A-Zhen went to Xiamen with her middle school classmates and immediately jumped onto her bed to look at the photos when she got home. In the nine-square grid, she looked stunning in a floral dress with her chin resting on her hand, but in the enlarged lower corner, A-May happened to be squinting from the sea breeze, looking just like a blind person. After posting for two hours on her social media, A-May sent a smile emoji: "Is my ugly face out there?" A-Zhen first noticed the dead fish eyes of her classmates in the photo and quickly retracted it, apologizing privately. Someone in the group chat tried to smooth things over: "Beauty apps know how to enhance, it's normal."

This kind of "normal" has already permeated social media. In the company break room, A-Ling posts afternoon tea every day, with six cups of bubble tea, but her cup is particularly transparent; in the family group chat, her cousin posted a photo from a grave visiting ceremony, and everyone's oily faces reflected light, making her look like a peach blossom; at a class reunion group photo, the class monitor's beer belly was edited to look like abs. Some jokingly call social media a "large magical realism theater," with filters thicker than the glass curtain wall of the Canton Tower.

As photo editing apps become more advanced, people's hearts shrink more and more. Last week, I ran into an old colleague, A-Kay, at tea time, and her phone gallery had over thirty selfies: "This one has a sharper chin, this one has bigger eyes, I need to edit nine different styles before I can post." By the time she finished editing her beautiful photo, the double chin of her colleague at the table had already faded from the iced lemon tea. The funniest part was last month during a department outing, in the group photo A-Kay posted, A-Qiang in the back row was edited to the point where even his ears were gone—turns out the "one-click slimming" feature of the beauty app was too powerful.

Social media has turned into a vanity exhibition hall, where everyone wants to be the main character. A-Zhen's aunt always uses "facial reshaping" when posting family photos, making her face look sharp while her husband's bald head becomes increasingly shiny. The most classic was last year's Qingming Festival, where she edited the family photo to the point that even the deceased grandmother had apple cheeks; after three minutes of silence in the family group, her second uncle quietly commented: "It's a ghostly duty, even ancestors need to wear makeup in the afterlife."

In fact, when the photo editing knife is at its sharpest, it cuts through human feelings. A-Zhen remembers when her old classmate A-Xin got married, the bridesmaids' group photo was sent to the group, and the bride replied instantly: "Wait for me to edit first!" The version seen on social media the next day showed the bride's veil flowing like a fairy, while the bridesmaids all turned into overly smoothed porcelain dolls. The worst was the flower girl niece, whose originally cute baby fat was edited into a snake-like face, and the little girl's mom privately messaged late at night asking to delete the photo.

Sometimes looking back, in the old days of developing film photos, everyone laughed off the ugly pictures. Now everyone has dozens of photo editing apps on their phones, pushing and pulling, and after editing the photos, they still have to come up with a caption to pretend to be casual. Like last month when A-Zhen and her friends went hiking, it was clearly raining heavily, but someone managed to edit the gray sky into a colorful sunset, with the caption "True feelings are seen in the wind and rain"—the genuine feelings had long been swallowed by the beauty camera.

True friends should know to hold back when editing photos. Like A-May later joking with A-Zhen: "Next time help me edit to have big eyes like a model, so I don't have to be your social media emoji again." In fact, the most important thing is to ask before posting: "Do you all think this is okay?" While beautifying your own appearance, remember to retain some empathy. After all, likes on social media can't replace true friends; looking like a goddess in photos is not as good as having someone in reality who shares a drink with you without makeup.

The most important thing in life is to have character, and even photo editing should be done with integrity. Next time you take a photo, you might as well say: "Let's all edit together!" Or just go all out, like A-Zhen's group of carefree friends, specifically taking photos of their cross-eyed double chins, with the caption "True friends dare to show you their bare faces." After all, no matter how beautiful the filter is, it's still fake; the lively likes on social media can't compare to someone in reality who smiles with you until their eyes disappear.