The photo problem

I was going to change my profile photo last night and somehow it's nearly one in the morning and I still haven't done it. I wanted to tell someone about this because it's so stupid. It started as a thirty second thing. Just swap the picture. That's it.

The old one had to go. It's me from like three years ago, standing in front of the school gate, and you can see the crest on the wall behind me, the whole crest, the motto in Latin underneath and everything. I never thought about it before. It's just a nice photo of me, the light was good. But last night I actually looked at it and thought, oh, anyone can read exactly where I went. Not even guess. Read it. The full name of the place is right there over my shoulder.

So fine. New photo. Easy.

Except every photo I have is like that, sort of. I went through the camera roll and the first decent one is me and Priya and Sam at the noodle place near her flat, all three of us laughing, and Priya doesn't even know I'd be putting her face up somewhere. It's not really mine to post. I don't think she'd care but also I don't know that she wouldn't care, and those are different things. So no.

There's one of me on the street that I actually like, from the spring, but you can see the corner shop with the green sign and the bus stop and honestly anyone from around here would know that street in one second. It's the most recognisable corner in the whole area. I love that photo. I can't use that photo. Which feels insane to type out.

Then I found a good one from work, except I've still got the lanyard on, the badge clipped to my shirt, and you can't read the badge exactly but you can read enough. The company colours, the shape of it. And my name on it, obviously, my actual full name, which is the whole point of the badge. I zoomed in to check and yeah. Readable if you tried. I don't want to be findable through a lanyard. That's a weird sentence.

Okay so. Take a new one. Just take one right now, I thought, it's late but the lamp light is fine, I'll do a quick mirror selfie like a normal person.

And the mirror selfie shows my whole room. Obviously it does, that's what mirrors do, I knew that, but I didn't think it. Behind me there's the window and through the window you can see the building across the way and the little balcony with the plants, and my desk, and the thing on my wall, and I stood there going, this is basically a floor plan. Anyone could work out which floor I'm on. I tried angling up so it was just my face and the ceiling and then I looked like I'd been arrested. Terrible. Deleted.

I don't know when I started caring about this. I genuinely used to not. My old username — the one I had for years, before this account — was tied to so much. My old email, an old forum, a thing I'd rather not be connected to my name now, sort of a previous-life version of me, and for the longest time I just used the same handle everywhere because why would you not, it's easier. And then one day I searched it on a whim and the trail was. Long. Longer than I'd have guessed. Stuff I'd forgotten I ever wrote. That was the first time I felt that little cold drop in the stomach. So maybe it started there and I just didn't notice it becoming a habit.

I want to be clear this is not me being paranoid in a dramatic way. I'm not important. Nobody's looking for me. It's more like — I don't want a stranger to be able to assemble me out of small pieces I handed them for free. The school, the street, the badge, the window. None of it is secret. All of it together is a lot.

The reason it came up at all is I made a new account on Knot.chat to talk to people I don't know, which is the whole appeal, you get to be a person without the rest of it attached, and the very first thing it asks is do you want a photo. And I sat there with my thumb over it like an idiot. Because the point of the thing is that nobody there knows me. So why would I hand them the gate, the corner, the lanyard, the window. It defeats it. It completely defeats it.

But also a blank grey circle looks like a bot. Or like you're up to something. People don't reply to grey circles, or they do but warily. I get it, I'm the same, I scroll past the grey ones. So I want a photo. I want a photo that is me but not me, if that makes sense, a photo that says here is a face, a real human, please talk to me, but does not say and here is my postcode and my employer and my alma mater.

That photo, it turns out, is very hard to take.

I tried again about an hour ago. Sat on the floor with a plain bit of wall behind me, no window, no crest, no badge, took the lanyard off, even checked there was nothing reflective behind me catching the room — there's a mirror near the door and the first three shots had the whole room in it again, in miniature, in the mirror, which I only saw on the fourth look. The room kept getting in. It's like the room wanted to be in the photo.

I have one now that's okay. Just me, blank wall, slightly tired, slightly orange from the lamp. It's fine. It's a bit sad maybe. Not the laughing-with-friends one, not the good-light-at-the-gate one. A more careful, more boring photo. I haven't uploaded it. I keep not uploading it. I'm sitting here looking at the good ones I can't use and the boring one I can, and feeling weirdly mournful about the gap between them, which is a ridiculous thing to feel at one in the morning over a profile picture.

The whole thing took four hours. Four. To not change a photo, and then sort of change it, maybe, I still haven't tapped the button. I don't even know if I will tonight. I might just leave the grey circle. People can think I'm a bot. At least the bot isn't standing in front of its own school.

Anyway. That's what I did with my evening. Don't ask me anything productive. I have to go to bed before this turns into the username thing all over again and I'm up till three searching myself.