CBHacking isn’t the only one with silly questions here. Here’s another one!
What’s the best way to make a facebook account? What can I do in order to not look like one of those silly dating sites profiles we all know and laughed about? I have a feeling photos are basically key here—so what’s the best way to have a good photo?
The goal is to make a minimalistically attractive facebook profile. Minimalistically because I like minimalism and because it’s a fresh profile, so I won’t have too much content to put on.
Facebook isn’t a dating website. It would be strange for a facebook profile to look like a dating profile as that suggests you don’t have a social life. A facebook profile normally grows organically over time.
There are three main photos:
(1) Your Avatar/profile picture. It should show your face. Humans use the availability heuristic. Make it easy to recognize yourself on the small thumbnails in conversations.
The avatar is placed at the left of the screen. As a result it makes sense that the body is turned towards the right, in the direction of the text.
Have open body language. You don’t want to be turned inward but you want to be turned outward. It’s good if the facial muscles are relaxed. It might be worthwhile to spend 30 minutes before taking the photo to get into a good physical state.
Wear clothes that signal what you want to signal. Logos can signal tribal affiliations. Depending on who you are and who you want to express different choices can make sense.
(2) Cover photo. I don’t have a good idea and probably will soon choose a new one for myself. A good strategy would be to illustrating a hobby or value that you have.
(3) General tagging. Go to a few social events that produce photos. Get photos of you participating in any hobby that you like. Photos are often made for event promotion.
Salsa Congress for example usually have a photographer that posts pictures on facebook that show of that the event is cool.
Define “best”. What are you specific goals for having a FB account? An “attractive facebook profile”—attractive to whom? potential dates? employers? random stalkers? NSA?
On my terms, “best” would mean a profile that would allow me to connect to people I could not reach at all or reach them in very non-productive situations.
“Give me your facebook and we’ll talk about this later”, as I commonly hear.
If I was honest though, that simply implies just having a facebook account. But at the same time I feel like it’s a job interview—how I could I prevent my resume from being tossed into the bin? There has to be a way—some way—in order to maximize my chances of connecting to other people, just as there’s must be a way of making a better resume that’ll get me the job instead of some other person (well, a resume isn’t everything, but it certainly helps, and it would be foolish to not optimize it if not maximizing it)
That’s one step, you need to take more—“connect to people” is too vague as people you might want to connect to are likely different and could be interested in you for different reasons.
Let’s try approaching it from another direction. A FB account projects a certain public (and semi-private) image. Which characteristics and qualities you would like to project and which ones you would like to avoid? Note that generalities (“smart, beautiful, rich, and lucky”) are not going to be particularly useful here :-/
But if you’re hellbent on selling out just to look cool to others, well. If you’re physically attractive, play up the photos. And, importantly, if you’re not, downplay them. Try to have all or most pics taken by someone other than you, even if it’s just the camera on a tripod and a timer. Save the “Like” button for stuff you really truly like; any four-digit Likes number is one or two orders of magnitude too much. Refrain from drama-queen status updates. Limit the number of pictures of random crap to about 15% as many as those of you. Don’t pull ridiculous or self-conscious poses or faces in photos; try to look natural, relaxed, and as if you’re having fun. (A workable alternative is the aloof bitchface they make models put on in photoshoots, but I don’t have you figured for a model, lad.) Have a selection of photos to choose from, and pick the most flattering for the profile. Untag yourself (is that possible? I don’t know) from unflattering or embarrassing photos of you your true and loyal friends have kindly made available to the general public. Expose little of yourself; you have no idea how much you can learn about someone just by regularly stalking something seemingly innocuous such as their public Recent Likes. Facebook is not a place to pour your heart out; everything you do leaves the digital analogue (ahem) of fingerprints. Emphasize instead the more impressive parts of yourself. Got a lot of books you read and liked? Great, put them all in there.
If you’re good at online image management, Facebook can take you far, perhaps farther still than your meatspace self. That’s probably the only reason I’ve ever considered making an account (the other would be access to everything beyond the Great Wall of Friends-Only Data), but it first has to lose the fight against the fear of surrendering personal data, forever, to a company I sure as fuck don’t trust. Of course—if you’re bad at that, it’s nothing but a new venue for making a fool of yourself.
Young men just wanna have fun, I guess. I’ll adress this in a later paragraph, though.
Most of your advice is simply great not only because it’s a common sense advice but because I wholeheartedly agree with it. With a bit of self-reflection though, assuming we are truly thinking of the same thing, it sounds more like shallowness-prevention. Nice touch on the last security-conscious bit, too. Are you Bruce Schneier?
