I've been around someone trying to get into dating apps, he just started asking us to "take a picture of him real quick" while we're doing outings with the bois "so I can out it on tinder".

I assume most people are this way, you just have others start taking pictures of the things you normally do (but didnt normally take pictures of) when you feel the need to make/flesh out a profile.

> This is the one thing that puzzles me most about dating apps: where do all these pictures come from?

People actually curate the profile and copywrite the text. It’s not real authentic life documented by accident. Once you put your profile there for others to judge you soon figure out that it needs to be manufactured. That’s when you start asking for others to snap a photo while your out doing the thing you maybe wouldn’t even do if it was not for the show.

There’s a pretty big range between “I don’t have any pictures of myself” and “documenting every second of our lives.” Most people are somewhere in that range.

You only need a few pictures to fill a profile. Taking a few snaps when doing interesting stuff likely spread over months or years isn’t “documenting every second of our lives”.

You're not weird. I've wondered the same thing myself.

I used to take more pictures of myself on parties and general group events. Now I am less involved so less pictures are taken.

You’re weird. The vast majority of instagram using women take so many photos that the joke is that “the camera eats first”.

I’m actively exhausted when I go out with my partner because I know that I’m going to take lots of photos.

I’d love to be in a world where this is so rare that people can’t even explain where the photos go: but unfortunately I ask the opposite question, which is “where do these people get the time to do literally anything else with how crippling their social media and photography addictions are?”