What your selfies reveal about you has been low-key haunting me for the past 72 hours, and I’m not okay about it. Like, I was sitting in my 2012 Honda Civic at a stoplight in suburban Virginia—Starbucks cold brew sweating all over my thigh, hair looking like I just lost a fight with a leaf blower—and I took a selfie “for the memories.” Ten minutes later I’m spiraling because apparently the fact I always angle the camera slightly above and to the left means I have narcissistic tendencies?? Excuse me while I yeet my entire personality into the Potomac.
Why What Your Selfies Reveal Feels Like Getting Read to Filth by an Algorithm
I swear, there’s actual science on this. Researchers at whatever fancy university (here, have a link so I don’t sound completely unhinged: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886916301209) found that the way you pose in selfies correlates with the Big Five personality traits. Extroverts smile big and show more face. Agreeable people tilt their heads like golden retrievers. And me? Apparently I do the dead-eyed duck-lip-with-slight-head-tilt combo that screams “emotionally unavailable but make it fashion.”
The Most Embarrassing Thing What Your Selfies Reveal About Me, Specifically
Last month I was drunk on two (2) White Claws and decided to “clean up” my camera roll. Found a folder labeled “cute ones maybe” with 834 photos. Eight-hundred-and-thirty-four. Every single one was taken in my bathroom at 1:13 a.m. under that cursed yellow light that makes me look like a Simpsons character. What your selfies reveal when they’re all 1 a.m. bathroom lighting? Chronic insomnia and a crippling fear of overhead lights, apparently.
- Always the same angle → control issues (guilty)
- Always hiding my left side → some childhood trauma I haven’t unpacked yet
- Always using the Valencia filter in 2024 → I need to be stopped
The Tech That’s Secretly Psychoanalyzing Your Face
There’s this terrifying tool called Microsoft Azure Face API (don’t @ me, here’s the link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/face/) that can guess your age, gender, and—get this—emotion from a single photo. I ran one of my car selfies through it and it said I was “sad” with 92% confidence. The AI literally clocked my seasonal depression from a photo where I thought I looked “mysterious.”
So… Should We All Just Delete Our Front Cameras?
Honestly? Kinda tempted. But also no, because what your selfies reveal is that we’re all just little gremlins trying to control the narrative. My advice, from someone who has 12,000 photos of herself and zero chill:
- Take the ugly ones anyway
- Stop deleting the double-chin shots (they’re honest)
- Maybe touch grass instead of analyzing EXIF data at 3 a.m. (I won’t, but you should)
Anyway, I gotta go take another selfie in my car because the light just hit different. Tell me in the comments what your selfies reveal about YOU—I’ll psychoanalyze you for free, promise I’m only slightly unqualified.
