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Instagram Face: The rise of selfie make-up and quest for hyper-perfection (2018)
- userbinator 7y agoPerhaps I'm in the minority, but I can't say I find "Instagram Face" to be attractive at all. It looks ridiculously unnatural, and evokes the same feeling as those ultra-SEO'd mostly contentless sites that flood search results.
- addicted44 7y agoI wonder if that's true for people who end up spending more time on Instagram than elsewhere, and start finding the IG Face to be more "natural" and get weirded out when they see people with wrinkles and stuff. I'm assuming here that "natural" is a result of what you (and I, since I feel similarly) are just used to.
- wreath 7y ago> and get weirded out when they see people with wrinkles and stuff. Well someday they will have to look around them and see people with wrinkles... in real life.. unless they are too hooked to their phones to even realize this.
- dwighttk 7y agoAR facetune will save them.
- zo1 7y agoYou probably said that tongue in cheek, but that's probably where we're headed. People value their social media intensely, and the combination of the two will naturally happen as a consequence of VR/AR becoming ubiquitous in our lives.
- sangnoir 7y agoThat would be an interesting twist on purchasing "cosmetic skins" IRL-ish (or more likely, monthly subscription. "For $5/mo more, you get our no gray-hair add-on"
- Sohcahtoa82 7y agoI can't help but feel like that's so incredibly dystopian.
- filoleg 7y agoA bit of a side-topic, but I believe there are even more interesting consequences/applications of future AR when it comes to looks. Why bother with only "fixing" certain things about your looks, whereas you can look like something/someone completely different? With AR advanced enough, I believe we will get to the point of multiple "realities" overlaid on top of the real one, which opens doors for so many interesting possibilities and applications. Don't like that pesky skyscraper blocking view of the lake from your apt? Luckily, there is a reality server you can subscribe to that has it removed. Or another reality server that acts like ad-block for real life. When the AR tech matures and gets in the hands of an average person, I expect life to change in such a crazy way, that changes brought by wide smartphone adoption will look like a tiny blip in comparison.
- neuralRiot 7y ago>Well someday they will have to look around them and see people with wrinkles... in real life.. Yeah it’s called “getting old” and one of the beauties of it is not caring for what others think about you or needing that acceptance feeling.
- CM30 7y agoI agree with this. What's seen as natural definitely appears to be a result of what you're used to. What's more, it's not just visual traits either. No, I suspect a lot of people feel an American accent is the 'norm' now as well, in part due to how much popular media originates in the US (and how many internet influencers seem to be from there). And there are definitely quite a few stories of people assuming their own country/culture works like the US/Europe/wherever based on what media they watch and who they follow online. Could be interesting to see a study about this stuff.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- trophycase 7y agoAgreed, I often think the world has gone crazy when completely absurd and inhuman stuff is labeled "attractive"
- paulcole 7y agoLet me guess, you also find most desserts too sweet?
- randyrand 7y agoAgreed. It does not look like a human person. Or at least is in that direction.
- koolba 7y agoI’m with you and think we may be the silent majority.
- ydb 7y agoAgreed. Most of my friend group (women in their late 20s and early 30s) make this face and it just appalls me. I think Baudrillard's conception of simulacra & simulation [1] is the perfect vehicle for understanding the "uncanny valley" effect this creates. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
- Der_Einzige 7y agoBaudrillard is a hack of epic proportions. He's an example of the worst kind of French psudo-intellectualism almost on par with Lacan or Deleuze. Actually, bro the gulf war happened! And most of the book you linked is full of utter nonsense and crankery. His review of JG Ballard's novel "Crash" was the only good chapter in the whole book. Just because it was in the matrix doesn't mean that it described our world accurately at all. It's nothing but fashionable nonsense.
- ydb 7y agoThat's rich coming from somebody who's username is literally Der Einzige. :) It's hard to believe you deign to label Baudrillard a crank yet identify enough with Stirner to make the title of his most well-known work your nom de plume Edit: See this [1] lovely video to learn why it's a common misconception that his work has any relevancy to the Matrix franchise beyond superficial pop philosophy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E
- Der_Einzige 7y agoStirner, and the rest of the German young hegelians, are far more coherent and interesting than French post modernists. They also don't engage in any type of fashionable nonsense. Stirner also doesn't advocate for his ideas on the basis of anything except self interest. The "dialectical" Frenchies will tell you a far different story about why you should agree with them.
