Two Minutes: Faces are Worth Millions.

" What a beautiful face. It's perfect- and it's mine as well now."

In 2018, people, following in the steps of the iconic stars of yore, realised that their most valuable asset was the one they showed the world all the time- faces. As time progressed, a market for beautiful faces to use as profile pictures in social media evolved into a market in which you could not only hide your life behind a rented* face, but in which new technologies made it possible to use that face in videos, calls and even as a professional avatar. The hard-core communities upgraded their mirrors to screens, to see this face reflected back at them when they brushed their teeth.

Depending on the popularity of a new face, it will cost anywhere between 15 000 and 150 000 000 credits (adjusted for inflation, 15 000 are ca. 10€).

No-one seemed to understand the people who used their own face anymore. Why represent your identity through yourself if someone else could do a better job of it for you?

* Originally, the rental contract stipulated that a face, or item, be leased to one person at a time. This stipulation was included to uphold the illusion that the leaser was the unique user of this particular item. An algorithm was installed onto most media that detected the avatar and replaced it, should two people using the same avatar happen to run into each other. In time, this clause was dropped, as the vendors noticed that no-one really minded sharing the currently trendy face with millions of others and everyone knew anyway. It caused less complaints The current fashion is "Veronica", a relatively unknown burlesque performer from the 1890's in simultaneous use by 25 000 000 clients.

NB: I'm having a lot of fun with clickbaity titles for these posts- a side-effect of writing these in two minutes or less.

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