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Comment by larrik | Hacker News Reader

The artist (or the article) suggests that the pictures he took on the metro are the 'real' person, whereas the pictures on the social site are the 'ideal' person.

I'm not so sure. I think its very possible that the person in the social network photographs is actually far closer to the person they really are than the photo of them riding alone on the subway.

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Further, the artist is clearly curating what he shows and what he doesn't and likely has his own message.

To be fair, he's pitching this as an art project, not a piece of social media or privacy research. Of _course_ he's curating the output to maximise his art's impact.

(I really like this sort of "subversive art", that has deeply important educational aspects showing people how the world really is in interesting ways...)

I thought exactly the same - and the photos chosen for the article don't really back up the point either. The pairs look like the same "person" to me, not one real and one fake.

Anyway I don't know anybody who busts out their truest expression of self to ride the subway.

> The pairs look like the same "person" to me, not one real and one fake.

I seem to be alone in this, but... they don't even look like the same person to me. Do we have any confirmation that the pairs show the same person? About 10 million Russian men look like the guys in the second pair of photos.

I have a friend from Czech who looks just like that guy. I was wondering the same.

I think they just picked the two most striking examples for that article. Look at the rest here: https://birdinflight.com/ru/vdohnovenie/fotoproect/06042016-...

Most of them are clearly the same person.

I dunno. Some of them clearly are because you can see they have moles in the same place and stuff like that, but a bunch leave me dubious. For example, that woman with the dyed white hair: the hair looks much frizzier/curlier in one than the other. And some I wonder how the face algorithm could possibly have matched them up - the guy in the parka vs the soldier don't even have the same facial hair, never mind how the parka fuzz obscures most of his head. (And you can't see more than a quarter of the next woman's face!) I wonder how much of this matching was manual.

Did it have to match those exact photos? I think he took a photo (or a few), used that (or those) to find the social media account(s). Then he could use whatever photos of that person he wanted to match up with a photo he had teken.

Oh yeah I think it was clearly manual. He uses this app to find their VKontakte account, and then he picks a good picture from their page. It's an art project, not a study.

Ah, thanks for this. Yes, I agree, this page has examples that really are the same person. I find those more striking.

I wonder...

Sometimes I suspect my early morning public transport "if you don't turn that stupid ringtone down I'm gonna stab you in the face" self is closer to my "truest expression" than my "look at me having fun being the life of this party" social media fake-self...

OTOH my tram "oh I'm so sleepy I'm afraid I'll miss my stop" face is further from my "true self" than the Facebook photos of me making stupid shit with duct tape or standing in front of a radio telescope dish, or showing off a Lisp book.

So I think it cuts both ways.

> I'm not so sure. I think its very possible that the person in the social network photographs is actually far closer to the person they really are than the photo of them riding alone on the subway.

That's how I see it too, but that may be tempered by my personality. When I'm on public transit or in a crowd, I do my best not to stand out (which is difficult being 6'4" and 240lbs) but when I'm around people I know, I will smile and have fun. When I go to a concert alone, I'm also a bit closed off and tend to dress blandly, but if I go with a friend or a group I'm more lively and interactive, and dressed to suit the music. It's all about being comfortable with those around you, at least for me.

So yes, on the subway I'm the dull guy in the jeans and t-shirt, and on social media I'm almost always with friends in a photo so I'm smiling and having fun.

Nothing out of the ordinary in these photos if you ask me.

>> whereas the pictures on the social site are the 'ideal' person.

Maybe it's that the picture on the web was chosen. Someone put thought into that, they said "oh hey I look good here", it's kinda like an ideal, or at least an above average view of themselves.

Of course my profile pic is a chosen ideal of myself. But you know i chose it and it depicts how I want to be seen. This says much more about me, than me monday morning or after a long of work, bored, alone, with the worst lighting conditions (blueish light from my mobile screen from below and neon lights from too far above).

Just like in other social situations, people idealise themselves at work or when out with friends rather than presenting an evenly balanced image of their inner self.

It's more surprising when people "overshare" and detail intimate information about themselves IME.

Who looks through photos to choose to preserve and doesn't pick the one's in which they look "better", doubly so when sharing those photos in public?

I don't think we are very good barometers for what kind of people we are. This is why having a confidant/BFF is so important.

Art can make you think or feel, and this art certainly makes me imagine, regardless of the artist's intended message.

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