Prettifying is a word, firstly. It’s the act of making prettier, especially in a superficial way.

Prettifying photos is also a tech trend these days, apparently. Big enough it’s helped Snapchat and other apps grow exponentially, according to Wired magazine. While it’s great to have nice photos of yourself that look better than the real life you, the problem is people don’t meet your photos in person. They meet you.

The real you.

The real you that’s less than the prettified picture of you.

And what would you expect their reaction to be?

Surprised? Sure. If they haven’t ever met you, like via Tinder or if they haven’t seen you in ages. But what about the judgment that comes after the initial instinctive reaction?

How’s about let down? Possibly BIG let down… like if you were meeting via Tinder, say. But even those who know you would have a little let down if somehow they had seen a prettied up picture of you that they reacted to favorably on Facebook, say, as being pretty, likable, sexy, hot, etc.

Now, extrapolate that to prettifying all or most of your pictures like some attention seekers do. What happens when people see them in life? It’s a little or big let down every time that those people have every time. It’s probably also a let down for the ones prettifying their pictures, because when people are a little disappointed in you right from the get go, they’re probably going to be a little less interested or excited about you as you might have hoped.

Then guess who else experiences a let down?

How long do you think you’d have to experience that before getting some feeling of depression? Then some drugs to help you with it?

You know what? I’m going to stick to putting my more than imperfect photos of myself online. Whatever people judge me from those photos, it’ll only be a surprise for them when they meet me in person because my personality outshines my looks that even if they didn’t like it, they would probably still be getting a little pleasant surprise. 🙂