- ydb 7y ago
- onion2k 7y agoWhy are you assuming it's supposed to be attractive? It's optimised for getting 'likes', not dates. The assertion that every picture of yourself is driven by a biological urge to reproduce is wrong. Humans do stuff for many more reasons than that.
- adrianN 7y agoPretending to be available for dates is a very effective way of getting "likes".
- tsukurimashou 7y agoAttractiveness is subjective, but most of the time, people find attractive the fact someone seems "open" for dates.
- dkersten 7y agoYeah I find it ugly. It looks so fake, almost like a dodgy 3D model or a cartoon. Not attractive at all.
- tsukurimashou 7y agoCmon, who wouldn't fuck a cartoon!
- Sohcahtoa82 7y agoI find it highly disturbing that someone with a username that based on a line spoken by a 10-13 year old anime girl is talking about fucking a cartoon.
- teekert 7y agoYes, I agree! So this woman feels sexy and al I think it she looks like a doll. But still.. in a way it's also a supernormal stimulus for the opposite sex and is on its way to becoming the new standard, the same way people tend to descend into stranger and stranger fetishes and finding it harder and harder to get aroused by normal "human" partners. I really don't like it. Though I will admit, such a fake face does tickle the fancy. As said, a supernormal stimulus. I guess when such make up can be applied in a second using technology, the world will change forever. By the way, in "Stories of Your Life and Others" form Ted Chiang, there is a story where this sensitivity for beauty can be turned off, everybody does this but then someone stops doing it. It's a fascinating story, and very relevant, the story is "Liking What You See: A Documentary" [0]: "it consists of interviews with dozens of people at a high school in the US doing a pilot project with a future technique called “calliagnosia”. This is a neurological intervention that reliably and reversibly deadens that part of the brain that responds aesthetically to the human face." [0] http://hugogrinebiter.com/?p=5604 http://hugogrinebiter.com/?p=5604
- trimmedarticle 7y agoHere's a no JavaScript version of the article that reduces the page size by 99% - from 3.15 MB to 33 KB: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/768 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/768
- busymom0 7y agoBe careful, you might hear from IP lawyers if you get even a little bit of traction.
- abjKT26nO8 7y agoThis is a completely different article.
- trimmedarticle 7y agoLink is updated: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/768 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/768
- moretai 7y agoThis is awesome
- superfrank 7y agoI'm assuming by the account name that this is your site. Off topic, but I'd love the ability to change the width of the text on your site. Just a "wide", "medium", "narrow" option or something similar. Personally, I find that 1100px is a bit wide for reading.
- ossworkerrights 7y agoPretty impressive - the size of js crap these days is horrible.
- notatoad 7y agoI like the concept, but in this case i'd rather load an extra 3.1MB to get the New Yorker's typesetting. 120 characters per line and a short line height does not make for a great reading experience.
- ebg13 7y agoBecause it's The New Yorker, there are no photos in the article. So if you're hoping to learn what "instagram face" actually looks like, you'll have to dig somewhere else.
- ossworkerrights 7y agoI think they describe it pretty accurately. The idea here is that the face is fake and propped up and pretty identical between “top” users of instagram. That’s a bit worrying.
- klodolph 7y agoIt may be worrying but it’s not new. What we got from magazines in the 1980s and 1990s is found on Instagram and YouTube in 2020. Now, what’s fun is digging up an old magazine and making fun of it with some friends. You can occasionally find one on Imgur or the Internet Archive.
- illinx 7y agoIt doesn't seem like you read the article, which is about two specific technologies which did not exist in the 80's and 90's.
- campee 7y agoSo instead they just hired people who looked a specific way instead of using technology to make them all look a specific way.
- klodolph 7y agoI read the article. We obviously have very different interpretations, but I’m unsure why you think my comment doesn’t make sense. Could you clarify?
