Personal Ads on Craigslist

A friend of mine offers a few sugestions for those placing a personal advertisement on Craigslist:

Rules for photos in the Craigslist personals
Yes a set of rules that seem to apply to almost everyone who posts personal images on Craigslist. Forgetting for the moment that anyone who posts to Craigslist personals must, axiomatically, have something deeply wrong with them psychologically, let alone the people who read them, like me, we all need to think that posting to a personals is like looking for a dream job.

If you post your resume to a job site you want to look your best. But it seems if you post your picture to Craigslist you want to look your worst.

Apparently the following photographic rules apply to Craigslist personal photos :
1) Make sure the image is nearly in focus. Not always but usually almost.
2) Make sure that the image appears to be composed of large film grains, even though it is a digital image. Make it appear fuzzy and lunky as if the viewer needed glasses, or perhaps was in a fog of wet sand.
3) Make sure the image of yourself is so small we cant' make out any of your physical details. Why not?
4) Make sure that the image appears to have another person in it with their arm around you, but they are cut off. Ex-boyfriend? Ex-lover? Someone who embarrasses you?
5) Make sure the image is very dark and details are hard to make out. Shoot in low level light conditions on manual with the wrong f-stop.
6) Make sure that what you are wearing makes you look like a slob. Hair messy and windblown or uncombed, stained tee-shirt, baggy pants, bulky pull over, gang banger clothes, head covered by hood, no make-up, etc.
7) Take a vary small image and blow it up till we can see each pixel.
8) Make sure the color is unfiltered and your portrait is shot in bright florescent light so the colors are shoved into the green. Here I come, ready to throw up ready ot not!
9) Do not have your picture taken by anyone who knows how to use a camera or who is a professional photographer. Oh Hell no!
10) Make sure you look dumpy.
11) make sure you appear bored and uninterested.
12) Make sure you look depressed.
13) If you do smile, make sure it looks forced and your body language is uncomfortable.
14) Make sure you look embarrassed.
15) Never, ever use Photoshop to correct any image defect.

These are helpful hints only and are not to be taken as recommendations. Many of these hints should not be attempted without professional supervision. Please see a therapist if conditions persist.

Heh...