Many years ago, I was in Las Vegas at a health care finance conference. I had a pretty good time, first time in many years I have to say; I had 3 conferences in Las Vegas, and visited two other times. This time around, I noticed something pretty wild that helps me with the premise of what I have to say today.

Photo by Jemingway via Flickr

If you’re anywhere on social media, you’re going to see a lot of images of some very good looking people. The overwhelming majority are pretty women, but sometimes it’s a good looking guy (I suppose; I don’t notice the guys that often lol). They’re extremely good looking, to the point of perfection sometimes. They just look too good to be true.

Before I started traveling all over the country, business or pleasure, I’d have said you don’t see that many outstanding looking women in one place anywhere. That was true for my life. Not that I haven’t seen a lot of nice looking women, but rarely in one place, and certainly not in quantity.

Things changed when I had two trips to Fort Lauderdale and my first business trip to Las Vegas; one didn’t have to go far before seeing so many good looking people, which I never noticed the previous two times I’d been in the city. I also don’t pay attention to the waitresses (I think they’re called that) who bring drinks to the tables when playing poker or slots; I live 45 miles from two casinos in different directions, one for almost 35 years.

The time I’m talking about, I was at the Wynn Casino. For 3 1/2 days I kept seeing some of the most outstanding women I’d ever seen in person. Most of them were wearing little black dresses, shorter than the ones in the image above. There’s a different walk from women wearing stuff like that. It’s confident and quick, with short strides, and you never see any of them slouching over; then again, with 3 to 5 inch heels, I’m not sure if one can slouch.

You know something else about the experience? You weren’t going to meet them; I certainly wasn’t, but I wasn’t trying. They weren’t there to talk to me or most of the people I saw. That is, unless you were one of three things.

One, you got into one of the big, expensive dance clubs that seemed to be open most of the day, definitely into the night (6AM, but I was going to bed 1AM, which would have been 4AM at home). I was informed that many of the ladies are actually hired to go into the clubs to talk to some of the men that show up along; of all things!

Two, you were already part of their inner circle, because many of them already had their arms around or hooked up with other men; every once in a while much older men. I have no idea whether the relationships were legit or not (though I postulated), just that they weren’t alone.

Or three, you happened to bump into them, which happened accidentally a couple of times because, well, I’ve noticed pretty people seem to think it’s everyone else’s job to get out of their way, and for the most part I do, but when I get irked after a while, even locally, I’ll just stop and let people walk into me; I refuse to genuflect just because of what anyone looks like or who they might be. I’m pretty nice most of the time, but I have my limits as well.

I relate this to what I see online. For the most part, we don’t know any of the women in the avatars used on social media. On some sites, most of the images are fake; that is, the women aren’t fake but the picture isn’t of the person who’s running the account. It’s like on certain types of blogs where you see a picture of a very pretty woman, yet the writer’s name is John; every once in a while the person isn’t even trying to hide what they are, and will use the image of a famous actress saying it’s them; please!

It’s things like this that make us not trust people, something I’ve talked about often over the years. It reminds me of online dating (I tried that in 1994; it was short lived, and ended up dating one person for a few months), where I hear that people will put up pictures that are supposed to represent them, but it’s either a picture of someone else or a picture of them when they were 18 and they’re now 45 (in 1993 or 1994, no one put their pictures in a newspaper). I remember knowing someone who put up a picture of himself on Facebook some years back from when he was in his 20’s and I called him out on it because he was closer to 60; I know, that’s snarky lol.

conference friends 🙂

I’ve been to some blogs lately where the owner has said that if someone leaves a comment and doesn’t have an avatar, they’re going to remove the comment, no matter how good it is. I’ve decided that criteria doesn’t work for me because I know some people are faking their avatars, some are using logos, some folks use cartoon images to represent them, and some want to protect their privacy; I understand. Personally, I don’t care about the avatars as much, especially since I have it set so that nothing worse than PG will show up here; I’m too busy fighting spam to deal with it.

My point overall is that if you get to thinking that maybe someone is worth following only because you see their image, without trying to check anything else about them, you’re going to be disappointed. The marketers or whatever you want to call them are hoping to trick you, to get you to follow them so they can market to you or have you in their clutches.

Don’t get caught up in the game; you’ll hate yourself for it later on. Instead, hope to meet someone as attractive in person that you might like, or have already liked. It never hurts anyone’s feelings to have a picture with a nice looking person, and if you’re a nice looking person, don’t be worrying too much about sharing an avatar. Just don’t believe the hype or live the hype; your thought? 🙂
 

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