About Your Picture

Between the two sites, I get my fair share of views, winks and messages.  There are two things that I notice immediately when checking out the guys who've checked me out - username and profile picture.  Sometimes the username can get a guy disregarded without a second thought (lonelyguy12 or nodrama456, for example).  When it comes to pictures, I like to look at all the ones a guy will post. When taken into consideration with the detail on the profile (or lack thereof), a guy's picture can help me to weed out the less-than-desirables or figure out who I'd like to get to know better.  Maybe the online dating game is making me a little more judgmental than I would be if I met any of these guys in public, or maybe it's just helping me to decide what's really important when I'm filtering out people. I haven't really decided that yet.  But I have come up with some strong opinions on profile pictures, and here are some of them:

• No picture at all - that's an automatic ignore for me. If you have no picture, then either you're really technologically challenged or you truly believe that there exists no picture of you in history that you believe is acceptable.  Sure, there are other theories as to why you don't have a picture, but they're highly unlikely. Such as, you're a big time celebrity and putting up a picture of yourself would cause serious trouble and chaos. Or, you're the invisible man. Or, having a picture taken of you would steal your soul and, therefore, no pictures of you exist.  It's not that I'm looking for a super hot guy, it's just that I'd like to know upfront if you have an upside down head like Jake Tucker on Family Guy. Is that so much to ask?
• Your dog/cat/horse/iguana -  I have nothing against animals. Really, I don't. I have a cat, I had a dog as a kid, as well as turtles, hamsters, rabbits, fish, and other assorted pets.  And that picture of you on the couch with your dog?  That's endearing because it shows that you like animals, too. (How does it go - first you try a houseplant, then a pet. If you can keep them alive & healthy, you may be ready for a relationship with a person? Something like that.)  The problem comes in when you have 1 or 2 pictures of you and 4 or 5 of your various pets BY THEMSELVES.  I like that you love your pets, but I'm not here to date Fido.  Try to keep it to a minimum.
• Your car/truck/house/boat - A picture of your most prized possession, whether you're in it or not, screams for attention. But it's probably not the kind of attention you're looking for.  Are you having luck with the ladies since you put up that picture of your brand new Mustang GTO?  I bet you've got one type of girl coming your way, the type responding to what your photo implies: "Calling all shallow ladies! Check me out!! I have a beemer and a big house and I'm on a boat!"  Having pictures of your favorite material things tells me you may not have a lot of substance/personality. Not to mention choosing to put up pictures of these things over pictures of you by yourself, with your family or friends, or even with Fido, tells me you probably prioritize your belongings over the truly important things in life.
• Hunting/fishing trips - I know we're in south Louisiana. I know it's "Sportsman's Paradise." But I also know that when I see that picture of you proudly holding up those dead fish/deer/ducks/rabbits it makes me throw up in my mouth a little.  Probably not the first impression you're aiming for.
• Cutting out another person - I get it. You don't take a lot of pictures by yourself. I don't either.  99% of my pictures have someone else in them.  Technology is really cool, though. They actually have programs and software that will let you crop people out of pictures.  You don't even need fancy stuff like Photoshop.  You can use things online to shrink that picture of you & your pals down to one of just you.  But when you open up that picture in MS Paint and do a really bad job of using the eraser to "erase" the other person in the picture, it kinda makes me wonder things about you.  Who is that in the picture that you so violently tried to erase? Is it your ex? Your ex-best friend?  A real friend who didn't want his/her face on a dating site?  Also, why did you put that picture up if there was someone in it you didn't want to be seen? Is it because that's the best picture that exists of you, but cropping someone out so that I could still see that really flattering shot of you just wasn't what you wanted to do?  Why don't you do us all a favor and google some photo editing programs. Or keep working on your Paint skills until you figure out how to erase half the picture instead of just someone's face.

These are just some of my observations on dating profile pictures. Naturally there are others that make me cringe (pictures of your kids - did you really think that was a good or safe idea? There are crazy people out there), laugh (senior prom pictures - is that the most recent/best you could do?), or just shake my head (blurry or super far away pictures - not so helpful).  At least these guys and their wonderful/awful/strange pictures keep things entertaining.  Now I think I'll go check my own pictures to make sure I've heeded my own advice.