As for the second paragraph I said I’ll respond to, Facebook is not going to be my social front, but simply means to an end. It seems incredibly useful, despite my misgivings with it. My experience with Facebook is that’s it’s quite similar to a common-man’s 4chan. I’ll leave the implications to you..
In terms of photos, I use a self-portrait that is artistically edited to the point of near-unrecognizability (and is unsearchable via Google Images) for my profile picture, and used to use a silhouette. My cover/background picture is something I made in Apophysis and Photoshop that I thought looked nice. You may not actually need a photo at all. If you want a less artificial cover/background image, take a nice close-up photo of some plant or something else visually appealing in your area, then edit it a bit.
For a “good photo”, you may want to take a passable photo, apply the basic touch-ups (the Spot Healing brush is great for acne, small cuts, and out-of-place hair), and then perhaps overexpose or otherwise apply a visually appealing edit to the image such that it looks like you, but obviously edited. (Here’s an overexposed picture.) It’s hard to go too wrong with taking a shower and wearing some of your nicer clothing, standing in front of a white wall, and getting a friend to take a picture while you smile a bit.
Your avatar/profile pic should look good at small scales. You want your face, not your body.
You don’t need to post a lot of pictures: just enough to make people know who you are, and using a real name with a location should be sufficient for that.
In terms of other content: you don’t care about listing what movies/books/games you like, just write a good description of yourself. Follow some accounts you like, join groups that you participate in IRL. Post interesting links with commentary occasionally. Don’t use the account to get into too many comment-section arguments.
For a “good photo”, you may want to take a passable photo, apply the basic touch-ups (the Spot Healing brush is great for acne, small cuts, and out-of-place hair), and then perhaps overexpose or otherwise apply a visually appealing edit to the image such that it looks like you, but obviously edited.
Hello. Person experienced with Photoshop here. Most of the time that stuff looks positively painful, and an honest picture of a pimple isn’t nearly as bothersome as bad editing. And human vision isn’t fooled easily; consider for instance when you edit a stray hair strand out of existence. You see it beginning at the hairline, disappear across the area of interest (say, face), then continue down the neckline. Ouch.
I’ve even seen moderately decent photo edits that, to the experienced eye, have Surface Blur written all over them (Gaussian Blurring skin is for newbs, by the way). Even cosmetics print ads have understood sometime during the last two decades that pores are a good idea. If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it.
The only non-horrid edits I’ve seen applied by amateurs to photos are subtly applied color actions, and if your only tool is Picasa even those get boring after the first 200 or so photos.
I concur that you need some basic competency in photo editing before you start to photoshop your face :-)
Surface Blur, I think, is good either in subtle amounts (you DO want to sharpen the skin differently from e.g. eyes or hair) or—since we are talking about “artistic edits”—you can go completely overboard and make a fully plastic face. That is also fine as long as you understand this is going to be an in-your-face :-) image and not the I-tried-to-look-pretty-and-failed one.
It’s hard to go too wrong with taking a shower and wearing some of your nicer clothing, standing in front of a white wall, and getting a friend to take a picture while you smile a bit.
That’s actually a pretty standard way of doing it wrong. You end up with a passport picture, basically, suitable for official documents but not for much else.
Especially if you want to get creative with filters or do a barely-recognizable semi-abstract.
The goal here is make an interesting picture, not that resembles the one on your driver’s license.
Clearly, I do not understand the goal here. It would be useful to know not only the point of a profile picture but also UnrequitedHope’s goal in creating a Facebook account.
I don’t think that’s the only purpose. It’s also to become familiar to people. If people frequently see your picture, you feel familiar to them. That’s easier with a picture where you are easy to recognise. That means a profile picture that doesn’t show much more than your face and thus doesn’t leave much room for personality signaling.
This theory does not survive cursory browsing of Facebook profile pics. We visually express personality mainly through the face. A profile picture that doesn’t show much more than your face still has all of that room for personality.
This theory does not survive cursory browsing of Facebook profile pics. We visually express personality mainly through the face.
It depends what you mean with expressing personality. A facebook photo that shows you engaging in a certain hobby does show a certain value of your personality. Face only pictures don’t have much room for that.
CBHacking isn’t the only one with silly questions here. Here’s another one!
