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Exploring that Awkward Time of Life in between Grad School and Marriage.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Do I Look like These People?

So last night I was engaged in one of favorite time-wasting activities - reading people's IM profiles and away messages - when I came across an interesting link (credit to the King). This site is called MyHeritage.com, and basically it lets you upload photos of yourself and it will tell you what celebrities you look like. I thought this sounded like an interesting concept, so of course, I gave it a try.

This is the picture I used:
And these were my top 3 results:
Prince William
Imre Kertesz (holocaust survivor/author)
David Hasselhoff

"Eh, maybe," I thought. But as cool as it was to be compared to David Hasselhoff in any way at all, something occurred to me. I'm not sure the name of this phenomenon/condition (if it even has a name), but I have noticed that no two pictures of me ever look exactly the same, and that most photos don't really look like the real me all that much. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I decided to test my theory.

Based on the assumption that a picture of the same person should get fairly-similar results (I could understand some minor variances for haircut, facial expression, etc), I then entered this shot - my horrible friendster picture that I only put up as a joke and never got around to changing:
And the results this time were completely different:
Władysław Szpilman (the basis for the movie The Pianist)
Freddie Prinze Jr
Chevy Chase

Interesting. No overlap at all. I do find it a little odd that I got Nazi-era European Jewish men in both sets of results, but I'm still not really seeing a strong resemblances to any of the program's picks. Is it possible that I am unknowingly some sort of mutant shape-shifter, altering my appearance ever so slightly each time I'm photographed? Maybe, but as awesome as that would be, I'd say the more likely explanation is that all of the bugs haven't been worked out of the website yet. Regardless, I decided to try one more time.

Enter picture #3:

And here's what I got:
Josh Hartnett
Harrison Ford
Al Pacino

Again, no overlap whatsoever, but I am finally satisfied with the results. Not so much in the "oh, wow, I actually do look like that guy" sense, but more so in the "most ladies would probably agree that those three guys are fairly attractive so I don't mind being compared to them" sense. That's really all I was looking for anyway.

If anyone else gives this a try, I'd love to know the results. I may even toss up a few more pictures of myself to see what happens. Here's the link (it's free to sign up):
http://www.myheritage.com


**EDIT**
For even more fun, set the gender button to "all" and see what happens. I got Meg Ryan on picture #1 (in 3rd place, no less - surpassing Hasselhoff!) and Madonna in 8th place on pic #3.

Very hilarious/creepy.

1 Comments:

  • At 8:05 AM , Blogger The Brewer Patriot said...

    dude, i got bunch of crazy people. Rudolph valentino
    michael douglas
    and some other guy i had never heard of. I think they just choose people who are looking in the same direction amd figure that is close enough.

     

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