Self-Portraits for Strangers

The photos are real. Someone took them, approved them, uploaded them to a dating site, and then waited. A man in a bathrobe holding a sword. A woman with a taxidermied fox on her shoulder like a parrot. Another man draped across the hood of a Lada in a pose that suggests he has seen exactly one magazine in his life, and it was about the Lada.

Christian over at Spiegel Offline compiled a collection from Russian dating sites, and the initial impulse—to scroll through it cackling—doesn’t survive the tenth photo. At some point the laughter curdles into something closer to recognition. These people want the same thing everyone on a dating site wants. They’re just doing it without the Instagram-aesthetic filters that make everyone else’s desperation look like confidence. A man in a homemade knight costume isn’t more ridiculous than some guy striking a pensive pose in front of his bookshelf; he’s just operating without the protective coat of irony.

There’s something almost refreshing about that. Nobody there is pretending not to be trying.