Point/Counterpoint: A Website That Tells You Exactly How Old You Look

It has come to our attention that two computer dudes, innocently futzing around with “Microsoft’s newly released Face Detection APIs,” have invented a website entitled How-Old.net, which enables users to upload their selfies and give the computer algorithm a chance to guess their age. Its existence immediately proved divisive among the Jezebel staff.

Point: This Website Blows

Literally fuck this website. Surely it took a modicum of technological capability and a propensity for toying with code to create such an algorithm, but its results are utter arbitrary bullshit, and the expectation that a computer might be able to recognize human characteristics is ungodly. It is the heathen personification of mathematics, and if I believed in God, I would also believe in God’s wish to smite its creators.

Further, it parades itself as a “fun” application of analytics, but the truth is much more sinister, though equally transparent: this is an antifeminist website created to foster insecurity in women, to solidify, and to designate an age that is not only massively incorrect and years if not decades over, but is the anonymous online equivalent of wiener-boys screaming juvenile taunts on the playground. Well, How-Old dot Net, sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me, and also your website is a steaming pile of shit.

Plus, I was recently bragging about how my wonderful genes have compensated for my disgustingly lethargic metabolism with skin that wrinkles at an equally slow pace. How-Old dot Net—the website equivalent of a taunting teen fuckboy avoiding his chores by posting on a Reddit forum from a desktop computer in his mom’s dingy basement—clearly wants to fight, and I will cut it.

-Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Counterpoint: This website is awesome.

Holy shit, I love this website. It fucking rules.

-Erin Gloria Ryan