I ran into a girl in full on Instagram drag face on the train one day. It was extremely unattractive and garish to where I was visibly stopped in my tracks for a hot second. I'm sure she looked awesome on IG though. Seems to be really popular with sorority girls.

And of course half the employees at any given Sephora look pretty wild (and often garish) as well.

There was this girl on a youtube video about plastic surgery obsession that looked very plain and trashy TBH in video. Her photos looked fine though. Can't remember the video but she was based in Cali iirc.

Also a "friend" of mine used filters and completely obscured her face with a heavy blur and I was like "she doesn't really look like that" (it was egregious) but the person who showed me it didn't notice at all!

So I would say it's kind of the opposite. I know what people look in real life and see them using filters to obscure their appearance.

Fortunately, most of my friends aren't really vain so they don't try and delude themselves into looking different than they actually do irl. No filters or anything, warts and all (not literally though). Same for myself; if I can't see the red blood spot under my eye or freckles then it's too strong of a filter and also I refuse to use anything that distorts my proportions in any way. I'm very sensitive to it with a background in the arts and photoshop. Pretty much the only filter I use are glitter ones because I find them pretty. They're romantic but still true to life, basically the digital equivalent of rubbing vaseline on the camera lens and blowing some glitter into the air.

I read that the most accurate photo is one taken with a laptop camera of 50 mm and the mirror (although make sure it's not a funhouse one, those cheap ones that warp in the middle from target or whatever are horrible).

I'd say the way you look when you smile is the most telling. Cara Delevigne comes to mind. She is stunning for fashion mags but when she smiles, it breaks the harmony of her face and she looks way different. I hate to say anything negative because I believe everyone looks best with a smile on their face and would hate to take away from someone's joy. One of the cruelest things you can do imo is make fun of a person's smile or laugh. But I think a winning smile is what keeps someone from being a VS angel versus just one of the regular models. Romme, Jasmine and Taylor all have killer smiles.