The eugenics in the era of Internet

When running into the newborn and already much debated service offered by the social network beautifulpeople.net the most malicious people will be certainly tempted to unbury from history books the infamous “Lebensborn”.

That is to say the clinics that, under the aegis of the programs of Nazi eugenics, blossomed in the 30’s in Germany with the aim of creating and generate a selected caste of couples with a rigorously Aryan pedigree.

The Danish meetings portal, open only to beautiful Internet users, has launched this week the “Fertility Forum”. A space of discussion where its attractive members will be able to meet the ideal father and mother for their own children.  And, the creators hurried to explain, it will be soon open to the “ugly ducklings”, or better still, to those unattractive women in search of the perfect genes for their future pregnancy. In this second circumstance the “donor” – maybe remunerated – is chosen among 600.000 people that are registered in the site. All these are people that in order to enter the happy club of ‘Adonises’ must have attested his/her physical charm by submitting personal pictures to the assessment of a jury. Nothing is left to the case: one kilo en plus or a wrinkle that is too marked can cause exclusion.

The case of Beautifulpeople offers therefore the umpteenth illuminating example of how the net can host the transmission of the most abominable and amoral  ideas.  That like for the controversies on the facebook groups, is no longer creating the scoop. Far more interesting is to notice how the advantages of the so-called 2.0, that inter alia offers unlimited possibilities to share ones pictures, have accelerated that phenomenon of ‘aesthetization’ of the identity that is long since under-way in our societies. The Image gobbles up the contents and, like in Beautifulpeople, transform itself in a real discriminating criterion. It separates, excludes and categorizes. In spite of the much displayed democratic virtues of the Internet.