I feel it necessary to say, “If you have a non-personal, business or professional blog or an advertisement of any sort – it is not required for the author of an article to post a picture of themselves”
WARNING:
Please keep your hands and feet inside the browser window while this train of thought is leaving the station.
Seriously, at least take a poll of people who do and do not know you and ask them if they think you should post your face on or in your blog. Then consider the results of the poll and regardless of the outcome: Don’t post your picture on whatever it is. Just don’t do it.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve read some interesting tidbit of information on an Internet site, only to see a picture of the author and thought, “This guy looks like a total dick, I cannot take anything seriously from a guy who looks like that.” (Sorry LifeHacker writer doods) Don’t even try to deny that you haven’t done it.
It’s not even something subconscious. Unless you consider something “subconscious” when the little voice in your head screams something so profane that another part of your brain says “ooo that’s not at all politically correct. If you said that out-loud, we’d get slapped.” and so you deliberately shove it into that brain-closet labeled “subconscious/denial”. And then you pretend that the though only existed on some magical plane of non-consciousness where thoughts somehow come from that are not your own.
Who ever came up with the quote “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” couldn’t be more wrong. Yes, you can judge a book by its cover, we do it all the time. We will continue to do it. We can’t NOT do it. You might be more accurate to say “It’s not fair to judge a book by its cover.” But when does anything pop into our minds that is “Fair.” We are all little Jekyll and Hydes inside of our own minds. The human mind is awash in a multitude of inequities, cruelties and professional sports that we think we are a part of, yet have never played. Thankfully, most of us have a little doorman at the brain’s poop-chute that controls what comes out of our mouths. This guy is helpless, however, to control what we do with our mouse finger – otherwise known as the “Decider”.
One who lives as she thinks.
There is nothing fair or even rational about using the Internet. The Internet is the domain of the finger, not the mouth. If we had to say out-loud what we were searching for or wanted to look at, the Internet would be a completely different entity. Think about all the things you have typed or clicked on while surfing the web. What if you had to actually say “Computer, search Google for obese midgets Jello wrestling”?
No sir, the web would be a very different place indeed.
The Internet is Freud’s “Id”. If you want your post to be taken with any validity at all, you need to have a photo that instills confidence or appeals to the non-rational side of our brain. Like a picture of a phallic-shaped institutional building or a picture of Lindsay Lohan. Before acting, ask yourself: “Is this “… blah blah ..”going to somehow be better or more interesting if I include a picture of myself?” Unless you just happen to be Lindsay Lohan, the answer -even in your own brain- is probably going to be a resounding, “NO.”
To recapitulate: The best way to not not come across as a douche-bag, dick or an idiot is to not post a photo of yourself on things that you want others to believe, judge fairly or take notice of. It’s much more fair to leave the photo off and have the readers decide that you are a dick solely on the words that you choose.
Too True …. Too Funny.