The first three months of Pixtr has proven to be picture perfect in more ways than one.
The app, which automatically makes snaps of people appear more attractive, has been downloaded 100,000 times since it launched at the end of April, thus proving that we’re all as vain as we suspected.
With the proliferation of social networks like Facebook and photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Instagram, people are taking more pictures than ever.
But most of them are of themselves. Everyone uploads their favourite group shots and selfies to Facebook, with friends posting comments with varying degrees of cringe-inducing encouragement about how beautiful the person is, even when the evidence in front of your eyes says otherwise.
But now Pixtr ensures that you’re always looking good – better than in person, in fact. It even lets you limit the damage of those shocking snaps you’re tagged in inside a deafening, sweaty club trying to order more drinks at the bar by communicating through the medium of interpretative dance.
Its software automatically makes people in a picture more appealing based on cultural definitions of attractiveness – so in the US people get whitened teeth, for instance.
The downside, though, is that we’re all going to be very disappointed when we meet each other in real life, seeing each other’s yellowing teeth and pale skin.
Internet dating sites may never recover.
