TikTok is the hottest app these days, with videos covering everything under the sun. People use the app to do dance challenges, find new music, or film videos using one of the app’s many facial filters. One woman even claims she traded up to a house from a bobby pin. However, a recent filter is coming under fire from users, and for good reason.
Why People Are Calling Out TikTok For This Filter
The “Ouch Filter” appeared on TikTok a few weeks ago, and quickly went viral. The filter makes its user look like they’ve been in a fight, complete with a black eye and a cut across the bridge of the nose. Many used the filter as part of trends where they pranked friends and family by sending clips of themselves looking injured, but others were concerned about the filter.
“This filter is absurd and disgusting!!!” one person commented on a YouTube video of someone using the filter. “This is the last filter people need to know about,” another wrote under a TikTok where someone using the “Ouch Filter” asked “what the f is this filter?”
“The romanticization of violence isn’t cool,” one TikTok user said in a video about the filter. She detailed the fake injuries the filter gives a user, then says, “All I have to say is, do we really need this kind of violence?”
Backlash also arose when some people started using the filter to talk about domestic violence. While it’s an important topic, many felt that a TikTok trend and a face-changing filter was not the correct way to discuss such a heavy subject.
Is TikTok Being Hypocritical?
While many dislike the themes of violence, especially against women, others are calling the app out for hypocrisy. TikTok has strict guidelines against what can and cannot be shown on the app. They can delete videos and accounts at their discretion if they believe that a video or content creator has broken any of those guidelines.
One such rule? Depicting violence in videos. Videos of people doing makeup to look like they had been in a fight have been deleted by the app and creators have received warnings or had their accounts deleted. Many makeup and VFX artists were angry to see that TikTok had created a filter that made someone look injured when they themselves had been penalized by the app for the same thing.
The filter has since been removed from the app, but many tech-savvy users have figured out how to continue using the “Ouch Filter.” While it’s arguable that it’s just a silly way to make videos, the implications of the filter are largely distasteful.