What’s the best way to make a facebook account? What can I do in order to not look like one of those silly dating sites profiles we all know and laughed about? I have a feeling photos are basically key here—so what’s the best way to have a good photo? The goal is to make a minimalistically attractive facebook profile. Minimalistically because I like minimalism and because it’s a fresh profile, so I won’t have too much content to put on.
Facebook isn’t a dating website. It would be strange for a facebook profile to look like a dating profile as that suggests you don’t have a social life. A facebook profile normally grows organically over time.
There are three main photos:
(1) Your Avatar/profile picture. It should show your face. Humans use the availability heuristic. Make it easy to recognize yourself on the small thumbnails in conversations.
The avatar is placed at the left of the screen. As a result it makes sense that the body is turned towards the right, in the direction of the text.
Have open body language. You don’t want to be turned inward but you want to be turned outward. It’s good if the facial muscles are relaxed. It might be worthwhile to spend 30 minutes before taking the photo to get into a good physical state.
Wear clothes that signal what you want to signal. Logos can signal tribal affiliations. Depending on who you are and who you want to express different choices can make sense.
(2) Cover photo. I don’t have a good idea and probably will soon choose a new one for myself. A good strategy would be to illustrating a hobby or value that you have.
(3) General tagging. Go to a few social events that produce photos. Get photos of you participating in any hobby that you like. Photos are often made for event promotion.
Salsa Congress for example usually have a photographer that posts pictures on facebook that show of that the event is cool.
Yo! Thanks for the long post.
Not for dating, just to keep up with stuff I otherwise couldn’t and some women here and there.
Yeah, that’s what my mind statistics way, too.
Taking the rest to heart. Got an idea for the cover photo?
The point is that a profile that looks like it’s a dating profile would be strange.
After thinking about the act of creating a new facebook profile, I would recommend to make the friend list invisible if the friend count is <100.
I don’t have a strong opinion about picking a cover photo. My own picture is from dancing.
Define “best”. What are you specific goals for having a FB account? An “attractive facebook profile”—attractive to whom? potential dates? employers? random stalkers? NSA?
Good observation; sorry for being vague.
On my terms, “best” would mean a profile that would allow me to connect to people I could not reach at all or reach them in very non-productive situations.
“Give me your facebook and we’ll talk about this later”, as I commonly hear.
If I was honest though, that simply implies just having a facebook account. But at the same time I feel like it’s a job interview—how I could I prevent my resume from being tossed into the bin? There has to be a way—some way—in order to maximize my chances of connecting to other people, just as there’s must be a way of making a better resume that’ll get me the job instead of some other person (well, a resume isn’t everything, but it certainly helps, and it would be foolish to not optimize it if not maximizing it)
That’s one step, you need to take more—“connect to people” is too vague as people you might want to connect to are likely different and could be interested in you for different reasons.
Let’s try approaching it from another direction. A FB account projects a certain public (and semi-private) image. Which characteristics and qualities you would like to project and which ones you would like to avoid? Note that generalities (“smart, beautiful, rich, and lucky”) are not going to be particularly useful here :-/
If I’m honest I’d probably go for getting my sense of humor there. I’ll have to do it myself though. It’s going to be hilarious.
If you put it that way, “connect to people” is more like a purpose rather than a step.
Good way to word it; I’ll have to think about it.
My two cents—don’t.
But if you’re hellbent on selling out just to look cool to others, well. If you’re physically attractive, play up the photos. And, importantly, if you’re not, downplay them. Try to have all or most pics taken by someone other than you, even if it’s just the camera on a tripod and a timer. Save the “Like” button for stuff you really truly like; any four-digit Likes number is one or two orders of magnitude too much. Refrain from drama-queen status updates. Limit the number of pictures of random crap to about 15% as many as those of you. Don’t pull ridiculous or self-conscious poses or faces in photos; try to look natural, relaxed, and as if you’re having fun. (A workable alternative is the aloof bitchface they make models put on in photoshoots, but I don’t have you figured for a model, lad.) Have a selection of photos to choose from, and pick the most flattering for the profile. Untag yourself (is that possible? I don’t know) from unflattering or embarrassing photos of you your true and loyal friends have kindly made available to the general public. Expose little of yourself; you have no idea how much you can learn about someone just by regularly stalking something seemingly innocuous such as their public Recent Likes. Facebook is not a place to pour your heart out; everything you do leaves the digital analogue (ahem) of fingerprints. Emphasize instead the more impressive parts of yourself. Got a lot of books you read and liked? Great, put them all in there.
