The key takeaway here isn't that "Instagram face" exists or what it looks like, but that it's a product of two factors: the emergence of less invasive plastic surgery techniques, and of software specifically dedicated to producing these faces. This being HN, the existence of the software is the really interesting bit.
It's called FaceTune:
> FaceTune, which was released in 2013 and promises to help you “wow your friends with every selfie,” enables even more precision... “I think ninety-five per cent of the most-followed people on Instagram use FaceTune, easily,” Smith told me.
Click the "watch video" link on that homepage to see a good visual example of what the software can do. (Warning in advance, the video has an obnoxious, loud techno soundtrack. Mute the tab before you hit play.)
I haven't looked into how instagram hosts the images (had to look in source of the page to find the link, as it doesn't allow to just direct link to it normally), so please let me know in the comments if the link expired/not working anymore. As of now, it works, and I checked that it works in a private chrome tab as well, no login needed.
P.S. Interestingly enough, if you remove the query string from that URL, the link refuses to work and displays a "bad timestamp" error. Which is what made me guess they employ some expiring timestamp hash in query strings for image URLs.
I work there and I would feel bad if I could repro that issue, but it seems like a totally normal link for me, having checked chrome, firefox, and safari :S
On mobile, clicking that link opens up the mobile app (which sends the browser with history into the background), but I assume that can't be what you're talking about...?
A job is a job. Would you begrudge soldiers who have to choose between an (arguably) unethical job, or letting their family starve?
I'm aware the change of working for another company wouldn't be quite so stark in tech, but it can still be a massive boost to your career to have a big name on your resume. Most people at those companies would just be doing boring day to day things, and not plotting world takeovers.
When did it become ok to target individuals who work at companies? The last week I’ve seen an uptick in these attacks on HN, they come off as very “I’m better than you” SJW’y, totally oblivious to a person’s situation.
I mean, as a society we agreed "I was just doing my job" isn't any sort of ethical defense about a century ago. It really just comes down to whether or not you support what these companies do.
> I think ninety-five per cent of the most-followed people on Instagram use FaceTune, easily,” Smith told me.
Whenever things like this app reveal themselves to me, I feel so naive for not realizing that they even existed or that people would actually use such things.
I mean the only thing that’s actually different is that there’s a tool that can do the thing that professional photographers do(-ish).
The tools are approaching real PS experience where before canned photo enhancing software was a lot more limited. But it’s not new that they’re ragingly popular.
Think there’s a third underlying factor which is the addictiveness of Instagram. That Instagram becomes so important in your life that you end up changing your body for likes. That’s a terrible tragedy. You might argue that some are making a living of Instagram as influences but that’s a small percent; many more will be doing it for a desperate need for validation.
I remember being a popular, outgoing, friendly kid from kindergarten until 5th grade when I got my first pair of glasses.
The glasses were not fashionable, and I went from being popular to being an introverted and isolated kid for the next 15 years. I eventually ditched glasses for contacts and suddenly became outgoing again.
While having glasses wasn't the only factor for my behavior, there was a noticeable difference to people's reaction to you based on how you look. I consider myself confident regardless of appearance, but I have to admit that the activation energy required for being sociable greatly increases when you don't have the right look.
Many people don't have high levels of confidence from within themselves and outward affirmation influences them a lot. Even if you have high levels of internal confidence, you'll still feel the dopamine of affirmation noticeably, and there's definitely a temptation to fall into milking that affirmation to very unhealthy levels.
Affirmation is not the same as social acceptance, but they are close proxies. Many people seek after social acceptance and mistake social affirmation for it, leading us down the wrong path.
But social acceptance cannot be pulled out of people; it must be pushed. You can compel someone to compliment you, but you can't compel someone to accept you. Instead, active communication of acceptance is a trait that needs to be fostered in our culture in order to have a healthier society.
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I can't say I find "Instagram Face" to be attractive at all. It looks ridiculously unnatural, and evokes the same feeling as those ultra-SEO'd mostly contentless sites that flood search results.
I wonder if that's true for people who end up spending more time on Instagram than elsewhere, and start finding the IG Face to be more "natural" and get weirded out when they see people with wrinkles and stuff.
I'm assuming here that "natural" is a result of what you (and I, since I feel similarly) are just used to.
I agree with this. What's seen as natural definitely appears to be a result of what you're used to.
What's more, it's not just visual traits either. No, I suspect a lot of people feel an American accent is the 'norm' now as well, in part due to how much popular media originates in the US (and how many internet influencers seem to be from there).
