I’ve started noticing something strange whenever I scroll through Instagram: some people smile so hard that it makes my face hurt. It’s not empathy, it’s resistance. My jaw tightens, my forehead creases, and I want to rub my temples, like I’ve just witnessed a small act of violence disguised as happiness.
There are smiles that make you smile back—the spontaneous, slightly imperfect kind that look like they slipped out by accident. Then there are smiles that demand participation. The “I’m-having-such-a-great-life” smiles. The “look-how-happy-I-am-to-exist” smiles. You can feel the muscles straining through the phone screen. It’s like watching someone hold a yoga pose for too long—admirable but exhausting to witness.
The thing is, I don’t think most of them are lying. I think they mean it in that moment. They’re performing the version of happiness that’s been rehearsed into social media muscle memory—the same grin they give to their captain, commander, or department photographer. The smile that says, I’m confident, I’m likable, I’m thriving. It’s a performance of competence, and it’s contagious in the worst way.
In my line of work, that performative grin has its own dialect. There’s the tactical grin—wide, confident, like a billboard that says I can handle pressure better than you. There’s the conference grin—usually paired with a badge-lanyard combo, one hand on a hip, one on a coffee cup. Then there’s the “off-duty” grin, which isn’t really off-duty at all: the social-media version of a wink. You know the one. Tilted head. Lazy eyes. The kind of photo that says, I’m relaxed but not too relaxed, I’m human but not too human. It’s public service cosplay.
I’ve seen it happen everywhere—from the patrol floor to the upper ranks. People who once kept their private lives quiet now curate them with the precision of an influencer. And who’s the audience? Not the public. Not civilians. The audience is each other. The same commanders and lieutenants who scroll, like, and remember. Smiles have become a kind of currency, a form of professional branding.
It’s eerie when you think about it. We used to say, “don’t smile in your ID photo.” Now every feed is an ID photo, just with better lighting and filters. The genuine human smile—the one that used to belong to joy, humor, relief—has been repurposed into a symbol of loyalty, of belonging. You smile to prove you’re still on the team.
Meanwhile, the people who don’t smile—who post the neutral or candid or quietly observant photos—look like they’re doing something radical. They look real. Maybe even suspiciously real. We’ve reached a point where the absence of a smile feels like rebellion. Authenticity has become a lost art. The more someone insists on being seen, the less of them there actually is.
So here’s to the unsmiling—to the people who refuse to flash all 32 teeth on command, who keep their joy private and their faces real. In a world where everyone’s performing happiness, the simplest thing you can do might be the most subversive: don’t smile for the camera.
