![]() ![]() She found a community of like-minded people on social media who enjoyed sharing their “ weird and wonderful second hand finds.” One day, as she was scrolling through the posts, she spotted something that caught her eye: a knitted toy with a personalized label on the arm, created by someone’s Aunt Tootie. In the back of her mind, she was always thinking about her dog and wondering where it ended up. As an adult, she enjoyed perusing thrift stores and admiring second hand items that once belonged to other people. Years passed, but Moon never forgot her toy. That stuffed animal went everywhere she went for years, until one devastating day when she lost him at a local fair. It was such an integral part of her life that her grandfather would carry it around when she couldn’t-he could always be counted on to be in the stands at her basketball games, holding up the dog to cheer for her. The stuffed animal brought her security and comfort. ![]() Her grandfather eventually recovered, and from that day forward she was never without her dog. She immediately dialed 9-1-1, and when the emergency responders who arrived on the scene recognized how traumatized she was after witnessing the event, they consoled her with a blue stuffed dog. One day when they were home alone, he suffered a massive heart attack. Moon was raised by her grandfather, who struggled with chronic health problems. For Mavis Moon, however, social media is what helped reunite her with a long-lost family member: a blue, stuffed toy dog. Sometimes, that connection can restore old relationships or begin new ones. ![]() ![]() Many of us associate connection with social media: connection to the world, to friends and family, and perhaps even to others who share their ideas and hobbies. Professional models have perfected this, which is why people can do photo sorcery like this by merely tweaking their angles: So you might want to think twice before fleeing the pesky paparazzi and their fancy zoom lenses it's the tourist with the pocket cam whose snaps will make you look fat on the Internet."Īnd because cameras don't show the 3-D version of you, it's easy to "trick" cameras to present a reality that's not even true. As Gizmodo writer John Herrman pens, the fancier the camera, the better you'll look in the picture: "Telephoto lenses are usually seen as more flattering, giving the impression that the subject is flattened, and slightly compressing the width of your foremost features, like your nose or breasts. Depending on your features, if you have a soft, round face, photos can flatten your features and further distort the "real" you.įor example, just changing the focal length of a camera can even change the width of your head. Pictures also only provide a 2-D version of ourselves. Because of the proximity of your face to the camera, the lens can distort certain features, making them look larger than they are in real life. After all, most people take more than one selfie before they find their most flattering one, and usually it takes a combination of angles, lighting, and duck lips before landing one that's Instagram-worthy.īut the problem might not be your angles, it could be lens distortion. So if your reflection isn't the real you, does that mean your ugly selfies are your "true self"? Although mirrors show a flipped version of yourself that tones down the harshness of your asymmetries, the myth that "pictures never lie" isn't true either. Weird, huh? The camera lens also plays a part. So although we think we look better in a mirror, we're more psychologically inclined to feel that way even if we truthfully look better in photos. So, when you see a flipped version of yourself, you immediately hate it or even find it grotesque because it's the opposite of what you're used to. Basically, it's a behavior concocted by psychologist Robert Zajonc that says people react favorably to things they're most familiar with. Scientists call this the "mere-exposure" effect. You've established a preference for that look of your face." "Looking at yourself in the mirror becomes a firm impression. "We see ourselves in the mirror all the time-you brush your teeth, you shave, you put on makeup," Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Center, told The Atlantic. And unless you're blessed with a perfectly symmetrical face, the photo version of yourself can be even more wonky. Because we're so used to seeing the reverse version of ourselves, seeing how we look in pictures can be jarring. It's a reflection, so it shows how we look like in reverse. Although we're the most comfortable and familiar with the face staring back at us while we brush our teeth in the morning, the mirror isn't really the real us. ![]()
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