I’ve been thinking about my interactions with other people lately.
One thing I noticed is that I hardly ever get my picture taken, or to be more precise, hardly anyone ever takes out their phone and snaps a picture of me.
It basically never happens.
I on the other hand tend to take a thousand pictures of my friends.
Examining myself I could tell this made me a little resentful.
So let's work back from my feelings, examine the origin, the meaning and let's rebuild it all to eliminate any undue resentment.
Let's start by asking ourselves why is this and why does it matter.
The why is such an hard question. I can see that my friends usually post stories they got tagged in. So it does happen for others.
Is it that I don't look good enough for pictures?
I usually put a modicum of effort into my outfits and that usually seems to pay off, meaning that the feedback I receive from people is pretty positive.
So I don't think it's the clothes. If anything that would make others more likely to take pictures of me.
I don't consider myself attractive but even people I’m in a relationship with almost never take pictures of me or with me. There are notable exceptions to this but the point still stands.
They clearly consider me attractive enough to be with them so I don't think attractiveness matters either here.
There's still so much left to consider;
The place, the vibe, my and their demeanor.
I’ll spare you the details, I’m pretty sure all of these have an effect so let's go through them super quickly:
- You are more likely to get your picture taken if it's a 1 on 1 situation, especially if you are with the opposite gender. (Caveat to this but I don't want to spoil the conclusion)
- You are more likely to get your picture taken if you’re in a cool spot and extremely so if there's cool food between you and the picture taker.
- You are infinitely more likely to get your picture taken if you and the taker know each other well, and I’m pretty sure if the taker's circle of friends knows you already.
So this are the ingredients that shape this interaction, but one extremely important one is that gender matters here.
Women take more way more pictures than men.
And they generally post more too.
The catch here is that not only they take more pictures, but it's so much more acceptable for them to have their picture taken on the spot or even to ask for it.
The result is that women post and get posted more, so that the friends I initially saw get posted are almost always women.
I on the other hand take a lot of pictures of my friends because my phone’s camera is amazing and I think they all look great.
Most of my male friends post selfies only. This is fine.
We touched the origin, got the meaning and explained the resentment away.
Now for why it matters:
The answer is simple, it's the concept of social proof
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people conform to the actions or beliefs of others in order to fit in or make the "right" decision. In marketing, social proof refers to using testimonials, reviews, or other indicators of popularity or trust to influence consumer behavior.
Whenever you use social media the consumers are the people that see and interact with your content.
Being posted by and with other people demonstrates that you have a social life, that someone likes you and you’re generally well adjusted. You might think this does not matter to you but it's very likely those are indicators you act on subconsciously.
Women are under stronger pressure to conform to society, there's no real positive conception of the cool loner for women like there is for men.
So they get posted more, they get more pictures taken of them. This makes sense to me and I’m at peace with it.