- dang 7y ago"Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- naringas 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
- reedwolf 7y agoThe concept in comic form: https://www.sparringmind.com/supernormal-stimuli/ https://www.sparringmind.com/supernormal-stimuli/
- infinitone 7y agoGreat way to convey a dense topic! Thanks for sharing!
- m3kw9 7y agoThis is the one to read
- nemo1618 7y agoHere's a weird idea: is music a supernormal stimulus? I mean, I listen to music constantly, every day, and I become irritable if I must go without music for long periods. It would not be a stretch to label this an addiction. Furthermore, music does not exist in our natural environment. You might protest that birdsong qualifies as music, but even granting that, birdsong bears no relation to the highly rhythmic, bass-heavy music that humans seem to prefer. Where did this preference come from? And if music really is a supernormal stimulus, is that necessarily a bad thing? Can a supernormal stimulus be morally neutral, or perhaps even good?
- samatman 7y agoIt depends on what your threshold is for supernormality. I would say no; bone flutes are among the oldest human artifacts, we may have been making music for as long as we've been using language. There is, on the other hand, a clear supernormal 'vibe' to pop music, which has been tuning in since the 80s. If you look at the waveform of a contemporary pop song, it looks like a brick: everything has been compressed and condensed to fill the available audioscape.
- smacktoward 7y agoThe key takeaway here isn't that "Instagram face" exists or what it looks like, but that it's a product of two factors: the emergence of less invasive plastic surgery techniques, and of software specifically dedicated to producing these faces. This being HN, the existence of the software is the really interesting bit. It's called FaceTune: > FaceTune, which was released in 2013 and promises to help you “wow your friends with every selfie,” enables even more precision... “I think ninety-five per cent of the most-followed people on Instagram use FaceTune, easily,” Smith told me. It's a phone app. More information is available here: https://www.facetuneapp.com/ https://www.facetuneapp.com/ Click the "watch video" link on that homepage to see a good visual example of what the software can do. (Warning in advance, the video has an obnoxious, loud techno soundtrack. Mute the tab before you hit play.)
- nostromo 7y agoMy favorite FaceTune example: https://www.instagram.com/p/BmnSLiIF-Rl/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BmnSLiIF-Rl/
- mixmastamyk 7y agoIn a few words, wrinkles have been excessively blurred out. Newt looks like a big fat baby Huey.
- seppin 7y agoAlso faces squished or am I imagining that?
- seppin 7y agoOh that looks awful
- guelo 7y agoWarning: if you click that link on some browsers it will remove your back button history by opening a new tab and killing the previous one. Instagram is aggresively user-hostile and if you work there you should feel bad.
- brootstrap 7y agomy little sister is (or wants to be) one of these, my wife watches them on instagram. I heard one woman talking about 'instagram brows' and she was just so fucking excited about how great her face and eyebrows looked. Here is this lady with the face (i've never heard it coined like in the article but I know it) and she has (tens?) of thousands of folks staring at her reinforcing the vicous cycle. More views, more facial contours, more stimuli, more ads, more money, more searches, more ads, more views
- faissaloo 7y agoI've found it subtly unnerving and in some way boring how women are beginning to look exactly the same, it's almost like something of comparable virality to the whole flat minimal UI design meme now exists in fashion.
- nemo1618 7y agoTo grossly generalize: Differentiation does not benefit females in the way it benefits males. Being "average" is a safe mating strategy for females, but not for males.
- faissaloo 7y agoI watched this great video on it from a while back where BoyInABand goes through an OkCupid study that actually says the complete opposite (unfortunately it seems like most of OkCupid's studies just vanished from the internet at some point): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLNwa_hoz4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLNwa_hoz4w
- smogcutter 7y agoThat okcupid stats blog was great, here’s a thread on reddit where someone archived them: https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/comments/aapn1l/okcupid_blog_archives/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/comments/aapn1l/okcupid_blog_... To sum up for parent: in okcupid’s data, women considered attractive but not super hot got fewer messages than women who were less conventionally attractive but had more polarizing photos. In other words for most women it’s a better strategy to play up a look/feature that’s unique but potentially alienating than it is to be generically attractive.