And there are definitely quite a few stories of people assuming their own country/culture works like the US/Europe/wherever based on what media they watch and who they follow online.
Could be interesting to see a study about this stuff.
> and get weirded out when they see people with wrinkles and stuff.
Well someday they will have to look around them and see people with wrinkles... in real life.. unless they are too hooked to their phones to even realize this.
You probably said that tongue in cheek, but that's probably where we're headed. People value their social media intensely, and the combination of the two will naturally happen as a consequence of VR/AR becoming ubiquitous in our lives.
A bit of a side-topic, but I believe there are even more interesting consequences/applications of future AR when it comes to looks.
Why bother with only "fixing" certain things about your looks, whereas you can look like something/someone completely different? With AR advanced enough, I believe we will get to the point of multiple "realities" overlaid on top of the real one, which opens doors for so many interesting possibilities and applications. Don't like that pesky skyscraper blocking view of the lake from your apt? Luckily, there is a reality server you can subscribe to that has it removed. Or another reality server that acts like ad-block for real life.
When the AR tech matures and gets in the hands of an average person, I expect life to change in such a crazy way, that changes brought by wide smartphone adoption will look like a tiny blip in comparison.
That would be an interesting twist on purchasing "cosmetic skins" IRL-ish (or more likely, monthly subscription. "For $5/mo more, you get our no gray-hair add-on"
Agreed. Most of my friend group (women in their late 20s and early 30s) make this face and it just appalls me. I think Baudrillard's conception of simulacra & simulation [1] is the perfect vehicle for understanding the "uncanny valley" effect this creates.
Baudrillard is a hack of epic proportions. He's an example of the worst kind of French psudo-intellectualism almost on par with Lacan or Deleuze. Actually, bro the gulf war happened! And most of the book you linked is full of utter nonsense and crankery. His review of JG Ballard's novel "Crash" was the only good chapter in the whole book. Just because it was in the matrix doesn't mean that it described our world accurately at all. It's nothing but fashionable nonsense.
That's rich coming from somebody who's username is literally Der Einzige. :) It's hard to believe you deign to label Baudrillard a crank yet identify enough with Stirner to make the title of his most well-known work your nom de plume
Edit: See this [1] lovely video to learn why it's a common misconception that his work has any relevancy to the Matrix franchise beyond superficial pop philosophy.
Stirner, and the rest of the German young hegelians, are far more coherent and interesting than French post modernists. They also don't engage in any type of fashionable nonsense.
Stirner also doesn't advocate for his ideas on the basis of anything except self interest. The "dialectical" Frenchies will tell you a far different story about why you should agree with them.
That I can agree with you on. It is certainly dense material that frightens away those unwilling to be linguistically challenged when reading a book.
> interesting
Absolutely not. Look, I get Stirner is neat for being a proto-anarchist and all, but his value ends there. You seem preoccupied with the "fashion" of it (which itself raises questions) instead of with the philosophy being discussed. Engage with the ideas instead of resorting to this rhetorical BS that we both know you're pulling.
For example, your point that Stirner grounds his philosophy merely in self-interest -- what exactly does that prove? That his ideas are derivative and trite? I understand that Baudrillard's writing is a tough nut to crack, but to think that his work (and the rest of the French canon) is irrelevant because it requires more than egotism as its foundation is absurd.
Over some time I have mostly come to this conclusion as well regarding most of the 20th century French intellectuals. Do you have any idea why they seem to retain so much influence and power in the academy this far into the 21st century? Is it essentially a matter of the emperor having no clothes or is there something more complex going on?
Yes, I agree! So this woman feels sexy and al I think it she looks like a doll. But still.. in a way it's also a supernormal stimulus for the opposite sex and is on its way to becoming the new standard, the same way people tend to descend into stranger and stranger fetishes and finding it harder and harder to get aroused by normal "human" partners.
I really don't like it. Though I will admit, such a fake face does tickle the fancy. As said, a supernormal stimulus. I guess when such make up can be applied in a second using technology, the world will change forever.
By the way, in "Stories of Your Life and Others" form Ted Chiang, there is a story where this sensitivity for beauty can be turned off, everybody does this but then someone stops doing it. It's a fascinating story, and very relevant, the story is "Liking What You See: A Documentary" [0]: "it consists of interviews with dozens of people at a high school in the US doing a pilot project with a future technique called “calliagnosia”. This is a neurological intervention that reliably and reversibly deadens that part of the brain that responds aesthetically to the human face."
