Reply To This Post
Recently, I downloaded Picasa, which for those of you who don't spend 8 hours a day online, is basically the download manager for picasa.com, Google's image hosting site. I'm slowly but surely converting all my online activities onto sites run by Google. If Google starts a religion, I would like an invite code to be a Gbishop, or whatever.
Anyway, the point is, one of the things the program does is to allow you to tag all the photos on your computer, like photos on Facebook, with who is in the picture. This task taught me two things. First, my ex-girlfriend took a LOT of pictures of herself posing awkwardly and uploaded them to a folder in MyDocuments without my knowledge, and second, a huge majority of photos of me are pretty unflattering.
I guess if it's the majority, that means that the ones where I look good are unrealistically flattering and that I am, simply, kinda weird-looking. Which led me to an ethical quandary with regard to posting online personal ads.
Is it misleading to post pictures of myself where I look rugged and windswept rather than pale, sweaty and ungainly.
I spent a half an hour or so perusing Craigslist while I thought about this question, and it occurs to me that this is sort of the same process as posting a r?sum?. I could certainly write a r?sum? in which I was totally honest, but I'd stay unemployed forever. And it's not that I'm a worse employee than most; it's just that everyone else is lying, and my truth can't live up to that. So, it's only fair to assume that everyone is posting their most flattering pictures. We'll never get anywhere without a level playing field. And beyond that, there's something to be said for the optimism and enthusiasm demonstrated by putting your best foot forward.
Just to purge any lingering guilt about the evils of shallow advertising, however, I thought I'd try to represent the spectrum.
* Location: Suburban Minneapolis
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 1883457207
No comments:
Post a Comment