Instagram Face: The rise of selfie make-up and quest for hyper-perfection (2018)

In a few words, wrinkles have been excessively blurred out. Newt looks like a big fat baby Huey.

Oh that looks awful

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Instagram is aggresively user-hostile and if you work there you should feel bad.

This is beyond gross. This is Gingrich-gross.

Direct image link for the no-js crowd?

I mean the only thing that’s actually different is that there’s a tool that can do the thing that professional photographers do(-ish).

The tools are approaching real PS experience where before canned photo enhancing software was a lot more limited. But it’s not new that they’re ragingly popular.

The influencers start doing it because of a desperate need for validation too. When they get paid, they feel validated.

Yeah, but it's done poorly and is painfully obvious.

> 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.

I 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.

Baudrillard 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.

Pretending to be available for dates is a very effective way of getting "likes".

Attractiveness is subjective, but most of the time, people find attractive the fact someone seems "open" for dates.

Cmon, who wouldn't fuck a cartoon!

I 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.

This is the nuanced perspective I really like hearing. I think people still want some avenue to keep in touch with and interact with their friends and family online, when meeting in person might be too difficult (geographic distance for example).

I feel super passionate about addressing the existing toxicity of existing social networks and making something more positive and uplifting - preserving what you call the "signal".

I launched something recently on HN about what I've been hacking on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21771456

To 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.

That's a helluva analogy. But I like it. More to the overall point, I find it incredibly ironic that while the world is constantly talking about diversity, uniqueness, and all those wonderful things, everyone is simultaneously trying to dress the same and literally look alike.

What? 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.

I think somatypes like hardgainers have been debunked, the explanation being that predominantly, these folks are habituated to not eating enough, GOMAD etc. There's edge cases of medical conditions or training non-responders though.

My main point is that western aesthetic standard for muscular men is increasingly moving towards more mass to the point where most individuals are below the bell curve for what's attainable naturally even with consistent training. It's reaching a point where achieving these bodies require either both elite genetics and conscientiousness, or good genetics and conscientiousness and illegal drugs. It can't simply be bought by 30k worth of plastic surgeries.

Theoretically most men can diet themselves down to Brad Pit fight club, there's an attainable amount of muscle mass, the trick is mostly diet and fat loss, which may still be prohibitive for some. But much less men can be Chris Evans Captain America, or more obviously the Rock. At some point drugs enter the picture. There's also VFX that adds muscularity in these productions, so we're also dealing with filters at the end of the day, but most people do not know that muscularity is just as easily edited in live action as facial features or de-aging.

It was a years ago, I think there's a... muscularity threadmill that maps with the growth of fitness social media in the last few years that started prioritizing towards size via functionality and strength. It started with relatively attainable fightclub look, aesthetics that is preferred by women, but people who enjoy fitness culture rarely stops there (it's a comparably easy and attainable body type) so the trend gradually shifted towards getting bigger and stronger to impress other audiences in fitness culture (read: men and a revival of machismoism). You also have the parallel influence outside of fitness of hollywood action stars getting bigger as well. I could be completely misreading the trend, but male aesthetic standard changes over time.

This is the one to read

Great way to convey a dense topic! Thanks for sharing!

Here'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?

It 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.

Somehow i don't like this kind of reddits - gives me the impression they are hate-groups.

Just image search Kylie Jenner for reference. The verbal description is accurate.

Thank you for this. The before after was striking. I’m used to seeing these contrasts in corners of Asian culture where high levels of makeup are common, but had been unaware of what it looks like in western faces and how prevalent it is.

That was pretty interesting and the writing was quite entertaining. Worth a read.

Ok, we'll change to that from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/decade-in-review/the-age-o.... Thanks!

She looks amazing in the before photo so in a way the question remains about the effect on average people ;)

I don't have an IG account where I would follow my friends so my only exposure to it is through these fake influencer/fitness/lifestyle accounts and it's appealing. Thankfully they force you to have an account to see most of the content these says so I'm not tempted to browse it more.

It seems the battle against airbrushing in magazines and how it shapes society's expectations is already two wars late.

Or maybe it's just the new version of the Myspace fat angle and we should stop pop sociology.