Hey everybody, welcome to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语).

It has been said that "a picture is worth a thousand words". In that case, there are books and books of words in the greatest online library ever compiled.

I'm talking about your Moments (朋友圈) on WeChat (微信), where at any time we can find photos of friends and strangers doing things from crazy, unique (独特) behavior to boring, everyday living.

The question that social scientists (社会学家) of the future will have to answer a million times is, "why did everybody really want to see what everybody else was eating all the time?".

So, recently someone I know asked me if I really believed what I saw in photos.

It's an interesting question because photos are not actually real, right?

Do things exist only because we can see them? Are we real?

What if what we do every day is just a virtual reality simulation (虚拟现实模拟) on someone's screen in the sky?

Ok, well, let's just believe that this world is real, and I'm here, you're here, and everything has it's own physical reality.

The question remains:

"are we being cheated by the pictures we see on our phones?"

If you look on WeChat moments, you can see lots of beautiful people doing amazing things, having so much fun, making you wish that you were there and you were them.

That's the power of social media (社交媒体) to trick others into thinking that our lives are more wonderful than they actually are.

Well, you know that's not always the case, since you have posted pics on your Moments too.

You know that we only post the best ones, and sometimes we take a hundred photos just to get one good one.

Besides, the first one you take is usually the best one anyway, if you act naturally.

So, can a picture lie to us?

Nowadays we have lots of tools to help us adjust (调整) photographs for the better.

Someone told me that girls no longer need to wear make-up (化妆品) for photos, they just do some Photoshop (PS) and voila, they look like a million bucks.

There's also a lot of photo apps that help you make your photos look better than they originally were.

Whatever you do, strike a pose (摆姿势), smile for the camera, show us your lunch, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt (假定某人是无辜的).

Even though we are looking at pictures from a long distance away, beauty is in the eye of the beholder (看起来觉得美就是美), and I think the world looks beautiful from here.

OK everybody, thanks for listening to Meiguo Shushu Shuo Yingyu (美国叔叔说英语) and see you next time, zai jian, bye bye.

Thousand Words