Unless you've been residing under a rock, you've probably seen the recent trend of morphed photos where people 'swap genders' or edit themselves to have different features or even apply make-up and change their age. While this is something softwares such as Photoshop have been able to do for a long time now, FaceApp has made it far more easy.
Since then, people have taken it upon themselves to flood the internet with various versions of their face. And while this has drawn the ire of some on social media platforms for its sheer inanity, it would seem that there are more problematic aspects to this new trend.
As some Twitter users noted recently, it would seem that the gender swap filters are "triggering to those with Gender Dysphoria". To this end, many have taken it upon themselves to delete their swapped images.
Now, what is gender dysphoria? Simpy put, it is a condition wherein one feels that their emotional and psychological identity -- as being male or female -- is opposite to their biologically assigned sex.
And while this has the potential to explode into a debate reminiscent of JK Rowling's recent trysts with Twitter, not everyone is in agreement. Some counter that this cannot be a problem simply because it is not meant to be offensive, while others wondered who exactly was being affected by the app.
Others have taken to social media with their personal feelings about the app. "Why would I do the face app thing when I have gender dysphoria telling me that I look like a woman all the time anyway," wondered one Twitter user recently.
Now, we understand that it can be traumatising for some people to see such photos, but even the internet itself cannot seem to agree on the trauma levels. Some of the comments seen on Twitter by this author showed rather outraged individuals who wanted to use the app to "combat" their gender dysphoria to "show the real me". Then, how can the internet begrudge them that?
It is not quite certain whether the app is truly and irrevocably cancelled yet, after all it does seem to find many champions -- even among the celebrity subset. A point to note here is the propensity of the internet to be "triggered" or to temporarily detest something or the other -- only to move on to greener topics in the coming days. Thus this present virtual outrage may soon fade out.
In the meantime, here are some excerpts from what Twitter users had to say:
