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Comment by ajkjk | Hacker News Reader

American smiles in photos are mostly not fake, fwiw.

You will never convince Europeans of this. They simply seem to be unable to grasp that (1) cultural norms about introversion/extroversion and friendliness are not universal, and so the default baseline IS more outgoing, social, friendly, and extraverted in North America, and (2) because of the other differences in service industry culture [not necessarily themselves all positives but nevertheless relevant], the service industry in America optimizes for extraverted and friendly people.

So yeah, when the super friendly waitress comes over and asks the table "how is your day going", they're not forcing a smile for a tip. It helps, but they're most likely naturally outgoing and friendly and genuinely curious.

When you grow up with this environment, moving to Europe is adaptable (have done so), but whenever you go back home it is a breath of fresh air.

That's because the reference point of most Europeans is not the actual lived experience of people in the US but the picture painted by the media.

When I visited the US the smiles seemed sincere‚ no doubt about it. The interactions also felt strangely shallow, which was of course to be expected and even sensible in the cultural context (why go into depth with someone you barely know and will never see again), but that is the real reason it felt jarring compared to what I was used to, and often made it confusing to make sense of whether the politeness was sincere or not.

This was in California, and I have to add that I was 17 at the time so "making sense of other people" wasn't a highly developed skill yet to begin with.

It is incredibly surprising to be told to smile when taking official photos in the US. I just couldn't understand the first time it happened at the DMV, the person kept saying "smile" and i'm like, wtf, why would i smile, this is an official photo for my driver's license.

That’s interesting. I’ve been told every time (so far) to keep a “neutral face”. I smiled once and the guy let out a heavy sigh and made me take the photo again (Redwood City, CA DMV).

Can confirm. US passport photos want a neutral expression and explicitly say (not in the below page, but elsewhere during the renewal process) not to smile.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-app...

Strange, one of the example photos has a person smiling. I’ve seen several US passports recently with the person smiling. It must not be an important rule if it’s not clearly communicated or enforced. Especially since some (all?) US states allow smiling in ID photos I would think they would be more explicit about not smiling in passport photos.

Same. I've been explicitly told "Neutral Face. Don't smile." for my passport and driver's licenses in NC, FL and CA (Redwood City too).

I smiled for my CA license. Not a toothy one though.

same, here in Australia

It’s not a requirement, just a suggestion. The most i ever got was “say cheese!” once at one of my DL renewals, but that was it.

In the US, I had to take photos for driver’s license at least 4 times, for green card 1 time, and for passport 1 time, not in a single one of them I am smiling. Saw the DLs of my friends more than a few times (either at bars or clubs or while crossing the border or when the topic arrived naturally), and the breakdown of smiling vs not smiling is 40/60 at most (with a heavy lean towards not smiling)[0].

I partially agree though about the US being a bit special in the aspect of even just allowing people to smile in ID photos. In the previous country I lived in and where I had to take ID photos, it was explicitly prohibited to smile in those photos, and they would reject applications if someone did.

0. Purely anecdotal, as it could totally be the case that I just accidentally ended up befriending mostly those who don’t smile for ID photos.

It is not often that a photo is required of me for some ID, so I believe the MVD here in Arizona has got two photos from me in 26 years. If I recall correctly, the instructions were "smile if you prefer to." My expression is cheerful but not overly smiling; I'm wearing a full beard, and the photo has been converted to monochrome - why, I have no idea.

However, the camera used at MVD is clearly more sophisticated than it appears, because if you install the Mobile ID app, your photo goes full "Harry Potter mode" and animates in a 3D rotation!

I don't recall any directions about my expression for the US Passport photo at the USPS station. However, they did attempt to reject the photo for strange technical reasons. I could not fathom the rejection because the photo had been entirely handled by the professional USPS clerk and I wasn't involved in generating it. I insisted on submitting exactly the same way a second time around and it was approved. It must've been a procedural glitch of some kind. Or the government knew I shouldn't be traveling to an ill-fated vacation, and was trying to gently dissuade me?

Whereas here in Iowa, smiling is forbidden in DMV photos. I guess it's state by state.

Oh, interesting, for me it was PA and later FL, both places requested smiles.

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