Feelings About Pictures Online

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Does anyone else get bothered by pictures of people on dating and social networking sites? When I do a search for something, I want to read the profiles that show up; I never want to look at the pictures, even on dating sites. It's distracting and kind of visually overwhelming to suddenly have a bunch of pictures of complete strangers all over the screen. It feels too intimate. When I click on profiles, I quickly scroll past the picture to the text. I don't much mind pictures of things and places.

I'm not bothered by pictures on dating sites. Their picture is what draws me in to look at their profile.

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People generally don't want to date someone they've never seen.

irrelevant

I don't think it's irrelevant at all. The OP is saying he doesn't care about their images, and starkid is saying generally people want an image of who they are dating before they date.

Two different opinions.

I fall into the second. I want an image of a face to associate with the profile I'm reading.

You have an image of someone in your avatar...

starkid and the OP are the same person. I am starkid, I am the OP, I did not say that I "don't care" about images, I AM NOT A HE, and I am tired of people automatically assuming that everyone is male on this freaking website.

As for my original post, I will go into more detail: I meant that I don't like to look at a bunch of random people when I'm browsing, like a screenful of pictures in search results. It's too much, visually overloading in a way, too much information too soon. Then when I look at individual profiles, what people look like is irrelevant at that point because I know nothing about them. If I get to the point of actually contacting someone, looking at pictures of that one particular person is more meaningful to me. I care about looks, but the profile text is far more important, and looking at the pics still feels a bit uncomfortable because the person is a stranger.

That makes more sense, and sounds pretty normal actually. For me personally, I care more about what it said in people's profiles than what they look like, but I do take their appearance into account. I don't get overwhelmed with pictures in search results, although I am with you in wishing the results would provide more text and less picture (after all, what's the point of scrolling through a bunch of stranger's faces with no context?).