You're Not You

I realized something today that I feel like I need to warn people about. I was playing around on photobooth and I hit the "Flip Photo" button. The effects of this button are mind-blowing. I did it and it immediately turned my good picture into a terrible one. I had just switched it back to the way it was when it hit me. The way the picture looks originally is the same way I see myself every day when I look into the mirror. It's a flipped image. That is not what everyone else sees, unless there is someone who happens to brush their teeth at the same time as you every morning and again before bed. I always knew that about mirrors, but I had never realized how different I looked in real life. I regretfully continued to flip all the photos of me in the past year. It was shocking. I am not who I thought I was. But then I reasoned with myself. I mean, all of our unbalanced features are probably so noticeable to us because our eyes have adjusted to our own faces that we see in the mirror. This makes it so that when we see the way we really are, the asymmetry is basically double what someone who has never seen us sees. I hope you are still following, because this is some serious stuff. Now, the people who have seen us and know us well have probably also adjusted to the asymmetry of our faces, so what they see of us is okay. What a relief, right? Wrong. Think about all of the photobooth pictures you show people or post on facebook. They might look great to you, but because your friends don't usually see you in the mirror, this means that the x2 asymmetry that we experience when we hit that awful button is now being seen from the eyes of the people who we know. No one can tell exactly how another's mind interprets images from the eye, but the math suggests this theory to be quite true.

Think twice before you show off your favorite picture of you, you narcissist.

Life changing..

PS. If you have the film stock effect on your photobooth and you choose to use it, go ahead and publish it to the world, you look great.