How to look cooler on Facebook

Have you ever wondered what’s lacking from your facebook profile pic? Do you want people to see your picture and think, “omg, he/she’s so awesome!” Well, dear children, I’m here to help. You see, in order to have that I’m-way-cooler-than-you look, your photos need to follow two simple rules:

Rule #1: There must be other people in your picture, proving that you are popular and people like to take pictures with you.
Rule #2: You must cut all other people out of your picture, proving that you are in fact the coolest one of them all, and they just don’t quite deserve to be in the picture with you.

Bingo! Now you have a picture that truly represents the height of your eg…ahem…I mean, coolness. Take a look at some examples with me for a moment:

Here we have a perfect example of a girl who is not only following both rules, she’s made sure that the person in the picture with her (and subsequently cut out of the picture) is of the opposite sex, AND he’s cuddled up nice & close to her. Clearly this means she’s not only popular, but also attractive.

Next we have the classic unnaturally long & skinny photo. This happens when the picture has to be cut extensively from both sides to remove any other people of lesser coolness from the photo. Some may say that it makes your picture look weird with such an odd aspect ratio. I say it makes it even more obvious that you are following Rules 1 and 2. Good for you.

Just as the first example showed us, it’s always nice if you can leave just enough of a person’s face in the picture to let people know that there WAS someone there wanting to be in the picture with you (rule #1), but you have most definitely removed them (rule #2).

It seems that girls tend to follow these rules more regularly, thus appearing much cooler on facebook. However, you will find the occasional guy who has caught on to the cool-profile-pic secrets and is putting them into practice. This guy right here, for example, has even left in the random female hands around his waist. If THAT doesn’t make the ladies swoon, I don’t know what will. Kudos to you, kid. Kudos to you.

One last example… If you’re picture is taken very close-up, there’s always the possibility that it won’t be quite as obvious that you’ve cut out the not-as-cool people. Solution? Make sure the picture is a full body shot with some space out beside you to one side. Then when you cut out the other people, nip off a little bit of your leg or arm or something. People HAVE to know you’ve doctored the picture then.

I’ve decided to put these rules to work for my current profile picture and Jake’s current profile picture. Here they are before:


Not too bad, but we definitely aren’t looking as cool as we could be. Applying my simple rules, though, we wind up with these awesome pictures:


Voila! No more is the surfboard cramping Jake’s style or Noah getting in the way of my coolness. It’s just that easy!

Disclaimer: I don’t personally know any of the people shown in this post (except of course myself and my husband). I conducted a random facebook search and pulled some of the profile pictures that just jumped off the page and said, “I’m so cool, you only WISH you could be my friend.” And then I blurred their faces just so nobody gets mad at me. Because I don’t like it when people are mad at me.