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My personal rule of thumb is that I don’t trust anybody whose Twitter profile picture is a photo of themselves.
by Lammy 6y ago
My personal rule of thumb is that I don’t trust anybody whose Twitter profile picture is a photo of themselves.
- echelon 6y agoThat's an unfortunate heuristic. What is your basis for this?
- Lammy 6y agoUnwarranted self-importance. Bonus points if it's a photo of them on a stage holding a microphone with that open-palm I-am-giving-a-TED-talk gesture :)
- ryandrake 6y agoThis is probably a pretty decent heuristic actually! My guess, as an armchair psychologist, is that narcissism and a toxic need to generate attention and drama are highly correlated with constantly taking selfies and sharing them. Look for the profile picture and just a quick glance at the feed, and if it's full of selfies, you probably have a pretty good idea of who you're dealing with.
- namelessone 6y agoAs another armchair psychologist with an ex-girlfriend that was just like that, I can confirm.
- raffraffraff 6y agoI know someone who hates pictures of herself, never took a selfie in her life, but switched to a picture of herself and used her real name simply because it's less likely she'll say something stupid/inflammatory in the middle of an argument. If you're using some random name like chickenslippers1981 and have a pic of a cat, you might feel less like being thoughtful. You can always walk away from chickenslippers1981/cat, but you can't walk away from yourself.
- Sodman 6y agoThis is wild to me, as my rule of thumb is the exact opposite! I assume anybody whose profile picture isn't themselves is either a bot, a troll, or a throwaway account they use for comments they know will be controversial. It's the equivalent of having a username like "@John448172312". (Not that you should really trust either group to argue anything in good faith on Twitter).
- Twisol 6y agoThere's a lot of nuance, but my rule of thumb isn't so far off from the comment's above you. My Twitter avatar is a picture of a fractal I generated with my own software. That reveals (fuzzily) a certain non-obvious aspect of my personality, which you couldn't get just from looking at my face. The majority of people have faces; mine isn't much of a signal to strangers. Faces are for recognition. If we met at a conference, you could recognize me again by my face. If you don't know me, my face isn't very useful unless you expect to meet me in person. So, a face on Twitter is unhelpful to the point of being counterproductive. Anyway, that face might not even be theirs.
- onion2k 6y agoI fall in to that group so you're probably right not to.