FaceApp Face Morphing

Submission 35,112

Part of a series on FaceApp. [View Related Entries]

About

FaceApp Face Morphing refers to the "Morphing" tool and several similar tools available in the mobile photo-editing application FaceApp which allow merging two faces into one. Added in early 2020, in August 2020, the tool gained significant popularity on 4chan with multiple threads in which various people and characters were merged together.

Origin

In January 2020, mobile photo editing app FaceApp added^[1]^[2] a Morphing tool that allowed to merge two faces into one, adding more similar tools such as "Our Son" and "Our Daughter" which allowed to produce a derivative morphed images in early August 2020.

The tool did not reach viral popularity until on July 12th, 2020, actress and influencer Skai Jackson tweeted^[10]^[11]^[12] her face morphs with Harry Styles, Zendaya and Timothee Chalamet. The tweets received over 6,100 retweets and 117,200 likes, 3,000 retweets and 63,500 likes and 2,900 retweets and 50,400 likes in one months (shown below).

The tool did not see notable use in memes until on August 13th, 2020, an anonymous 4chan^[3] user started a FaceApp thread in /tv/ in which users posted face morphs of various actors. The thread received over 344 replies.

Spread

Starting on August 13th, 2020, more threads in which users posted images created with the tool were created on the /tv/ board. For example, another August 13th thread^[4] received over 337 replies; a thread^[5] started on August 15th received 363 replies.

On August 16th, an anonymous /pol/^[6] user created a similar thread inviting other users to create face morphs of various people and characters. The thread received 377 replies.

On August 16th, three^[7]^[8]^[9] additional threads dedicated to images created the tool were created in /pol/.