One Fat Step For Man

Purestorm? More like Shitstorm, amirite?

So it seems that my presence was not welcome on the popular modelling website Purestorm, as I found out today when my account was unceremoniously deleted, following a suspension for which I was given no reason.

See, I don’t mind that some sites want to have an air of exclusivity by rejecting what they see as amateurs, and that’s within their rights to do. I certainly can’t and won’t bother to argue the toss if they don’t want me there in the first place. However, I do think that there are more elegant ways of going about this rejection than how Purestorm approached the matter.

Two weeks ago I made my account, uploaded my info and a couple of photos and began waiting for my profile to be activated. Time went on without any notice and I decided yesterday to email them and ask why the decision was stalling. The answer came a few hours later in the form of an email which stated that I was suspended from using the site with no explanation.

Okay. So I email again, asking what the problem was and why my application had been not just rejected, but suspended. The answer was short and along the lines of “Purestorm only accepts 1 in every 3 applications and we decided not to accept you” which left me even more bewildered.

In their FAQ I found nothing except this bit of info:

“When you are suspended the reason for your suspension is sent to you via PM so you will need to log into your account and check your inbox for a message.

Suspensions are not always permanent and there may be instructions in the PM telling you how to get your profile re-instated again.”

So again I decided, for whatever reason, to email them and ask what it was about my profile that lead to the rejection/suspension and whether I could amend it to make them reconsider. Consistently with a friendly tone, thanking them for taking the time even to communicate with me, since some sites don’t even bother with that.

However, this broke Purestorm’s camel’s back and they weren’t happy judging from the fact that my profile was instantly deleted. If I try to enter my details now it merely says that the information is incorrect. When I try to recover my password it tells me that “Your account is no longer active on Purestorm, the most likely cause for this is that you requested your profile to be removed from the site.”

I guess this is where the story ends and while I don’t particularly mourn the loss, I extend this as a warning to other potential members that Purestorm is not above draconian measures to stop their site from being inflicted with a bunch of non-conformist “amateurs”.