By Gina Hill | Alaska Headline Living | March 2026
It says something about the times when the photo police post to find you is one where you’re pouting into a ring light. Those duck-faced, over-filtered selfies we labor over for likes suddenly become “last seen” images, an unintended public service announcement.
I’ve been writing a lot of missing persons stories lately, scrolling through social feeds for usable photos, and realizing how little we all look like ourselves. The glamour filter might slim your face for the algorithm, but it also might make you unrecognizable when it really matters.
Once upon a time, you had maybe three photos: a school portrait, a driver’s license, a Christmas snapshot with someone’s thumb in the corner. Now the police are combing through TikTok to find the one frame where you’re not sticking out your tongue or perfecting a Kylie Jenner tutorial pose.
It’s darkly funny, and a little bit sad, that our curated selves have replaced our real ones. Every photo says, “Look at me,” but none of them quite say who we are. Maybe what our missing person posters really reveal is that we’ve all gone missing … from authenticity, from our natural faces, from the kind of photo someone could actually recognize.
And if I ever go missing, please … don’t use the one where I’m testing the AI aging filter. That’s not me. That’s me pretending to be 80 and wise. I promise, I’m only one of those things.