I find it highly disturbing that someone with a username that based on a line spoken by a 10-13 year old anime girl is talking about fucking a cartoon.
I one time let a friend edit a photo, blurred my skin, etc and posted it to social media, and it got way more likes than any of unedited, unfiltered photos. I never edit photos (rarely do I post any for that matter) but man that was a real disappointment.
There's no question social media has to be bad for our self-image.
I've really improved my happiness ever since I uninstalled these apps (IG, Snapchat, etc) and never looked back. I suggest everyone do the same. They get you hooked on a dopamine drip feed, instill feelings of inadequacy, and otherwise do nothing to improve your life.
Good for you. I never had any of those types of services except for Facebook and I never used that much at all. So, I don't know what it's like to "unplug" in that regard, but I can imagine how much it must suck to be in that spiral. I think in addition to the dopamine addiction, there's also some sort of neurotic or narcissistic aspect to it as well for many. I see it all the time with people everywhere. Women on the bus are constantly on all of that shit taking selfies. Like, who the fuck needs to see you making a wannabe cute/sexy face on the bus on the way to work? And that, amazingly, isn't limited to just women in their 20s, but it does trend heavily to them.
I'm married but the concept of dating in this modern world is terrifying to me. First thing I would do would be to lookup a woman on social media to see if she's one of these crazies.
I think it's funny how 90% percent of these 'selfies' are taken in bathrooms. Used to be you went to a nice place and took a photo to show where you went. Now I think the average selfie taker doesn't even realize they are in a toilet, it is completely self focused. There is a fitting metaphor in there somewhere.
The way I remember early selfie culture is that it actually started in places like bathrooms and only spread to include location later. But those details do not matter, the real story is how bathrooms apparently became places of public representation.
All bathrooms usually are private places in the house + have one or multiple mirrors, real selfies weren't made with a second lens/selfie mode in your smartphone before 2008 lol
I overwhelmingly agree, but disagree in one regard; there is some signal in the scream of the noise and in not engaging whatsoever you miss that sliver of signal, which can be very important events in friend's/family member's lives they've chosen to document there, or maintain some sense of contact with people who are now geographically distant, etc.
Overall their effects are indescribably negative, simply due to how they effectively game people's innate insecurities, but they do have 1 to 2 uses that do improve the life of a private individual.
This is the nuanced perspective I really like hearing. I think people still want some avenue to keep in touch with and interact with their friends and family online, when meeting in person might be too difficult (geographic distance for example).
I feel super passionate about addressing the existing toxicity of existing social networks and making something more positive and uplifting - preserving what you call the "signal".
my little sister is (or wants to be) one of these, my wife watches them on instagram. I heard one woman talking about 'instagram brows' and she was just so fucking excited about how great her face and eyebrows looked. Here is this lady with the face (i've never heard it coined like in the article but I know it) and she has (tens?) of thousands of folks staring at her reinforcing the vicous cycle. More views, more facial contours, more stimuli, more ads, more money, more searches, more ads, more views
This guy argues that "instagram brows" are drag queen brows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVvhWQVbR-g. He's a makeup artist and criticizes it from the standpoint that drag is hyper feminine on a masculine face, so while women can (and probably should) draw inspiration from it, the general technique and shapes aren't appropriate for women. It's more artistic commentary than anything about the freedom to do it or politics of it.
Here's another video I ran across looking for that one where he demos and criticizes apps that influences use on videos to get clear skin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1lovMzixm0
I've found it subtly unnerving and in some way boring how women are beginning to look exactly the same, it's almost like something of comparable virality to the whole flat minimal UI design meme now exists in fashion.
That's a helluva analogy. But I like it. More to the overall point, I find it incredibly ironic that while the world is constantly talking about diversity, uniqueness, and all those wonderful things, everyone is simultaneously trying to dress the same and literally look alike.
>everyone is simultaneously trying to dress the same and literally look alike
I think it is a bit more complicated than that due to one small detail you omitted, but still just ironic. In reality, they are all trying to look "different", but "different" in the exact same way, so they all end up looking the same.
To grossly generalize: Differentiation does not benefit females in the way it benefits males. Being "average" is a safe mating strategy for females, but not for males.
Funnily enough I only ever see women using the phrase to shit on other women for not staying in line. Woman actually likes tech/cars/whatever and doesn’t like makeup and fashion? Ugh, she thinks she’s “not like other girls”, she’s looking down on us, she’s just trying to impress men.
