Londoners. You’ve heard the rumours. We’re miserable, heads-down, tourist-avoiding narcissists. Well, our selfies match up to our reputation. They’re reportedly the most miserable in the world..
A new study commissioned by Somerset House and selfiecity London led a team of media researchers and data scientists to collect all public Instagram pictures during one week in September 2015. That was 152,462 images, of which 21,662 featured faces. They looked at factors such as emotional expression and physical poses, as well as gender and age estimates. And the results were hilarious.
Compared to five other major global cities, we have the least happy faces. We have the most upright poses and are least prone to the classic head-tilt duck pose – our average head turn is 15 degrees compared to the 20 degrees average. Factor in us having the highest number of eyes closed, and evidentally we’re a serious straight-to-the-camera bunch. Best of all, London has the oldest average age for male selfies – an estimated 28 years vs 26 years for other cities. So London men take the most miserable selfies for the longest amount of time.
So tl;dr – we’re just mopey, down-in the dumps narcissists. Tell us something we don’t know.
Somerset House’s Big Bang Data exhibition opens Thursday.
