The Make-Believe World of Pictures

Photo from www.gabrielsaplontai.ro

It’s so easy to have a gorgeous picture nowadays. You have Adobe Photoshop that clears all blemishes, alter one’s skin tone, and warp your body to the perfect figure you may never attain in real life. You have Adobe Lightroom that edits the lighting of the picture, its brightness and contrast, and other technical stuff, which I do not and would not wish to understand, to enhance your picture. You have DLSR cameras, those evil cameras which seem to make anyone behind the lens as gorgeous as a model.

It becomes so convincing that you yourself is convinced that the picture is so you that you upload it in Facebook. What a hallucination! Some gullible person then views it and before you even know it you have numerous likes and all praising comments on your picture. Let me shove some reality into you: These people who rave and comment are not actually praising you. Subconsciously, they are praising the photographer, who by his art, makes any uninteresting subject look attention worthy with just a click and a little processing. To a point, it looks like idolatry, where an object venerated by people is the one getting all the praise for the efforts of the one who truly worked for it.

I have this theory. If you want to view if a good looking boy/girl in Facebook is as good looking in person, go view their tagged photos. There you will see the reality, faces unguarded, faces raw from editing and other manipulation. This might not work if the user selectively chooses the photos where one would be tagged, because by all means any person could un-tag oneself to submerge oneself again in the make-believe world of beauty and glamor.

I don’t get the point why people have to overly enhance their pictures. I’m guessing it’s because of self esteem issues or some craving of attention. To those people, please help yourself and buy some cartons of self esteem and boxes of attention in you local grocery store, or have it delivered by your doorstep. That might work. However, I really think that it’s being pretentious. I’m actually glad when some blogger friend I met told me that I look the same in person as in my pictures. Let me tell you one thing, I look better in person. Haha. Kidding.


Here's a song for all those people:

The World is Sinking, Group Yourselves into Three!

There is something about parlor games that makes me raise my eyebrows. Aside from the fact that I don’t know why the hell they’re called parlor games, I highly question the values that they teach children - certainly, these values doesn’t include sportsmanship, camaraderie, and other related euphemisms as they would seem to propagate.

Let us take for example, the game of “The Boat is Sinking” where children group themselves into a specified number of people and in the process, form alliances and choose the one to be excluded. Then the poor child who was left out, shall haply accept his defeat while winners rejoice their victory. Here resurface the theme of betrayal and unhealthy competitiveness at an early age. Just imagine if they happen to be in a real situation where the easiest way to be safe is to sacrifice someone, I don’t think they would think twice doing it. As for the title, I can’t say that it’s the most child friendly, all the gore and trauma of a sinking boat it would cause – definitely not for children. 

Another is “Trip to Jerusalem”, where one competes to secure a chair for himself after revolving around a group of chair in a circle. Talk about imparting selfishness to the next generation. No wonder we have a growing census of position-starved politicians, swindlers, and frauds as confirmed by the news programs. This should stop.

Now who could forget the children’s party staple, the “Bring Me” game where children are asked to “bring” to the host a specified item and the first one to do so snatches the prize. While the immediate effects are fun and adrenaline pumping, the lasting effects could be devastating, some of which include imparting to the kids the idea about wanting to have something out of reach and teaching them that having “everything” is ideal. In addition to that, this makes the parents pack in anticipation the usual items asked during birthday parties – say, 5 peso bills, a family portrait, and the most frequent, a strand white hair (Poor lolo and lolas) – which is not really mentally healthy.

This post is an outrage to the parlor games and their detrimental effects to society. If the humankind would lay ignorant my warning, I would just bless the world and watch it destroy itself. 

Heed my call, STOP PLAYING THEM.