I watched this great video on it from a while back where BoyInABand goes through an OkCupid study that actually says the complete opposite (unfortunately it seems like most of OkCupid's studies just vanished from the internet at some point): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLNwa_hoz4w
To sum up for parent: in okcupid’s data, women considered attractive but not super hot got fewer messages than women who were less conventionally attractive but had more polarizing photos. In other words for most women it’s a better strategy to play up a look/feature that’s unique but potentially alienating than it is to be generically attractive.
Polarizing being good for dating doesn't necessarily mean it's good for influencers. In dating you want one person to like you a lot. So if you make the majority dislike a bit and the minority like you more that's great. But in influencing you want a lot of people to like you a little.
That’s one explanation. Another possibility is a more polarizing face makes some guys feel like they have a better chance. This is total speculation, of course, just offering up another way to explain the data. Could be a mix of both explanations.
I went back and read the post, and I remembered it wrong. The effect is there for women with the same overall attractiveness rating, which is a stronger version than I originally posted.
> Another possibility is a more polarizing face makes some guys feel like they have a better chance.
This explains why guys would send messages, but not why they would rate pics highly. It’s a better fit for why guys would message girls with lower ratings, not girls with high ratings and high std. dev. The trick in their version is it’s not just “I think other guys aren’t into her”, it’s “I think other guys aren’t into her, but I am.”
But yeah, being a story that explains the data doesn’t make it true, and all sorts of stuff could be going on. And like the other poster pointed out their analysis is fun but not necessarily ironclad. For my part I figure there’s a ton of cultural signaling going on in dating pics that they can’t really account for.
I loved reading OkCupid's Blog but it rarely matched my experience with the site and the conclusions they reached almost always had other plausible explanations.
The author of that piece, Jia Tolentino, has a collection of essays called Trick Mirror. This quote pretty aptly describes the transition to the social-media-driven internet:
“At ten I was clicking around a web ring to check out other Angelfire sites. At twelve I was writing five hundred words a day on a public LiveJournal. At fifteen I was uploading photos of myself in a miniskirt on Myspace. By twenty-five, my job was to write things that would attract, ideally, a hundred thousand strangers per post. Now I’m thirty, and most of my life is inextricable from the internet, and its mazes of incessant forced connection — this feverish, electric, unlivable hell.”
I think the most interesting thing here is the comparison between these hi-tech options we've got now (FaceTune, cheap and low-invasion surgery) and their lower tech analogues (ie. makeup, haircuts). These hi-tech options may be way more quotidian 10/20/30 years down the line - according to the article, the stigma around the procedures is already diminished to the point where celebrities are willing to promote it. It still doesn't feel like something I'd want for myself, but it's not hard to imagine a reality not too far off where this becomes much more common, especially considering what we know about the positive correlation between conventional attractiveness and fame/money/career advancement.
There's an analogous drive for men in western masculinity with the resurgence in gym culture and elevation of muscularity in media, particularly driven by physiques portrayed superhero franchises.
We're rapidly shifting from Brad Pitt fight club "ottermode" bodies into some bignorexia territory. Though, it's much more self limiting, since you can't simply "buy" a well built physique, even with drugs unless you're an exceptional genetic outlier. It still requires years of dedicated training and continued maintenance. Though the fact that steroids are scheduled drugs makes pursuing these standards literally illegal in many countries, which is a separate topic altogether.
It depends on the person, but many people’s bodies tend to be catabolic which makes gaining muscle hard - the so-called hard gainers. These males also tend to have feminine qualities in facial structure. TRT will probably help those individuals more w.r.t to muscle gain than steroids. Or RHGH.
I think somatypes like hardgainers have been debunked, the explanation being that predominantly, these folks are habituated to not eating enough, GOMAD etc. There's edge cases of medical conditions or training non-responders though.
My main point is that western aesthetic standard for muscular men is increasingly moving towards more mass to the point where most individuals are below the bell curve for what's attainable naturally even with consistent training. It's reaching a point where achieving these bodies require either both elite genetics and conscientiousness, or good genetics and conscientiousness and illegal drugs. It can't simply be bought by 30k worth of plastic surgeries.
Theoretically most men can diet themselves down to Brad Pit fight club, there's an attainable amount of muscle mass, the trick is mostly diet and fat loss, which may still be prohibitive for some. But much less men can be Chris Evans Captain America, or more obviously the Rock. At some point drugs enter the picture. There's also VFX that adds muscularity in these productions, so we're also dealing with filters at the end of the day, but most people do not know that muscularity is just as easily edited in live action as facial features or de-aging.
