Speakingfaces

Well this is something new. And oddly compelling. Simply upload a photo portrait of yourself, or link to an existing URL, and site visitors will give you their first impression of you from a shortlist of single words (boring, smart, sexy, cute, interesting...) And that's it. As long as your photo is there, visitors will see it and rate it and gradually you'll build up enough votes to get a much better idea of how other people see you. You can then use that information to change your appearance, if necessary, grow a beard, wear a paper bag or whatever seems appropriate. You can upload a different photo any time you like, which will reset the count and start over. So if you got a negative result the first time (you wouldn't believe how many faces got a "boring"), you can try a different look and try again. Theoretically voting should be objective as the chances of people recognizing you are hopefully remote. Simple as it is, I found several minutes had passed while I was looking at faces and rating them. It's compulsive. And interestingly, or worryingly perhaps, it's obvious that the majority of people have fixed archetypes in mind when they vote. Girls are almost universally voted "cute" or "sexy" or if they're lucky, "omg!". Men with glasses are generally boring or smart; older men who hold a non-committal pose are likely to be "self-confident" or "interesting", teens in shades are "arrogant" and so forth. It may be amusing to strike archetypal poses and see if you get the kind of voting pattern that you expect. At the moment, all voting is entirely anonymous. I would like to see voters register their sex and birthdate, though, so that we can get a voting breakdown by age and gender. It would be useful to know whether your image is more appealing to men or women, and whether you're pitching yourself to an audience too young or too old. Still, even as it is, it's a fun, free idea and you can definitely waste a coffee break here.