lol, the previous sentence was quite paradoxial, don't you think? Oh well, she's only 13 years old.. As old as I was when I came to this forum. :eek:


What do you think?

I don't think your sister should know or does know what a fag is :D I think the MAIN reason people post their pics on those sites is to get a high rating from others and feel good about themselves. It's funny cos the sites I've seen like that, you must be 18 to post your pic - obviously they can't enforce that strictly but I think most people can tell the difference in a pic between an 18 and a 13 year-old. "Interacting with friends" is quite a stupid reason to go on those sites, since you can do that much better over MSN or over the phone or in real life.

Everyone likes to feel sexy and desirable... no biggie. It's when people become obsessed with getting other people's approval and encouragement that the trouble starts.

Vask, my sister does know what a fag is, she just wanted to piss me off. :D

Yay, so you guys agree with me. ;)

Submitting pictures is allowed for people of any age. It's mostly for people aged 12-25, I think especially for 13-16 year olds, since they have the teenager crisis or something.

I know everyone likes to feel sexy and desirable.. just that sometimes it gets slightly perverse, like when 12-16 year olds try to 'reveal' themselves a bit. Also, the self esteem part gets so overline sometimes that it's funny.

Take this person for example(I don't know who he is, just found a link from Google). Judging from the pictures, he thinks really highly of himself. Now, the weird thing is that despite the first pic, his 'Extra info' section says 'I love (girl's name)' and it also says that he's a 'honest pessimist.' He doesn't look like that to me, heh.

There are a few Hate Rate clubs or such in Estonia, due to it's evergrowing popularity. In the site it says that there are 282468 active rate.ee users and 430593 pictures. Keeping in mind Estonia's small population of 1,4 million, and that 20-30% of the population are Russians, I calculated an estimation of 282468/1050000 use Rate.ee actively. That would be more than 1/4 of the Estonian population!

I don't really know what to think of it, I'm just saying how the situation in Estonia is.

Gosh, it really does fascinate you, doesn't it uss? ;) Personally I wouldn't waste my time getting so caught up in teenager's internet pages. We have a Dutch equivalent of the website you're talking about, teens wallowing in navel-gazing Weltschmerz and fishing for compliments of other teens, etc. I say let 'em, where's the harm in it? Better a teen with self esteem than one without it. Preoccupation with looks and with how you compare to others is a much wider-spread phenomenon, that doesn't originate with these sites and that is much too ingrained into western Culture to have any clear solutions.
Just don't make me go through the bother of actually reading these sites: when I want to get bored to tears I'll go and watch paint dry or something. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I might be wrong, but i think rate.ee might have sprung from the swedish site snyggast.nu. This site has been up for several years and is hugely popular.

now it has become a place where girls often (before the administrators can take them offline) show nearly pornographic fotos of themselves trying to earn money on cell-phone services.

These sites are the ultimate in vanity, although they can be quiet fun.
Me and a friend posted our pics on Hotornot.com as joke to see who would rate higher... she of course, being a girl was way above me [img]smile.gif[/img]
Although I did score higher than I imagined I would... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 05-23-2004, 05:05 PM: Message edited by: Jorath Calar ]

I checked out rate.ee...but it is in dutch, I do not understand the language, it stumps me.
I probably need to install the program that converts LOTE to English.

Rate.ee in Dutch? Hehe, that's not possible. I assume you're talking about Estonian? Come on, that's got nothing in common with Dutch! Right now, I don't know any Dutch words, but when I went to Holland, it seemed like the Dutch language is some extremely weird rip of from the English language! For example, I bet 'I'm going to the zoo' is 'Aaime gooeing tooe tee zooo.' [img]tongue.gif[/img] :D

Actually, both English and Dutch are West-Germanic languages, which means they've both descended from the same language, but have literally "grown apart" over the centuries; mostly due to different outside influences. The Germanic languages were first introduced in the British Isles during the Anglo-Saxon invasions, by the way.
And for the record, "I'm going to the zoo" is actually "Ik ga naar de dierentuin" in Dutch. ;)

[ 05-30-2004, 05:30 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]