Marcel Winatschek

Portrait of a Murderer, Portrait of a Barista

A friend named Clara sent me the link with zero context, which is exactly how the best things arrive. A French developer named Bobby Watson built a simple quiz: you’re shown a photo and asked to decide whether the person staring back at you is a serial killer or a hipster. That’s the entire premise. It doesn’t need to be more than that.

The problem, of course, is that the overlap between the two is vast—the hollow stare, the deliberate facial hair, the particular combination of self-absorption and barely suppressed rage. You look at a face and think: this man has done something terrible. But has he dismembered someone in a storage unit, or just declared a wine undrinkable? The quiz doesn’t make it easy. I failed to reach the end, which probably says something about me I’d rather not examine too closely.