People are flipping out about how the Shiny Fox filter changes their facial features completely and makes them unrecognizable.
It feels like decades but it was actually in 2015 when Snapchat popularized filter from animal faces to ones that gave you makeover and changed your face shape completely.
Snapchat referrer’s lenses, they gradually went from being funny to what we now cosmetic surgery filters that changes the size of your features such as your nose, lips, and chin.
However, most people have begun pushing back to use of filters that make you look like other version of yourself who’s gotten work done. As time is passing, it seems that face-changing effects may eventually someday fall out of use.
One Instagram filter, named as the “Shiny Fox,” has gone incredibly viral by users, it makes them look completely different. The filter’s creater is Aleksandra Matveichuk, who lives in far-east Russia. She said that she started creating filters in 2019 and became obsessed with making them for two years.
She said “I was looking for references, coming up with what the new filter would be, communicating with subscribers, asking them what filters they were waiting for and what they liked.”
Matveichuk further said, “At first her filters became popular in the Philippines and Brazil, and later went viral and were used all over the world. The Shiny Fox filter alone has 2 billion impressions, and in total all 300 of her filters have exceeded 600 billion impressions”.
“I always create filters relying more on my taste, and I am glad that my creativity has found a response in the hearts of so many people,” she added.
But recently some viral posts showed people panicking about how much the Shiny Fox filter changes their facial features and makes them unrecognizable.
As one research showed how it is effecting user’s mental health, it is being affected by constantly seeing altered images, 90% of women surveyed would edit pictures to alter their faces and bodies.
One audio went viral, using the Shiny Fox filter in Instagram Reels which belongs to @thediaryofrihanna. Caption she wrote was, “I legitimately get so weirded out when I see a filter I think is cute on someone’s story and then I use it and it gives me a completely different face with lip and cheek fillers.”
Almost 5,000 people have used that audio alone, Rihanna says, “I’m legitimately so confused because I saw this filter, and I didn’t realize they didn’t look like this. I just liked the colors of the filters so I was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna use it,’ and then I put it on my face and this is not my face.”
In a similarly but more playful audio, where @kidsaretheworst joked “I don’t know why people have a problem with this filter, this is totally what I look like,” and then the filter comes off. That audio has also been used by none other than Eva Longoria.
After being criticized, Matveichuk said she doesn’t take what people have been saying to heart because she knows that videos where people reveal their face without a filter get a huge number of views. “I do not know why, but people like to watch the video ‘I am with and without a filter’ to the end. Algorithms are triggered, and the video is gaining views.”
And added that people should know that they are beautiful and that the phone camera can distort their perceptions of themselves. “The camera highlights skin imperfections and distorts proportions. Filters can correct this, and I don’t see anything criminal in this.”
It’s not criminal, but there is a push for looking more authentic. Even Instagram itself has acknowledged the way its filters have changed and banned ones that encourage surgery.
“We want AR effects to be a positive and safe experience for our community, while allowing creators to express their artistic perspectives,” said a spokesperson from Meta, the company that owns Instagram. “We ban effects that directly promote potentially dangerous cosmetic surgery, and we don’t recommend certain face-altering effects in the effects gallery.”
