Face Value

Every so often I find out that I am naive. 

I suppose that this is not a terrible thing, but it is startling when it happens. For instance, I recently read a blog with a list of photos people should not post on Facebook ever again. I clicked the link, thinking I was going to sit here and laugh privately about a string of duck faces. (Really, when isn't it funny to see someone pursing their lips and posing? lol) 

Instead, what followed was a list of every single photo style that I have probably ever seen pop up on the walls of family and friends. Each had negative comments about why it shouldn't be posted, and what the poster was 'really' doing when they post that type of photo. Some of the pictures mentioned were

Pictures of dinners:

Okay, I'll give him that one. Special occasion meals, or home-cooked meals you are really proud of are fine. But serial posting of well, cereal-posting (pun) could get annoying, I'm sure. ;)

Pictures of children:

What parent (who also has their own parents, aka the grandparents, online) doesn't put up piccies of the kids for mom and pop to see?

Pictures of feet:
While I find the people who post many 'feet photos' to be perhaps a little impressed by their own dogs, I don't mind these either. Especially when it is someoner having a long-awaited dream vacation and those feet are against a backdrop ocean view. 

Pictures 'with' my kid:
Narcissism! "Isn't my baby so cuuuute!".... but YOUR face takes up most of the photo. lololol There are a few people who post themselves with every single picture of their child. Hilarious! I once spoofed that with my own photo of 'my baby' in the car... in which it was all my face, and just the back of the car seat in the background. lol 

Anyway, you get the idea. It seemed like all of the pictures you could possibly take were listed, along with cynical reasons it shouldn't be posted... aaaaaand most of those reasons were that people are incredibly fake, or the viewers of said photos were doing nothing but trashing the person posting them mentally anyway. 

That is when I realized that either the blogger was wrong, or I am very naive. I don't trash people's pictures. (Although, as mentioned, a few make me laugh!) I also don't think my friends and family think of ME in those ways. 

Not too long after that, I was in conversation and the person made the comment that people aren't themselves on FB. :( Once again, I am faced with this possibility, and I just don't like it. My list is full of people I know, not strangers. I feel as though everything posted by my friends/family is very 'them' of them, very genuine. 

All of that rambling to say that I don't like being faced with the reality that people could be disingenuous. I honestly don't believe my friends are. I feel I know them well enough that, in my little bubble of the world, the posts they make fit right in exactly with their character and personality. So, yup, while I don't like being naive, I even more dislike the alternative. An uglier world, where even the people you are closest to aren't really themselves. What ever happened to just taking life at face value?