Everything is, but in terms of factors, eating enough is more within control, i.e. the excessive GOMAD prescription, gallon of milk a day. Mostly diet genetics becomes an consideration when you're at the extreme ends of weight goals, like dietting down to unhealthy bodyfat levels or trying to cram 8,000 calories a day to maintain in the heavier weight classes (250lbs+). Compared to genetic propensity for gaining muscle or one's training response, conscientiousness to train consistently - eating habits for most "hard gainers" is current diet + a few spoonfuls of peanut butter a day.
What? Assuming you live in America, "many" people's bodies are not catabolic for any meaningful portion of a given week. Not even close.
You can force a catabolic state onto yourself...but how does TRT help? Note also that insulin levels associated with obesity also modulate that mechanism, in the opposite direction of your argument, but let's ignore that. Theoretically you prevent loss of lean muscle mass while in a calorie deficit while intermittent fasting, but that's an obscure edge case for someone looking to increase in size.
Also, TRT is a steroid. At high enough doses. And, if that holds, how can it be less effective? Ignoring some of the biology itself.
Sorry for the sharp rebuttal but what are you talking about.
If you look at the research there's a very narrow band of philiosogic changes available to new and intermediate gym goers. The exact figures escape me, but if I recall with perfect nutrition and perfect gym adherence I believe I previously calculated for an average american male for that top end to be around 0.2 to 0.7 pounds of lean muscle mass additions per week. Based on an older paper. And that's the theoretical ceiling.
But, the flip side was that even for "hard gainers" with "feminine qualities in facial structure" (for which I've never seen research for but will take you at face value on that, no pun intended) that also means that gradual incremental changes are probable and positive with enough adherence.
Saying that a healthy strong body is not attainable without growth hormone or steroids seems like a cop out, when just sticking to it will (very very slowly) yield incremental progress.
It was a years ago, I think there's a... muscularity threadmill that maps with the growth of fitness social media in the last few years that started prioritizing towards size via functionality and strength. It started with relatively attainable fightclub look, aesthetics that is preferred by women, but people who enjoy fitness culture rarely stops there (it's a comparably easy and attainable body type) so the trend gradually shifted towards getting bigger and stronger to impress other audiences in fitness culture (read: men and a revival of machismoism). You also have the parallel influence outside of fitness of hollywood action stars getting bigger as well. I could be completely misreading the trend, but male aesthetic standard changes over time.
it hasn't fully kicked-in in the mainstream yet, but I agree that it is going in the direction you are describing, and movies map to it quite nicely.
Just take a look the change over time in looks of Wolverine from the first X-Men movie to the most recent movie featuring him (all played by the same actor btw, Hugh Jackman). Back then, even though he was obviously fit and muscular, he had a physique that was fairly easily attainable by an average male without sacrificing much. Over time, it got to the point that there is no way an average male would be able to gain such physique without being obsessively controlling with the nutrition and spending all of the free time outside of work at the gym.
Here's a weird idea: is music a supernormal stimulus? I mean, I listen to music constantly, every day, and I become irritable if I must go without music for long periods. It would not be a stretch to label this an addiction. Furthermore, music does not exist in our natural environment. You might protest that birdsong qualifies as music, but even granting that, birdsong bears no relation to the highly rhythmic, bass-heavy music that humans seem to prefer. Where did this preference come from? And if music really is a supernormal stimulus, is that necessarily a bad thing? Can a supernormal stimulus be morally neutral, or perhaps even good?
It depends on what your threshold is for supernormality.
I would say no; bone flutes are among the oldest human artifacts, we may have been making music for as long as we've been using language.
There is, on the other hand, a clear supernormal 'vibe' to pop music, which has been tuning in since the 80s. If you look at the waveform of a contemporary pop song, it looks like a brick: everything has been compressed and condensed to fill the available audioscape.
The one comment that stuck out to me in this article was the coworker who said she felt anxious whenever she saw the author of this article. Personally I am not someone who likes to wear a full face of makeup on a daily basis but the pressure to do so feels more present every day. A lot of this is because you never know when you will be photographed and end up on any social media platform. Even simple tasks like heading to the grocery store seem to require at least some mascara and eyebrows drawn on.
I saw a similarly titled article in the New Yorker[1] twice before seeing this link. For some reason that author saw fit to only use words (outside of a drawing at the top of the article) to describe the effect which did nothing for me. Kudos to this author who actually included pictures.
