The intimacy of Photoshop

There's a strange sense of intimacy in Photoshopping a person--not to change their appearance, but to remove smudges or scratches from the picture's surface. It feels like you're grooming them through real touch, even though you're only clicking on pixels. This can feel odd if you're fixing up a photo featuring someone you haven't seen in years, no longer have a relationship with, or have never met. There's a certain thrill in digitally primping someone you wish you had known, like a famous person or historical figure.

It's hard to divorce two-dimensional images of people from their tangible forms. For that reason, it's also eerie to find a photo of someone who is no longer alive and look into their eyes, even though they were alive in the picture. It's confusing to read a distraught message from a friend while seeing the userpic of their grinning face.

Time is never static, but photos give us the illusion of that. They really do seem to store an unchanging facet of a person. And maybe many of us present two-dimensional versions of ourselves in real life, because it feels safer than showing our fuller and unretouched selves.

The psychology of food pictures

Now, I'm not knocking or judging people who like to share photos of everything they ingest. Posting food photos is your legal right as a citizen of Facebook, seeing as the Declaration of Internetdependence grants us the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of indefinite "likes." So if you want to show everyone what you're eating, go right ahead. But I have to admit that I don't quite understand the motivation. When we share photos of our meals, is it in memorium of the food? Is it due to the desire for a communal meal with all of our friends and followers? Is it to make others jealous and/or hungry? Is it to offer people ideas for what they, too, can consume? I have posted a picture of a bottle of mead, and it was because I know a lot of people who have never heard of mead and I want to spread the word (or image) so they can experience its incredible majestic deliciousness themselves. I haven't grasped the overall reasons behind this practice, though.

Also, maybe taking pictures of what we're eating is sort of like a Level 2 Selfie. A selfie is "This is my face," while a food pic is "...And this is what goes INTO my face!" It's like a selfie, but more in depth.