32 | New Scientist | 29 February 2020
BY HER own admission, 19-year-
old Manilyn Macalos is addicted
to Instagram filters. She has
road-tested everything, from
ones that add a rosy blush to her
cheeks and a sea of light brown
freckles under her eyes to others
that overlay a swarm of butterflies,
flapping their wings over her
head. There are filters giving her
whiskers and ears made of
flowers. She has even tested a
Flappy Bird-like filter that allows
her to control the eponymous
character of the popular mobile
phone game by nodding her head.
But Macalos’s most prized
filters are the 10 she has saved
to her phone. “Most of them
make your nose look slimmer,
and your eyes and lips a little
bigger,” she says.
It sounds like innocent play:
it can be fun to mess around
with digital photos of ourselves
and other things using the
latest technology. As well as
Photoshopping out blemishes,
there are mobile apps that tuck in
your stomach or accentuate your
curves. One of the most popular
apps is Facetune, available since
2013 and used by celebrities to
make themselves look slimmer.
Now, however, Instagram
filters are no longer about merely
prettifying photos to add to your
“grid”. The latest tech means that
any short-lasting Instagram
Stories that use the filters seem
to be more likely to go viral and
be seen by millions of users. That
changes the effect they can have.
As they come to be part of the
zeitgeist, we need to think – and
know – about filters.
The big change started last
August, when Instagram’s parent,
Facebook, opened up its Spark AR
platform to the public so anyone
could develop their ideas for
augmented reality (AR) filters.Filtering out our real selves
For years people have used technology to tweak their digital selves, but is
there a downside when such images go viral, asks Chris Stokel-WalkerNew online communities
formed quickly, with developers
trading secrets of how to design
good filters, says Tama Leaver
at Curtin University in Australia,
who is co-author of a recent book
called Instagram. One Facebook
group for Spark AR developers has
51,000 members, who post their
latest filters. A recent demo shows
one that turns your head into an
analogue alarm clock, with neon
hands pivoting around the endof your nose. Two bells protrude
from your head, with a hammer
in between: as you shake your
head, the alarm clock rings.
Four months after Facebook
opened Spark AR – and just in
time to provide a welcome
Christmas diversion – the first
high-quality filters trickled
through. One that captured
a lot of attention was developed
by a Belgian content creator,
photographer and video-maker
named Arno Partissimo. The
“What Disney character are you?”
filter projected an image of a
mirror above the head of anyone
who took a video using it that
cycled through Disney
characters. Like a slot machine,
it stopped on a random character,
capturing reactions.
“I started creating filters
because I saw the big potential
of this new technology,” says
Partissimo. He had made about
25 filters before his Disney
creation took off. Inspiration
came from Facebook quizzes
that Partissimo took when he
was younger.Views Culture
what you get.” The way the filter
requires you to effectively record
a video of your reactions to get
the result is also key, because
that is inherently more likely to
make something go viral than,
for example, filling in a Facebook
quiz. The instantaneous-reaction
video provides part of the joy for
a lot of people, says Leaver. For
him, it produces an exaggerated
network effect in which the value
of something increases according
to the number of others using it.
And it can also tap into our fear
of missing out, or FOMO, inciting
others to get involved.
Such match-ups with well-
known characters allow users to
“act out” and project onto otherHe released the filter, and it
quickly went viral. Celebrity users
including the Beckham family,
DJ Diplo and actors Vanessa
Hudgens and Zelda Williams
tried it out, posting the results to
their Instagram Stories. In a rare
case of coincidence, Williams’s
random character choice stopped
on the genie, the character her
father, Robin William, played
in the film Aladdin.Joy of reaction
There were a number of reasons
behind the filter’s success,
says Leaver. “They’re tapping into
our fandoms, but they’re also a bit
like a slot machine: it’s fun to seeTIM BODDY FOR NEW SCIENTIST. ALEKSEY POPOV/ALAMY“ The reaction video
lets users project onto
fictional characters
and become sexier
or more aggressive”Instagram filters
can turn you into
a human alarm
clock or alter
countless details
in photos of you