I’m all for personality quirks (I know, I have a few uh..special quirks of my own). But quirky has gone too far on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
I have identified a trend of people repeatedly posting photos of themselves making absurd faces. This strikes me as odd…not the part about people making ridiculous faces, but the fact that they keep on doing it. I’ve seen profiles of people who seriously post about 200 photos of themselves just making random faces, usually ones where their mouths are gaping open (maybe in mocked shock or horror) or their eyes are especially wide and close to the camera. You know what I’m talking about.
A variation on this trend is people posting endless photos of themselves making seductive, sexy, or otherwise attractive faces. I think we can chalk this one up to pure vanity and insecurity. So whether a series of attractive faces or absurd ones, I find that the weirdest thing is that people are taking these pictures themselves! (You can easily determine this by looking at the angles the photos were taken at. Plus I have a hard time believing anyone else would have the patience to take so many stupid, pointless pictures.)
I just don’t get it. Is it simple plain self-absportion for the whole Internet world to see, or do these people really think all their quirky faces are just that funny? It’s…strange. Who spends hours on end photographing themself?
Does it really matter that people are obsessed with weird photos of themselves? No. But when you consider th amount of time people waste taking, selecting, and posting photos of themselves doing nothing else than looking purely ridiculous, it sure does make me wonder if narcicism isn’t becoming more a societal norm than a recognizable form of pride.
Citizens of the WOL, I urge you to set an example in this regard. Please. Try and resist the urge to capture your own absurdity on film. And if you must do so, please just keep your ridiculousness to yourself, perhaps in a photo album neatly labeled “Funny Me” or another such title. Then you can open it up whenever you want and view all your weirdness for as long as you feel you need. And if that doesn’t sound like much fun, maybe you should ask yourself why the rest of us should be interested in seeing it either.
i think people post photos of wierd faces just to be funny and maybe to show a part of their personality to portray to those viewing their profile. maybe they feel like that’s one side of them that they want others to know about them, and they feel comfortable doing it in a photo online for people to see. a couple of times i have posted photos like that, mostly to get my friends reactions because i like getting comments on my myspace or facebook. i learned early that each time you change your photo on myspace, more people go to your page to see if you have any other updated photos, or to see if you’ve updated your site. then, while they’re there, sometimes they’ll give you a comment. i live for comments! well, not really…but it is gratifying in a way. not sure why…
as for the seductive photos, my opinion is that people do that because they want attention and they want to be noticed, and they must feel like people will be attracted to them if they have such a photo posted. so yeah, that probably is out of insecurity.
have you heard of postsecret.org? someone took a picture of themselves and wrote on their arm “i want to be noticed.” that was their secret. i think a lot of people want to be noticed but they don’t want to admit it. actually, everyone wants to feel significant in some way.
anyway, that was a good thought-provoking post. when’s your next one? this is inspiring me. i really need to update my blog. i haven’t written in a few months and that means i broke my new years resolution of being consistent on it. *sigh*