Contributed by: Jet on Friday, October 08 2010 @ 08:32 am
Last modified on
We often talk about the dos and don'ts of online profile picture-taking. However, one thing manages to slip by: the sheer number of pictures involved. Can there be too many? What about too few?
Picture this: you're looking at a profile and it seems pretty appealing. You wonder, though, if maybe the profile is too appealing – is it one of those vague ones designed to hook anyone? To get more of a personality flavor, you check out the additional pictures of Vague Profile Person – who, based on their default picture, does look pretty hot.
...And you find out that the default picture is the only one there! Immediately red flags are raised. Could this default picture be some random image taken from the internet? Is there some unsuspecting hot victim out there who has no idea their sweet visage is being used to lure additional suckers? In short, is this a scam?
Now, it might not be a scam at all. It might be that the person who wrote the profile is a perfectionist, and they only had one picture that they deemed decent. And that's not a bad ethic to have, but sometimes too little information can be suspicious. Besides, sometimes pictures that aren't necessarily the best from an aesthetic standpoint can be gold in terms of what they say about you – the picture where you have a funny face because you're giving a belly laugh, or hanging upside-down on a jungle gym. If you're a perfectionist, consider allowing a little imperfection to shine through.
Then, however, there are people who go too far in the other direction. We've all seen one; the person is seemingly using their profile as a place to dump all their photos. We get twenty pictures of one night on the town, some “art” photos of a fly on the lid of a trashcan, and one sideways shot of the photographer's shoes when they forgot the camera was on. Excess in anything is not good.
So, what's the magic golden number? There's no perfect answer, but I'd say between three and ten varied, interesting shots is a good place to start. Your pictures can say as much about you as your profile does; don't let your quest for the perfect picture keep your true self from shining through.