Every Time You See a Picture, It’s Probably Staged

I stopped using Instagram. Instead I mostly just bitch about it.

I’m sure Instagram is great for business and yeah, obviously there’s something to be said for using Instagram in a way that empowers you rather than brings you down. That’s definitely possible. But I can’t stop thinking about how we buy into it all.

It’s all staged. We even have a term for photos that aren’t staged. Isn’t that crazy?

Candids. Um, okay.

The idea that we weren’t actually preparing for a photo. In actuality, we were caught off guard by a friend or something. To communicate the idea that we’d let our guards down for 3 seconds. Like a normal person.

There’s some sort of disconnect between what we see in a person’s photo and what enters our little lizard brains. Group photos, obviously, translate as staged because they’re so ridiculously stupid looking there’s no way those were candid.

But I did see a friends photo the other day as I did a quick check-in on Facebook for messages. It was this gorgeous beach photo of her and some dude who was probably her boyfriend. Nothing looked out of place. The sun was gorgeous. Their faces were smooth and the beach looked amazing.

Except then I saw the name of the beach and knew very well that it was not a nice beach. And I also happen to know they’re miserable from someone else who knows them. If that wasn’t enough (jesus), can you imagine how long he had to hold her annoying ass up before they got that photo right?

Not to mention the filters — god, the filters. Some people even use professional photo editing software on themselves. But to the casual viewer, you’re probably not taking mental stock of all of this. You’re probably just scrolling and absent-mindedly “liking” things.

When did we get so afraid of ugly? I just can’t relate to perfect. I don’t think any of us can. And it’s just blatant dishonesty that we put up with every day. It’s like reality television.

Not inherently bad, no. But deceitful. And even worse when we casually accept it and forget that it’s very, very not what it appears to be.

—

This post was previously published on Chris Marchie’s blog.

***

Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.