design: Brooke Farren
permission to print photos: Shannan Johnson
So, a few friends of mine had the genius idea of going on a dating app made for teens called Yubo, with the main goal of just meeting more cool people. Obviously, I had to make a profile; it would be a shame to miss out on this amazing opportunity.
My friends spent some time picking out beautiful pictures of themselves, but I am just #builtdifferent, which led me to naturally do the opposite.
After plenty of searching through my camera roll, I found the most gloriously horrendous pictures of me. However, I had to be careful, because in the end, the goal was to get a few matches even with the bad profile, meaning the first picture had to be somewhat normal. The first choice consisted of a blurry photo with only half my face, the next photo consisted of just my glasses.
The third and fourth ones are just me making the most ridiculous faces. The fifth one is just my eye that was red at the time, and the last one is me posing with a giant polar bear stuffed animal while wearing two overly large sunglasses stacked on top of each other.
The objective of this experiment was to of course find myself a new man, surely one could see the dedication and the artistry within the photography that captured the true beauty of Shannan Johnson. Afterall, if one does not swoon upon seeing a pair of Shannan’s glasses, one must recognize this behavior is unnatural and immediately start the falling in love process.
The weekend of Nov. 2 was when the launch of the masterpiece on the app. Hope filled me as I got to present the hard work that went into choosing the pictures, hours of searching, high and low, so many tough decisions led up to that moment.
Even still, it sadly seems as though not many have swiped right on the perfect pictures. Even still, the profile has 12 matches, meaning there are at least twelve people with excellent tastes in dating profiles. Unfortunately, this means that hundreds of people do not have taste as I proceeded to swipe right on everyone.
After getting the matches, there have been many amazing conversation starters such as “nice weather we’re having, right?”, “y=mx+b”, “the opposite of purple is yellow”. However, I am still patiently awaiting a response. One can only assume that once they see the conversation starter, they will truly see how blessed they are to have matched with such a lovely profile.
The truth is that no matter what picture ends up on the profile, people will still blindly swipe right and eventually be stuck with another person anyways. This should be seen as a metaphor for life because no matter what first impression one may give off, everyone finds people who stick with them. Even though I ended up talking to no one even though they got to see a wonderful picture of my glasses, that’s not what matters.
