Have you ever had a friend post an unflattering picture of you on Facebook? If you said yes, don't feel bad. A new survey said that "that two-fifths of women admitted to purposely posting a picture of a friend not wearing makeup. When asked to remove an unflattering photo, one-fifth of the women surveyed said they refused."
I'll admit, this has happened to me. Once I was out with some friends and it was a really hot day and I was sweaty and feeling icky and my friend insisted I stand in a picture that I didn't want to be in, and I said "Okay, but only if you don't post it on Facebook" because she loves to post unflattering pictures of other people. Sure enough, after the day we all spent together she posted the photo of all of us (who looked terrible) and she wasn't in the shot because she had taken the picture.
Why did she do this? I'd suspect it boosted her ego for some reason. She ended up losing friends (including me) not because of this one specific incident, but because she was a really bad friend overall. She was unsupportive and tended to be very snarky with friends. At the same time, she demanded a lot of attention. (Generally, someone that needs a lot of ego-stroking but doesn't act like a friend to someone else is going to have trouble keeping good people in her life.)
So I wonder if this study says more about toxic friends than people who value friendship? If you care about a friend you aren't going to want to embarrass them or make them feel bad just so you can feel good. I think posting bad pictures of friends is just one symptom of a person who doesn't know how to be a friend. What do you think?
I have a sister-in-law who does this to everyone. She will wait and wait with camera in hand until someone is in an unflattering pose at gatherings – (parties, graduations, weddings, etc.) and snap a picture to post on facebook. She has been called out on it on facebook and then of course she deletes the comments in which people are angry at her. She herself has a lot of posed pictures in which she has spent hours with hair, makeup, and clothes. It obviously speaks to some self-esteem issues, and she has lost friends and relationships over it. I never said anything to her myself, but I no longer consider her a friend, and stopped communicating with her. I can say that she also doesn’t treat people very well in other situations, so I think perhaps people who do this type of thing probably have deeper issues. That is probably a whole other article.
That probably is a whole other article. I agree, people who do this probably have other issues with self-esteem or something related. Good friends just don’t do this to one another.