system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Are pictures of Galaxies really what Galaxies look like?

I'm talking about the shape. Suppose you have this picture of a Galaxy in 3 quarter profile. Then the 'front' of that galaxy must be thousands of lightyears closer to us than the back end. Since light takes time to travel and all that, the front stars and especially their position must be thousands of years younger/more recent than the back. 
So does that mean the shape of a galaxy as we perceive it through out telescopes is not at all what it's really shaped like or just that I'm an absolute idiot?
gpt
The diameter of a galaxy is relatively insignificant relative to its rotational period.

In the case of the milky way, the galaxy rotates every 15 million years, or more, while the galaxy itself is only around 120,000 ly across, so you will have a small amount of distortion, but not enough to completely invalidate how we observe other galaxies.