- brenden2 7y agoI've really improved my happiness ever since I uninstalled these apps (IG, Snapchat, etc) and never looked back. I suggest everyone do the same. They get you hooked on a dopamine drip feed, instill feelings of inadequacy, and otherwise do nothing to improve your life.
- turc1656 7y agoGood for you. I never had any of those types of services except for Facebook and I never used that much at all. So, I don't know what it's like to "unplug" in that regard, but I can imagine how much it must suck to be in that spiral. I think in addition to the dopamine addiction, there's also some sort of neurotic or narcissistic aspect to it as well for many. I see it all the time with people everywhere. Women on the bus are constantly on all of that shit taking selfies. Like, who the fuck needs to see you making a wannabe cute/sexy face on the bus on the way to work? And that, amazingly, isn't limited to just women in their 20s, but it does trend heavily to them. I'm married but the concept of dating in this modern world is terrifying to me. First thing I would do would be to lookup a woman on social media to see if she's one of these crazies.
- to1y 7y agoI think it's funny how 90% percent of these 'selfies' are taken in bathrooms. Used to be you went to a nice place and took a photo to show where you went. Now I think the average selfie taker doesn't even realize they are in a toilet, it is completely self focused. There is a fitting metaphor in there somewhere.
- kohtatsu 7y ago"My shit doesn't stink"?
- usrusr 7y agoThe way I remember early selfie culture is that it actually started in places like bathrooms and only spread to include location later. But those details do not matter, the real story is how bathrooms apparently became places of public representation.
- xandyalexg 7y agoI think the most interesting thing here is the comparison between these hi-tech options we've got now (FaceTune, cheap and low-invasion surgery) and their lower tech analogues (ie. makeup, haircuts). These hi-tech options may be way more quotidian 10/20/30 years down the line - according to the article, the stigma around the procedures is already diminished to the point where celebrities are willing to promote it. It still doesn't feel like something I'd want for myself, but it's not hard to imagine a reality not too far off where this becomes much more common, especially considering what we know about the positive correlation between conventional attractiveness and fame/money/career advancement.
- unsignedchar 7y agoRelated story in the New Yorker today: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/decade-in-review/the-age-of-instagram-face https://www.newyorker.com/culture/decade-in-review/the-age-o...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- malingo 7y agoThe author of that piece, Jia Tolentino, has a collection of essays called Trick Mirror. This quote pretty aptly describes the transition to the social-media-driven internet: “At ten I was clicking around a web ring to check out other Angelfire sites. At twelve I was writing five hundred words a day on a public LiveJournal. At fifteen I was uploading photos of myself in a miniskirt on Myspace. By twenty-five, my job was to write things that would attract, ideally, a hundred thousand strangers per post. Now I’m thirty, and most of my life is inextricable from the internet, and its mazes of incessant forced connection — this feverish, electric, unlivable hell.”
- mensetmanusman 7y agoPeople use to strangle their feet to keep them small in order to be attractive for men. This is harmless by comparison?
- jagged-chisel 7y agoPhysically, perhaps...
- Cougher 7y agoOne of the trends that's directly related to "this" is the trend of getting plastic surgery. That's a pretty ugly, disastrous road.
- dirtyid 7y agoThere's an analogous drive for men in western masculinity with the resurgence in gym culture and elevation of muscularity in media, particularly driven by physiques portrayed superhero franchises. We're rapidly shifting from Brad Pitt fight club "ottermode" bodies into some bignorexia territory. Though, it's much more self limiting, since you can't simply "buy" a well built physique, even with drugs unless you're an exceptional genetic outlier. It still requires years of dedicated training and continued maintenance. Though the fact that steroids are scheduled drugs makes pursuing these standards literally illegal in many countries, which is a separate topic altogether.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y agoIt depends on the person, but many people’s bodies tend to be catabolic which makes gaining muscle hard - the so-called hard gainers. These males also tend to have feminine qualities in facial structure. TRT will probably help those individuals more w.r.t to muscle gain than steroids. Or RHGH.
