![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mar. 2nd, 2019
After running some errands in the late afternoon I found myself wandering through the west-end neighbourhoods of Carleton Village and Earlscourt, wandering north up Symington Avenue to Davenport Road and then heading east. It was a warm afternoon, barely below freezing point, and the clean white snow was falling down lightly.
Yesterday morning, I had a bit of fun. While I was shaving, I decided to play with a mustache for a bit. I've almost always fluctuated directly between having a full beard and having no facial hair at all. On a couple of times, I've played with a goatee. But a mustache is something I've never done, at least partly because of the intense reactions it has gotten from others. I wondered: What would happen if I did that now? So, I took a selfie of myself with a mustache, went to shave it off, and then took a selfie of me without.
I posted the two photos, with and without, on Instagram. I'd also taken care to crosspost them to Facebook, with and without. The photos also made it to Flickr, too, with and without. (They made it to Twitter and Tumblr, too.)
The reactions I got were very interesting. The reactions, as I noted, were intense; I got not a few GIF responses. On Facebook, a notable majority of people seemed to be hostile to the mustache, even intensely so. On Instagram, as one friend pointed out, the reactions went the other way; my mustache photo got nearly twice as many likes as my non-mustache photo, and the comments were accordingly more enthusiastic.
What was going on? I might speculate that my Facebook friends tend to be people I know relatively well, even having real-life relationships with them, while many of my Instagram friends are more random additions. Was it a matter of people with relatively little attachment to me being interested to see what I might do? I wonder.
I posted the two photos, with and without, on Instagram. I'd also taken care to crosspost them to Facebook, with and without. The photos also made it to Flickr, too, with and without. (They made it to Twitter and Tumblr, too.)
The reactions I got were very interesting. The reactions, as I noted, were intense; I got not a few GIF responses. On Facebook, a notable majority of people seemed to be hostile to the mustache, even intensely so. On Instagram, as one friend pointed out, the reactions went the other way; my mustache photo got nearly twice as many likes as my non-mustache photo, and the comments were accordingly more enthusiastic.
What was going on? I might speculate that my Facebook friends tend to be people I know relatively well, even having real-life relationships with them, while many of my Instagram friends are more random additions. Was it a matter of people with relatively little attachment to me being interested to see what I might do? I wonder.