Looking Back

Nothing says "this profile was actually taken from a porn site" like a girl looking back at you over her shoulder. 

Back in the day when I first started to explore the online dating world, I was compelled to create a special folder of screenshots for obviously fake profile pictures. If you've never been - the majority of the profiles on dating sites are fake.* 

*Female profiles that is.

Image credit: Mia Goth in Ti West's X

I spent four years in college studying art history, which means a lot of time thinking about pictures - what they mean, what they don't mean, why they were made, how they were made, etc. Decoding body language, hand gestures, and eye gaze is now an automatic reflex. Some would call it visual literacy. If there was an actual game where you had to identify the fake dating profile, I would call it an advantage. 

Over time, as I swiped profile after profile right into my "fake" folder, I noticed a pattern. It's a pattern that fake-profile-makers must have noticed long before me. They know what works best - a girl looking back at you, over her shoulder, is a sure way to override your authenticity meter, making you click that profile in the hopes that maybe she's looking at YOU! You stud!!

Nowadays, anytime I see the back of a nude shoulder in the wild, I hear my "fake profile" alarm go off in my head.

Tech Support

Post Script:

Miss Airport Security 2011 - aka Scan me like one of your french girls

Post Post Script:

Bot Holiday - Traffic stats from both Network Address and Limbic Signal drop to zero circa March 2022

Circuitously related - I've been joking forever that the only people who visit this blog are Russian bots. Well it turns out that as of March of 2022, my traffic has gone to zero. Coincidence? I think not.

For further reading, see this article from the Guardian, where they source none other than the authors of Memetic Warfare.