- texasbigdata 7y agoWhat? Assuming you live in America, "many" people's bodies are not catabolic for any meaningful portion of a given week. Not even close. You can force a catabolic state onto yourself...but how does TRT help? Note also that insulin levels associated with obesity also modulate that mechanism, in the opposite direction of your argument, but let's ignore that. Theoretically you prevent loss of lean muscle mass while in a calorie deficit while intermittent fasting, but that's an obscure edge case for someone looking to increase in size. Also, TRT is a steroid. At high enough doses. And, if that holds, how can it be less effective? Ignoring some of the biology itself. Sorry for the sharp rebuttal but what are you talking about. If you look at the research there's a very narrow band of philiosogic changes available to new and intermediate gym goers. The exact figures escape me, but if I recall with perfect nutrition and perfect gym adherence I believe I previously calculated for an average american male for that top end to be around 0.2 to 0.7 pounds of lean muscle mass additions per week. Based on an older paper. And that's the theoretical ceiling. But, the flip side was that even for "hard gainers" with "feminine qualities in facial structure" (for which I've never seen research for but will take you at face value on that, no pun intended) that also means that gradual incremental changes are probable and positive with enough adherence. Saying that a healthy strong body is not attainable without growth hormone or steroids seems like a cop out, when just sticking to it will (very very slowly) yield incremental progress.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoI one time let a friend edit a photo, blurred my skin, etc and posted it to social media, and it got way more likes than any of unedited, unfiltered photos. I never edit photos (rarely do I post any for that matter) but man that was a real disappointment. There's no question social media has to be bad for our self-image.
- TrackerFF 7y agoThere's so much fakery going on, you'd might as well just assume that what you see is not real. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagramreality/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagramreality/ (Warning: may include slightly NSFW images)
- firecall 7y agoThats a decent sub that generally mocks terrible photoshop work for Instagram! LOL The pinched waist with huge ass look... done badly!
- friendlybus 7y agoIt's supposed to be a veil you unveil to those you want closer in your life. That's part of the fun, getting to know people better. The idea that you have to become the veil you are projecting out is the illness.
- spyckie2 7y agoI remember being a popular, outgoing, friendly kid from kindergarten until 5th grade when I got my first pair of glasses. The glasses were not fashionable, and I went from being popular to being an introverted and isolated kid for the next 15 years. I eventually ditched glasses for contacts and suddenly became outgoing again. While having glasses wasn't the only factor for my behavior, there was a noticeable difference to people's reaction to you based on how you look. I consider myself confident regardless of appearance, but I have to admit that the activation energy required for being sociable greatly increases when you don't have the right look. Many people don't have high levels of confidence from within themselves and outward affirmation influences them a lot. Even if you have high levels of internal confidence, you'll still feel the dopamine of affirmation noticeably, and there's definitely a temptation to fall into milking that affirmation to very unhealthy levels. Affirmation is not the same as social acceptance, but they are close proxies. Many people seek after social acceptance and mistake social affirmation for it, leading us down the wrong path. But social acceptance cannot be pulled out of people; it must be pushed. You can compel someone to compliment you, but you can't compel someone to accept you. Instead, active communication of acceptance is a trait that needs to be fostered in our culture in order to have a healthier society.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- enriquto 7y agoThe "before/after" images are uncanny! Before, she looks like a normal, approachable person; after a scary seller of shady stuff that you would nothing to to with.
- welluu89 7y agoI just don't think this kind of thing is good for anybody. Thinking, that a perfect face and body can exist or even should is unhealthy. It adds up to a lot young people, who are still trying to figure out, who they are and trying to get comfortable with their own bodies.
- dwighttk 7y agoI saw a similarly titled article in the New Yorker[1] twice before seeing this link. For some reason that author saw fit to only use words (outside of a drawing at the top of the article) to describe the effect which did nothing for me. Kudos to this author who actually included pictures. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/decade-in-review/the-age-of-instagram-face https://www.newyorker.com/culture/decade-in-review/the-age-o...
- kiwifan 7y agoThe one comment that stuck out to me in this article was the coworker who said she felt anxious whenever she saw the author of this article. Personally I am not someone who likes to wear a full face of makeup on a daily basis but the pressure to do so feels more present every day. A lot of this is because you never know when you will be photographed and end up on any social media platform. Even simple tasks like heading to the grocery store seem to require at least some mascara and eyebrows drawn on.