MySpace Angles

2006practiceclassic

Published September 8, 2026

MySpace Angles is the trick of shooting a self-portrait from an extreme high angle to shrink the body and hide facial flaws, a habit that got its name from the flood of arm's length profile pics on MySpace after the site's 2003 launch. The term hit wider use in February 2006 with the first Urban Dictionary entry and David Lehre's short film 'MySpace: The Movie,' and it went on to fuel a decade of dating-site warnings, academic papers, a Samsung ad campaign and a viral 2013 Korean YouTube demo.

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Overview

The core move is a self-portrait shot from well above the face at arm's length, with the lens tilted sharply down. The high vantage shrinks the body out of frame, softens double chins and widens the eyes while cropping the face into the middle of the picture1. Urban Dictionary contributors also flagged the use of pushed brightness and contrast edits, treating heavy post-processing as part of the same visual bag of tricks5.

Because MySpace pushed a single lead image on every profile, the trick ran through mid-2000s pages in bulk. Men on dating threads spent years complaining about being fooled by the angle, and dating advice sites eventually named it as a warning sign for anyone considering a first meet-up3. Women pushed back that men were pulling the same stunt with gym mirrors and cropped bathroom shots, a debate that ran across the follow-up posts from the same sites4.

Origin & Background

Platform
MySpace (source practice) / Urban Dictionary and David Lehre short film (naming and viral spread)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2006

The practice of shooting a flattering self-portrait predates MySpace, growing alongside consumer digital cameras and early social sites like Friendster and LiveJournal. The label attached itself to MySpace after that site's 2003 launch, and the first Urban Dictionary entry for 'Myspace Angles' was submitted on February 10, 2006, describing it as 'a style of photography used to make unattractive people appear attractive, often by positioning the camera at strange angles and using extreme close-ups'5. That same month, filmmaker David Lehre released 'MySpace: The Movie' on his personal site, opening the short with two guys studying a blind date's suspicious profile pics for signs of 'The Angles.' Lehre later said he came up with the phrase after meeting women in person and realizing they 'look nothing like their photos' and had 'figured out their best angles'7.

How It Spread

Mainstream press picked up the joke by the end of the 2000s. In July 2008, Slate ran 'I Look Stupid,' a first-person piece about the pressure to post a flattering head shot on Gmail, iChat and Facebook, and referenced a Guardian breakdown of nine common head shot poses including 'the hand job' and 'the gormless grin'1. The Guardian returned to the topic in a July 8, 2009 blog post that pointed readers to the academic paper 'You Looked Better on MySpace: Deception and Authenticity on Web 2.0,' published in First Monday, which argued that other users heavily police arm's length selfies for signs of misrepresentation2.

The dating advice site Official Dating Resource ran two of the most-shared warnings about the trick. Its 'Beware the Dreaded MySpace Angles' post cast the angle as a form of 'black magic' used by 'photography-savvy young ladies' to hide chins and bulges from men chatting with them on MySpace, Facebook and Friendster3. The follow-up 'Revenge of the MySpace Angles' answered women who wrote in pointing out that guys lie in their profile photos too, joking that 'the girls are just more fun to laugh at'4.

Brands eventually mined the joke for ads. In August 2009 The Viral Factory made a six-film YouTube campaign for the Samsung ST550 (also branded TL225) called 'Own the Angles,' with each clip showing a vampire, zombie or other grotesque character using the camera's front-facing screen to work up a flattering self-shot6. Four years later, on August 9, 2013, Korean YouTuber Namsik uploaded 'The Importance of The Angle,' a short selfie clip that starts from an unflattering low angle before swinging up above the head, and it set off a wave of copycat videos across the South Korean web8.

How to Use This Meme

The classic recipe is straightforward. Hold the camera above your head at arm's length, aim the lens down toward the face at roughly a 45 degree pitch, tilt the chin up slightly and let the jawline read against the sky or ceiling. Shots typically get cropped tight to the face, with brightness pushed high enough to blow out skin texture5. On MySpace profiles the angle was often paired with a mirror shot or a top-down laptop-camera pose, both aimed at showing the face while keeping the body out of frame3.

Cultural Impact

The trick attracted academic attention as well as journalistic hand-wringing. The First Monday paper cited by The Guardian framed the arm's length selfie as a modern echo of Henry VIII's disappointment on meeting Anne of Cleves in person after choosing her from a portrait2. Slate placed the practice inside a wider anxiety about identity online, noting how Gmail, Apple's iChat and Facebook were all nudging users into posting a head shot before the end of the 2000s1. Samsung's 'Own the Angles' viral turned the joke into a selling point for a compact camera whose whole pitch was a second screen on the front, letting the user frame a self-shot without guesswork6.

Fun Facts

The First Monday paper on the practice compared today's MySpace users to Henry VIII, who 'felt disappointment upon meeting his fourth wife Anne of Cleves after selecting her to be his mate on the basis of her portrait'2

Samsung's 2009 'Own the Angles' viral, produced by The Viral Factory, sold the ST550 by casting vampires and zombies as the ones using the trick to work up a passable self-shot6

The Korean web calls the same move the 'Ulzzang' angle, from a slang word meaning 'best face'7

The Guardian's 2008 taxonomy of head shots split them into nine styles, and Slate's writer admitted the one he settled on, 'the hand job,' was flagged in that piece as looking 'camp or arch'1

Official Dating Resource's original warning post described angling women as bending 'precariously to just the right position to hide those multiple chins'3

Derivatives & Variations

Ulzzang angle, the Korean web's term for the same technique, translating roughly to 'best face' angle[7]

Namsik's August 9, 2013 YouTube clip 'The Importance of The Angle,' which triggered a run of copycat before-and-after selfie videos in South Korea[8]

Samsung's 2009 'Own the Angles' viral series with The Viral Factory, in which vampires, zombies and other monsters demo the trick to look presentable[6]

Frequently Asked Questions