Let’s be perfectly honest here; your Facebook profile picture is very important to you. We all now spend hours trying to get the right photo to attract friends, look cool and show that we are as hip and trendy as we would like to pretend to be. So which of the following trends have you gone for?
Cartoon Characters
There was a campaign a couple of years to get everyone in the world to change their Facebook profile pictures to show their favourite cartoon characters. It didn’t really work but there are still lots of people out there with Sponge Bob, Fred Flintstone or – Lord help us – Mickey bloody marketing ploy Mouse on them. This is cool and this is retro but don’t expect it to help you in your job search or to find the perfect life partner.
Mirror Shots / Selfies
So, you are on your own. You have a camera, you have a mirror and you want to take a new Facebook profile picture. What do you do? Your options, in ascending order of stupidity, are; 1, wait for someone to arrive and take the picture for you. 2, use the timer on the camera which is, quite frankly, there for this specific reason. 3, take a picture of yourself looking dumb in the mirror. Hey, even your favourite celebrity takes mirror shots of themselves so that makes it a smart thing to do, right?
The Trayvon Martin Support Pictures
The last couple of trends were kind of lame and jokey but there is no doubt that Facebook profile picture trends can also be part of a powerful social or political movement. The George Zimmerman trial raised a lot of tension and in this day and age it is no surprise to see that this spilled over into the world of social media. One of the effects of this has been the number of people of showing support in the search for justice for Trayvon Martin through their choice of profile picture on Facebook.
The Surgically Enhanced Picture
Back in the old days we were happy to do a quick Photoshop to cut out our flabby areas and our sagging chins and hope that no one noticed. However, according to news reports the latest trend in India is to get plastic surgery in order to look better on Facebook profile photos. This is fuelled by a desire to look great on the screen but to not them disappoint in real life.
The Organ Donor Trend
We might as well stay in the hospital but move onto a trend which might just restore your faith in mankind. The idea of letting Facebook users show on their profile the fact that they are organ donors has turned out to be a roaring success. If you want to do this then you need to click on “life event” on your timeline followed by “health and wellness” and “organ donor”. It has been reported that the number of organ donors has increased by 30 times since this feature was brought in, which goes to show the good that Facebook profile trends can do when they don’t involve Sponge Bob or mirrors..
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