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The Age of Instagram Face
- stephenitis 7y agoyet not one photo in this article.
- dpau 7y agono, but there's a nice animated illustration. is a photo really needed? just open instagram
- larrik 7y agoI looked 3 times and didn't find any illustration. Maybe my ad-blocker killed it.
- hoorayimhelping 7y agoThe header hero image at the top of the page. It's not what you're looking for though, it's just an illustration and doesn't really show off what the author is talking about.
- dpau 7y agoI respectfully disagree, I think the illustration shows very nicely what FaceTune and plastic surgery are doing to the face.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoAnd a hugely annoying rolling Rolex video ad on mobile. I need photos of what it looks like!
- fahadkhan 7y agoI really liked that about this article. Social Media sites are full images of that illustrate the point.
- mstade 7y agoAside from HN I have no social media accounts, so a picture or two to illustrate what an "Instagram Face" is wouldn't hurt. I also don't care enough to actually look it up, so I suppose there's that too.
- MikusR 7y agoSo this is it? https://www.instagram.com/p/B8qMuIFn_SK/ https://www.instagram.com/p/B8qMuIFn_SK/
- bbotond 7y agoI don't use social media sites so I don't really know what the article is talking about. A couple of photos would have been nice.
- Can_Not 7y agoAssuming everyone is using Instagram doesn't illustrate the point.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoSome links out to examples on Instagram though.
- frandroid 7y agoThey're not embedded, but they're linked... Is linked content not part of the article?
- epicgiga 7y agoIt'll be interesting to see how things pan out from all this. The internet has only really been with us for a few decades, and yet has completely transformed the fabric of humanity, acting as a bizarre and extreme lens upon existing human traits. At some point, logically, there has to be sufficient reaction to bring us back in line with what we came from. The "winner take all" effects from the internet are just too extreme to be feasibly sustained. You can't have a happy society with such extreme gaps between rich tech people and everyone else living in tents or off what they choose to spend their money on. You can't have a happy society where the top 5% of beautiful men are paying people to schedule their calendar of tinder lays while other guys buy thot bathwater, or where the top 5% of women get all the attention and the rest wonder where their prince charming is who's been denied them from all this as they sadly pass 30 alone. The fact is, a huge amount of bad has come from the internet. A seriously huge amount. And the opportunity cost of all that capital that went into enraged politics on twitter and inanity on facebook, that could've gone into medical research... At least we got Musk from it I guess. It's a strange feeling. Being an active participant and facilitator in something that is clearly not naturally aligned with human happiness, only human progress. In the end, what choice do we have. This is our natural aptitude, and succeeding in it can mean the difference between living paycheck to paycheck and becoming financially free. So we're going to do it. We have little choice. But we can't say any of it is fundamentally good. At best we're peddlers of the neutral and inevitable.
- jsjddbbwj 7y ago>where the top 5% of women get all the attention 99%
- neardanger 7y agoMany unhappy men we'll see how it all pans out. Many unhappy women as well but more for the same reasons.
- jsjddbbwj 7y agoI'm saying that for each woman affected by this there are 100 men left outside the dating pool.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoIt will be interesting how this works out long term. People may get bored of the constant competition or it may end up like the people from the 60s who switched from “love and peace” to “greed is good” a few years later. Maybe in 20 years plastic surgery is totally normal and required. I’m definitely noticing that I am getting old and stubborn. I probably should dye my hair like a lot of people my age but I don’t want to although it really makes people look much younger.
- tartoran 7y agoIt’s already happening right now to some extent. But I highly doubt this trend will include the more educated and the less narcisistic, and on top of it, trends come and go in cycles and generations learn something from them. The not so good part is that the collective memory is relatively short, otherwise we’d learn more from history.
- masona 7y agoWhenever I see these kinds of stories about ridiculous mass trends, I think ‘This is the kind of stuff my kids will rebel against.’ That gives me comfort.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoSometimes they rebel against it or sometimes it will be totally normal for them and they will even take it to the next level . You never know.
- v77 7y agoHacker News spends half its time making fun of moral panics and half its time participating in them. Who cares if people want to have plastic surgery or injectable treatments?
- jakemal 7y agoI don't think surgical enhancements are inherently bad, but if the reason they are getting them is because social media is having a negative impact on people's self-esteem then I think that's worthy of discussion.
- amoitnga 7y agoAlcohol is bad for you. Pot is probably bad for you (I don't really know) Feel free to not use any of it. I noticed when social media started to have an impact on how I feel, so I almost stopped using facebook - It's difficult to ditch it altogether because sometimes I need access to dev panel. I unfollowed everyone on Instagram who is not my immediate friend, anyone whose posts are obviously fake nonsense and not genuine moments. I need these to stay in touch with my old friends, see what's happening in their life. I don't need this to see where some C@#$@ drinks their cosmo today.
- BlargMcLarg 7y agoI care because I don't want everything to turn into a race to the bottom with the little gremlin on the side laughing as he continues to sell tools for a premium, yet some groups seem to be hell-bent on getting people in this rat race and ostracizing the people who won't conform.
- paganel 7y agoI first thought about his back in 2012-2013, when two of my female colleagues at the time decided to tattoo their eyebrows. I realised at that point that tattooed eyebrows create a bigger chromatic contrast when digitally photographed and posted online, hence the appeal.
- fjp 7y agoThe people I know who have done this (called microblading) were putting on their desired eyebrows every morning with makeup. Now they save themselves 10 minutes and worrying about getting it right every morning. It's just semipermanent makeup.
- dangus 7y agoThese kind of articles do get tiring. There’s nothing new about Instagram or even photo retouching. And more importantly, the idea that people want to modify their appearance to look more attractive is incredibly old. Just check out your local natural history or art museum, all the ancient art is mostly jewelry (although I’m sure that’s affected by survivorship bias). I guess the article might be a nice explanatory thing to enlighten someone who has their head in the sand and has never seen social media.
- whatshisface 7y agoWhat's new is that everybody is doing it now, instead of only vain aristocrats.
- MarcScott 7y agoYep, suddenly it's a problem now that poorer people can participate, whereas the rich and powerful have been doing this for centuries if not millennia.
- whatshisface 7y agoWas it good when they did it, though?
- Arnt 7y agoAnd that makes a difference. I'm not sure whether that makes it good or bad in this case, but mainstream activity is different from fringe activity, even if the thing done is the same.
- klyrs 7y agoMy mom was incensed in the 60s when her freckles were erased from her school photo -- our family is far from aristocratic. And fwiw, I still have the same frustration with photo filters to this day.
- there_the_and 7y agoIt was never “only vain aristocrats.” Life is not a cartoon. Cosmetics, tattoos, and jewelry have been in use for thousands of years.
- chillacy 7y agoA YouTube series I’ve been enjoying recently talks about the amount of FaceTune and photoshop which goes into influencer photos: https://youtu.be/eJvQ0Ml1v6I https://youtu.be/eJvQ0Ml1v6I He has a similar series on facial attractiveness which is interesting as well.
- drummer 7y agoThis is just another area of life where everything becomes fake. Similarly we have fake overprocessed food, fake news, fake history, fake personalitie, fake medicine etc.
- mLuby 7y agoBrowser extension to auto-de-photoshop?