The Online Epidemic of Facelessness

11:45am, Monday, February 16, 2015

Mercyline Reporting

Across America and now across the globe, identity theft is at an all-time high. But there is another danger now targeted at our young people, facelessness. In some ways, the abundance of selfies and a clear online presence secured the identity of social media users, leaving a trail of who they are. But now for some, that trail is all but disappearing. Take Lynx for example:

Lynx is a photographer, and as you can see from his instagram, he has no face. This is a problem we are seeing more and more. Lynx recently won a photography award from an art community you’ve probably never heard of, and this was his dinner out with his wife to celebrate.

Faceless. It’s like they were never even there. In fact, the staff reports seeing no one with the features shown in this picture. One bus boy did vaguely remember an underdressed couple in the 20-somethings looking at their phones, taking pictures of each other and their food, but the staff told us this young man was unreliable and that he often claimed to “see people” fitting that description.

We did some homework and found this picture of Lynx’s wife, Piper, posting an OOTD before the evening began.

Pretty horrifying if you are seeing this for the first time, Unfortunately we have found this is all too common, and spreading quickly. Eunice for example, lives in Virginia. Her friends say they used to love seeing her face, until she got an instagram three years ago. Warning, these images may be disturbing to sensitive readers.

Where have they all gone? What can we do? It seems there is little we can do, and things are only getting worse. Eunice is not even pictured in her latest post. It’s like she is vanishing altogether.

Meet Sage from Pheonix, Arizona. He is pictured here with a mango, “his favorite fruit,” his mom said. “He used to eat it with his hands and the juice would get on his face, and the stringy fibers would get in his teeth. I made him eat them on the porch because he made such a mess, but now so much has changed. I miss those days.” And as you can see, a lot has changed.

Sage’s sister Margaret is not far behind, as you can see from this picture she posted of her and her friends at the local botanical garden.

Sage’s girlfriend is also believed to be faceless, as can be seen in his post from their coffee date earlier this week.

This is not a problem localized to one family or region. If you have 3G or high speed internet in your neighborhood, your community is susceptible to facelessness. And we don’t know this full and lasting affect this will have on future generations, but we know we must act now, because our youth are disappearing.

-Galen Rea TRD. SA. TD. (Author of “Cats in Sweaters and Outer Space; Early Warning Signs”) reporting.