How Normal Are You?
October 1, 2020 6:58 AM   Subscribe

How Normal Am I? is an art project/tech demo website by Tijmen Schep that that uses your camera and face-recognition to gauge how "normal" you are.

At least that is the link-baity hook. What it is really doing is giving a short but effective demonstration of what is possible in the field of recognizing and categorizing people.
posted by AndrewStephens (33 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Note: This turned the camera on on my laptop, then never turned it off.
posted by achrise at 7:13 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


Rather fascinating. Useful (?) to know that my profile apparently looks 10 years younger than my frontal.
posted by Aethelwulf at 7:29 AM on October 1, 2020


Note: this told me I was fat, ugly and sad, then never apologized.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:32 AM on October 1, 2020 [11 favorites]


On my phone, it turned on my rear-facing camera and didn't provide a way to swap to the selfie-cam.
posted by hanov3r at 8:03 AM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]


That was pretty interesting, though I didn't love the auto-playing audio. With my 'rona beard and unkempt hair it thought I looked about 10 years older than I am and gave me a pretty low attractiveness score -- both of which I'd agree with. I thought BMI was the easiest to manipulate -- you just have to raise your eyebrows and tilt your head forward to get a lower score. I was most unclear about the "fingerprint" section -- I would have liked to have known what the grid represented and it varied wildly depending on how I turned my head, etc.
posted by treepour at 8:29 AM on October 1, 2020


Always nice to start the day being told I appear to be a different gender than I am, ten years older than I am, and dangerously underweight
posted by potrzebie at 8:40 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


Yup, unusable on mobile.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:55 AM on October 1, 2020


There was a tiny grey camera button in the top left corner for me on mobile that reversed things. But honestly unless you are a very attractive twenty-hindering or you want to have a computer say mean things about you, I would maybe not bother.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:15 AM on October 1, 2020


I have never been so flattered by a glimpse of our dystopian future
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:28 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


I have never been so flattered by a glimpse of our dystopian future

I was about to thank everyone for crowd-testing the Future-Crime AI being developed.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:33 AM on October 1, 2020


facial recognition data gathering app
posted by infini at 10:04 AM on October 1, 2020 [6 favorites]


I took off my glasses and my beauty score went up 6%.
posted by middlethird at 10:10 AM on October 1, 2020


For reference, Ingrid Bergman is about a 7 and Ryan Reynolds is not quite an 8.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:15 AM on October 1, 2020


I am 64% normal. I don't understand what that means...
posted by kitcat at 10:28 AM on October 1, 2020


Nice - If this app is telling me that I am 2/3 as attractive as Ryan Reynolds than I support it.
posted by windbox at 10:29 AM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]


OK, got it to work. I was 45% normal. The computer thinks I'm 14 years younger than I actually am, but also quite a bit heavier. I rated below average in beauty, and was apparently sad - which most people are. I have a life expectancy of 81 years.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:37 AM on October 1, 2020


I took off my glasses and my Hotness Score went from 7.5 to 9.7 so I'm going to say this is a great website!
posted by theodolite at 10:37 AM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


I took off my glasses and my Hotness Score went from 7.5 to 9.7 so I'm going to say this is a great website!

Was this website created by a Hollywood screenwriter?
posted by jacquilynne at 10:43 AM on October 1, 2020 [16 favorites]


Just reading about this made me push my laptop camera-hider closed.
posted by the_blizz at 10:50 AM on October 1, 2020 [11 favorites]


I want to know how Cliff I am instead.
posted by srboisvert at 11:23 AM on October 1, 2020


I'm an old woman so it couldn't see me at all.
posted by JanetLand at 11:36 AM on October 1, 2020 [19 favorites]


I'm 40 and it thought I was 16 (I do look young, but not THAT young). BMI seemed pretty close. Not a great judge of hotness so not sure how accurate my score was (7.9 so I'll take it).

Pretty creepy though. Sometimes I feel lucky to be the age I am and have missed out on so many of these tech things that are meant to make life better, but end up making it immeasurably worse. (For example I am so thankful I did not have Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, etc. when I was a teen).

Can't even imagine how awful this type of thing will make the future.
posted by elvissa at 12:01 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


This is creepy af and also kind of great, it told me I'm thin, beautiful, and young (nope, not especially, and nope) and then it told me I would live for 81 more years, after I had already told it I'm in my thirties.

Thanks, I guess?
posted by beandip at 1:06 PM on October 1, 2020


42% normal, with a face made for radio.
posted by emelenjr at 1:14 PM on October 1, 2020


I'm 53% normal, which sounds about right. It also thinks I'm thinner than I really am. Anyway, that was fascinating -- thanks for posting!
posted by holborne at 1:31 PM on October 1, 2020


In a way the inaccuracy is just as bad as if this really worked, and I suspect that's part of the message. (Note the bit where the presenter said he wanted to demo with African faces but couldn't get a consistent read). Algorithms give the people who commission and employ them a sense of accuracy, and they then make decisions with real world consequences, even though the accuracy is very much lacking -- but they feel justified.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:32 PM on October 1, 2020


I did it again with my laptop and better lighting. My beauty was 7.9, I was 29 years old and had a BMI of 20.4. Still sad, still male. The difference? Lighting. And I smiled more, but not enough to be neutral. I was 63% normal.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:29 PM on October 1, 2020


I'm an old cis guy, and it tells me I'm about half normal and "Pretty strange in a sexy way." I suppose I should save that assessment for Tinder if I ever get not married anymore. Or was that guy in the glasses just coming on to me? Oh, and I'm going to die in twelve years.
posted by kozad at 3:12 PM on October 1, 2020


I got 75% normal, which is described as "violently normal."

If my normalcy hurt you, I sincerely apologize for the harm I caused.
posted by oddman at 5:07 PM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]


I started it once with the browser on an external monitor which meant that I was looking up slightly. My age and gender came across as 41 year-old woman. I moved the browser down to my laptop where I was looking straight at the camera and determined that I'm a 52 year old man and that I'm "Violently average." oddman, I think we should fight.

(I'm a 50 yo woman who is skeptical about the accuracy of their AI.)
posted by bendy at 7:02 PM on October 1, 2020


You can definitely manipulate it a lot. I was surprised that it said I was extremely normal but then I suppose that just means I was close to the average of users who submitted data for all the parameters they evaluate. That doesn’t necessarily mean I look like the average of those people, let alone all people.
posted by atoxyl at 8:53 PM on October 1, 2020


You can definitely manipulate it a lot.

I got my age all the way down from 35 (a little higher than my actual age) to 19. Personally I think I look a bit younger than 35, but I don’t think I look 19.
posted by atoxyl at 8:57 PM on October 1, 2020


I’d participate if there were an add-on called, “What’s Wrong With You?”
posted by The Potate at 9:32 PM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]


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