What the Hell Happened: SnapChat Face Swap

The internet is no stranger to the concept of face-swapping: A quick Google search reveals several years worth of adults with babies’ faces, men with women’s faces, and—well, some swaps that defy description. The mildly unsettling meme has recently achieved a whole new level of prominence, however, via a new SnapChat filter. The filter identifies and then swaps two faces, meaning that anyone with a phone and a friend can create a face swap within a minute or so.

Unsurprisingly, the filter has turned out to be incredibly addictive and popular. What exactly makes face swaps so fascinating, though? (Bustle, Popsugar, Buzzfeed, and Teen Vogue did not all release articles on, say, the introduction of the puppy filter.) To begin with, the swaps can be compellingly horrifying. People face-swapping with dolls can take you on a creepy trip to the uncanny valley, while the filter’s occasional malfunctions can produce borderline demonic images: If the camera interprets a non-face section of screen as a face, you might end up with a disembodied pair of teeth floating around the ceiling or a blurry Frankenstein mess. There’s something sadistically satisfying about turning your own face into something that looks like it might be from the depths of hell.

The filter also allows its users to play with gender in interesting ways. Putting a made-up, delicately structured face on a muscular, bulky torso makes for a hilarious contrast; on a deeper level, however, the filter allows for a kind of effort-free cross-dressing. When a man and woman face-swap with one another, they each get to satisfy their curiosity as to what they might look like as a member of the opposite gender.

And the point of this curiosity has to do with self-definition. When you change your features entirely or take them out of context and impose them on someone else, you learn something about your own identity—what you are, what you are not. Maybe you only realize that you have exceptionally large and fluttery eyes when you realize how stunning they look on another woman. Maybe you never realized how comfortable you feel with male features when they’re imposed on you directly. Or, of course, maybe you suddenly see your true midterm-week self perfectly expressed in a blur of mouths and nightmares.

—Staff writer Charlotte L.R. Anrig can be reached at charlotte.anrig@thecrimson.com.