If you’re good at online image management, Facebook can take you far, perhaps farther still than your meatspace self. That’s probably the only reason I’ve ever considered making an account (the other would be access to everything beyond the Great Wall of Friends-Only Data), but it first has to lose the fight against the fear of surrendering personal data, forever, to a company I sure as fuck don’t trust. Of course—if you’re bad at that, it’s nothing but a new venue for making a fool of yourself.
Young men just wanna have fun, I guess. I’ll adress this in a later paragraph, though.
Most of your advice is simply great not only because it’s a common sense advice but because I wholeheartedly agree with it. With a bit of self-reflection though, assuming we are truly thinking of the same thing, it sounds more like shallowness-prevention. Nice touch on the last security-conscious bit, too. Are you Bruce Schneier?
As for the second paragraph I said I’ll respond to, Facebook is not going to be my social front, but simply means to an end. It seems incredibly useful, despite my misgivings with it. My experience with Facebook is that’s it’s quite similar to a common-man’s 4chan. I’ll leave the implications to you..
In terms of photos, I use a self-portrait that is artistically edited to the point of near-unrecognizability (and is unsearchable via Google Images) for my profile picture, and used to use a silhouette. My cover/background picture is something I made in Apophysis and Photoshop that I thought looked nice. You may not actually need a photo at all. If you want a less artificial cover/background image, take a nice close-up photo of some plant or something else visually appealing in your area, then edit it a bit.
For a “good photo”, you may want to take a passable photo, apply the basic touch-ups (the Spot Healing brush is great for acne, small cuts, and out-of-place hair), and then perhaps overexpose or otherwise apply a visually appealing edit to the image such that it looks like you, but obviously edited. (Here’s an overexposed picture.) It’s hard to go too wrong with taking a shower and wearing some of your nicer clothing, standing in front of a white wall, and getting a friend to take a picture while you smile a bit.
Your avatar/profile pic should look good at small scales. You want your face, not your body.
You don’t need to post a lot of pictures: just enough to make people know who you are, and using a real name with a location should be sufficient for that.
In terms of other content: you don’t care about listing what movies/books/games you like, just write a good description of yourself. Follow some accounts you like, join groups that you participate in IRL. Post interesting links with commentary occasionally. Don’t use the account to get into too many comment-section arguments.
Hello. Person experienced with Photoshop here. Most of the time that stuff looks positively painful, and an honest picture of a pimple isn’t nearly as bothersome as bad editing. And human vision isn’t fooled easily; consider for instance when you edit a stray hair strand out of existence. You see it beginning at the hairline, disappear across the area of interest (say, face), then continue down the neckline. Ouch.
I’ve even seen moderately decent photo edits that, to the experienced eye, have Surface Blur written all over them (Gaussian Blurring skin is for newbs, by the way). Even cosmetics print ads have understood sometime during the last two decades that pores are a good idea. If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it.
The only non-horrid edits I’ve seen applied by amateurs to photos are subtly applied color actions, and if your only tool is Picasa even those get boring after the first 200 or so photos.
I concur that you need some basic competency in photo editing before you start to photoshop your face :-)
Surface Blur, I think, is good either in subtle amounts (you DO want to sharpen the skin differently from e.g. eyes or hair) or—since we are talking about “artistic edits”—you can go completely overboard and make a fully plastic face. That is also fine as long as you understand this is going to be an in-your-face :-) image and not the I-tried-to-look-pretty-and-failed one.
That’s actually a pretty standard way of doing it wrong. You end up with a passport picture, basically, suitable for official documents but not for much else.
Especially if you want to get creative with filters or do a barely-recognizable semi-abstract.
The goal here is make an interesting picture, not that resembles the one on your driver’s license.
Clearly, I do not understand the goal here. It would be useful to know not only the point of a profile picture but also UnrequitedHope’s goal in creating a Facebook account.
On a social media platform, the purpose of a profile picture is to be a picture of your personality, as you wish it to be perceived.
I don’t think that’s the only purpose. It’s also to become familiar to people. If people frequently see your picture, you feel familiar to them. That’s easier with a picture where you are easy to recognise. That means a profile picture that doesn’t show much more than your face and thus doesn’t leave much room for personality signaling.
This theory does not survive cursory browsing of Facebook profile pics. We visually express personality mainly through the face. A profile picture that doesn’t show much more than your face still has all of that room for personality.
It depends what you mean with expressing personality. A facebook photo that shows you engaging in a certain hobby does show a certain value of your personality. Face only pictures don’t have much room for that.