Does The Internet Make You Smile?

We all spend a great deal of time trawling the web, but does it make us happy? Do all those LOLcats, pictures of Keanu looking sad, supercuts, music videos, short films, social networking sites and the rest bring us a state of well being? Yeah, they probably do, as long as you remember to leave the house occasionally, too. And the question of what exactly makes different individuals smile is addressed in this new collaborative project from Kyle McDonald and Theo Watson, called Happy Things.

Using software developed by Theo Watson for his web application Auto Smiley to analyse your facial expressions via your webcam, it’ll capture and post a screenshot every time it detects a smile. So whatever it was that made your face light up for a second gets recorded and shared online. Let’s just hope you’re not a degenerate psycho because that could make for some unpleasant viewing for the rest of us. If you’re not and want to be part of this crowdsourced experiment in what makes us smirk in the online realm, then you can download the software from here. Your image will then be uploaded to this page. Smile, you’re on the internet.