There are very few things more anxiety-inducing than posting a selfie. It happens naturally enough. You just did your makeup. Your tits look flawless. Your hair makes you look like a mutherfuckin’ mermaid. Whatever it is, you decided to unlock your phone, reverse the camera, and take a peek at yourself.
And that’s when you realize: holy shit. I’m hot as hell.
So you take a picture. Then another one. Then another one. Duck face. Fish gape. Cheesy smile. Soft smile. Smize. Smize. Smize. Before you know it you’ve spend 45 minutes taking 100 plus photos and that’s when you decide that you need to post one. But which one is the best? The hottest? Would get the most likes?
According to Techinsider, a Stanford PhD student named Andrej Karpathy figured out how exactly to pick the perfect selfie. Because honestly, when you’re working towards your doctorate at one of the most prestigious schools in the country, what else are you going to do?
Andrej built an artificial intelligence system that will literally tell you how good your selfie is before you post it. Finally, something the world actually needs.
To train it, Andrej had the “deep learning system” analyze 2 million selfies. Basically, by searching the hashtag #selfie on Instagram (aren’t we the worst?), and separating the “good’ and the “bad” pictures, as well as considering number of followers, our Stanford brain was able to figure out an algorithm using whatever sciency things people way more intelligent that I utilize. And now we have a system that can tell which pictures will generate the most likes.
Thank God. Or, I guess thank Andrej Karpathy.
And the results are pretty much basic AF. Here’s the key to reeling in the most likes for posting a picture of your stupid face:
• Be a woman.
• Have long hair.
• Do not post group “selfies” with all of your slutty friends.
• Do not post a selfie with your boyfriend/sort-of-boyfriend/guy you wish was your boyfriend.
• Seriously. Don’t even THINK about putting a man in the picture.
• Brighten, lighten, and wash out the picture as much as possible.
• Filter the fuck out of it.
• Throw a border on there.
• Cut off your forehead.
• Make sure your face is in the middle third of the photo.
It sounds like I’m kidding, but I’m 100 percent not. These are the keys to getting lots of likes on your selfie. And if these easy-to-follow tips aren’t good enough, Karpathy made something even better. A Twitter bot that you can send your selfie to before you post it. With an awesome response rate, this system will tell you how good your picture is so you can avoid the embarrassing “I posted this selfie 20 minutes ago, why does it only have seven likes” feeling. It’s called @deepselfie, and I can’t decided if it’s really depressing or really awesome.
Either way, luckily there is now something you can use to judge your selfie, before you post it to be judged. And sure, it sounds vain, and pathetic, and like a direct result of the deterioration of society, but hey, if this can stop you from the soul-crushing moment when you delete a photo because it didn’t get the respect it deserved, then so be it. Selfies can’t buy you happiness, but they can buy you likes. And I’m pretty sure that’s the same thing..
[via Techinsider, Andrej Karpathy blog]
Nice Move235
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Rachel Varina
(yeahokaywhat) Aspiring to be the next Tina Fey, Rachel spends her free time doing nothing to reach that goal. While judging people based on how they use "they're" vs. "there" on social media, she likes eating buffalo chicken dip, watching other people's Netflix, and wearing sweatpants way more than is socially acceptable.
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