Scott Meyer

How to React to the Inevitable Progression of Technology

Added 2022-08-08 08:00:03 +0000 UTC

Sadly, the smile-detecting camera is not a figment of my imagination.

I understand the use-case for the camera. In all of the photos of my brothers and I when we were growing up, we all look disgruntled. It’s not that mom chose to document moments when we were unhappy. She chose happy moments, and the process of posing the photo made us unhappy. See, my brothers and I all have unnatural looking toothy smiles. We can half-smile, we can smirk, and we’re natural-born sneerers, but if we try an open-mouthed toothy grin we look like we’re plotting your murder.

Not a murder . . . specifically, your murder.

So, we all three learned early on to smile closed mouthed when posing for pictures. Sadly, our mother was not on the same page, and would tell us, with increasing stridency, to “stop smirking! Smile pretty! No, not like that! That looks stupid! You boys won’t even smile right for your poor mother! Smile pretty, with teeth!”

The smiles that resulted were not convincing.