The picture dilemma

There will be a day when you will be asked to provide a picture of yourself. Not a sad, grey looking, almost mug-shot like passport photo. This picture will be shown. To people. In public. Please, please, I'll say it again, Please. Don't let it be a selfie. 

It doesn't matter how good you look, how the angle is almost realistic, or how well you cropped your stretched out arm. It will look like a selfie. Also, don't be fooled by the HD quality and magic flash aura of professional club pictures. You might look great, but the random people's heads and hands around you, the drink you are holding, and the gravity pose might give it away. What's the gravity pose, you ask? It's the physical phenomenon that acts upon your height making you subject to an extra downward vector equal to the number of girls you're with. From tilting your head to the side, to full knee dropping.

I'm telling you this because I, too, did it once. It was for a scholarship ceremony, so I knew I could get away with a cheeky selfie taken on my graduation day. I did it only because I knew the participants' age would be between 18 and 26. Against all odds I was one of the few who presented a selfie. I still think it looked slightly better than the off-colour passport pictures taken at the train station machines. But I might not be objective in this particular case.

Let's just assume that someone simply clicked on your Facebook/Instagram, or even worse, think Myspace(!) profile and picked a picture from there. What would it look like? Thankfully I am a fan of groups and circles. Officially it's to avoid boring high school friends with my hobbies, but really it's to keep Erasmus party pictures as private as possible.


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