Maybe this is the frontier of facial augmentation, and maybe it’s been done already, but if not I have a feeling we’re not far off from the surgically enhanced smile. That is, making small cuts at the corners of the mouth to broaden the gape. Why might someone want this elective surgery? Photographed, of course, a larger smile would suggest the poseur’s larger capacity for joy. One's appearance of being fun-loving, of having an agreeable personality, radical positivity, and just like being amazing has become a preferred persona for life outside the home.
The genuine, unselfconscious smile has given way to something more ecstatic, manic even. People sometimes look like charming promotions of themselves, but to what end? Is it charm or smarm? We aren’t stopping for photos to catch moments, we're staging them, creating them. Halloween pumpkin patches are frequented by costumed influencers, young men and women in shoes two steps too fancy and fully made up and kitted out in browns, golds, and oranges. Folks’ online profiles are superblooming over fields of wildflower. Or so they’d have it.
To naturally express a happy state of mind for a picture feels quaint and boomer-like. Not enough perceived vitality. But too many of us look like we’re faking it. It is so common, this held exaggerated smile, that it has become normal even in times that are arguably historically awful. I suffer not from your world weariness, we suggest. To me it comes off like the over-laugher at the comedy club—you sense the pain behind the drinks.
Just as inflation takes hold on economies, it takes hold on language (we’ve been stuck on awesome and amazing for a loooooong time). But where to turn after the limit of the linguistic max flex? How do we overcook our descriptions when they’ve been so overdone for so long? Come back down to ground? We know anecdotally, and from social scientists, and our collective gut that not all of this online life has been real. And that we can’t believe all the pictures. Maybe the young are properly disillusioned, and have given us the word mid as a hint.