I just don't think this kind of thing is good for anybody. Thinking, that a perfect face and body can exist or even should is unhealthy. It adds up to a lot young people, who are still trying to figure out, who they are and trying to get comfortable with their own bodies.
It's supposed to be a veil you unveil to those you want closer in your life. That's part of the fun, getting to know people better. The idea that you have to become the veil you are projecting out is the illness.
The "before/after" images are uncanny! Before, she looks like a normal, approachable person; after a scary seller of shady stuff that you would nothing to to with.
Because it's The New Yorker, there are no photos in the article. So if you're hoping to learn what "instagram face" actually looks like, you'll have to dig somewhere else.
Thank you for this. The before after was striking. I’m used to seeing these contrasts in corners of Asian culture where high levels of makeup are common, but had been unaware of what it looks like in western faces and how prevalent it is.
She looks amazing in the before photo so in a way the question remains about the effect on average people ;)
I don't have an IG account where I would follow my friends so my only exposure to it is through these fake influencer/fitness/lifestyle accounts and it's appealing. Thankfully they force you to have an account to see most of the content these says so I'm not tempted to browse it more.
It seems the battle against airbrushing in magazines and how it shapes society's expectations is already two wars late.
Or maybe it's just the new version of the Myspace fat angle and we should stop pop sociology.
Interestingly the New Yorker manages to take the edge off of head-shot photo competition by using caricatures of its regular authors instead of photos.
The Netflix series Better Than Us has a great example of this with the character Svetlana Toropova.
Spoiler: The character is a TV host who suffers a mental breakdown. You first see her Instagram face, then you see her looking more natural with her lover (for whom she doesn't wear a wig), and finally she ends up in a psychiatric hospital where you see her without any makeup. At first I was questioning whether it was the same actor.
I think they describe it pretty accurately. The idea here is that the face is fake and propped up and pretty identical between “top” users of instagram. That’s a bit worrying.
What we got from magazines in the 1980s and 1990s is found on Instagram and YouTube in 2020. Now, what’s fun is digging up an old magazine and making fun of it with some friends. You can occasionally find one on Imgur or the Internet Archive.
Years ago, Esquire put Michelle Pfeiffer on the cover, with the headline "For the Woman Who Needs Absolutely Nothing". A little later, Harpers published the retoucher's bill for that photograph, to the great amusement of many. You could look it up at https://harpers.org/archive/1991/01/what-michelle-pfeiffer-n..., but you'll have to pay.
I agree, the reason i find it worrying tho is because of the lack of diversity. the massive reach means even more people will have a uniform set of standards.
"Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that.""
I was not replying to you, but rather to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21776078. Probably you were confused by that comment being [dead], and assumed that I was replying to your adjacent one instead.
This happens from time to time, and I'm not sure how best to eliminate the confusion.
You can go to any of the accounts of the people they mention in the piece. Even better examples can be found if you go to the accounts of anyone commenting on the aforementioned accounts.
After looking through some of the threads there, I have to applaud the moderators. They're very explicit about not wanting to be hateful, and (if the number of deleted comments is any indication) they're very willing to enforce this. The surviving comments mostly focus on the photo manipulation.
If this site starts getting any traction, you're going to get destroyed by lawyers and copyright infringement claims, so I hope you're prepared for that. outline.com does basically the same thing, but they've had to exclude most of the major sites from working through it now.
Outline even seems to make it difficult to find any way to identify/contact them, but it only took me a couple of minutes to find the identity and location (inside the US = easy target) of who's behind Trim. Seriously, talk to an IP lawyer before you continue trying to promote this. You can't just copy other people's writing onto your own site.
I like the concept, but in this case i'd rather load an extra 3.1MB to get the New Yorker's typesetting. 120 characters per line and a short line height does not make for a great reading experience.
I'm assuming by the account name that this is your site.
Off topic, but I'd love the ability to change the width of the text on your site. Just a "wide", "medium", "narrow" option or something similar. Personally, I find that 1100px is a bit wide for reading.
It's called FaceTune:
> FaceTune, which was released in 2013 and promises to help you “wow your friends with every selfie,” enables even more precision... “I think ninety-five per cent of the most-followed people on Instagram use FaceTune, easily,” Smith told me.
It's a phone app. More information is available here: https://www.facetuneapp.com/
Click the "watch video" link on that homepage to see a good visual example of what the software can do. (Warning in advance, the video has an obnoxious, loud techno soundtrack. Mute the tab before you hit play.)