TikTok Live Profile Picture Pranks

Submission 846

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

About

TikTok Live Profile Picture Prank is a prank trend on TikTok in which people visit creators on livestreams and change their profile pictures to match their victim's appearance. The trend was popularized in March 2023 after several TikTokers began posting videos of them screenshotting people's live feeds and changing minor details on FaceApp before making the doctored image their profile picture.

Origin

Pranking creators on TikTok Live by changing one's profile picture to the victim's became a nascent trend in early 2022,^[1]^[2]^[3] but only grew into a prevalent prank in early 2023. The key difference between early and later videos is the use of Facetune or FaceApp in order to change some features on the screenshotted image.

On March 7th, 2023, TikToker^[4] @yourgrannysbible posted the earliest known video of the trend in 2023, gathering over 8,000 views and 400 likes in one month (seen below, left). Another early adopter of the trend was TikToker^[5] @ronnynosebleed, with a March 10th, 2023, upload that gathered over 12,000 views and 800 likes in a month (seen below, right).

Spread

On March 11th, 2023, TikToker^[6] @yourgrannysbible posted another TikTok Live profile picture prank, gathering over 1 million plays and 190,000 likes in a month (seen below, left). Also on March 11th, TikToker^[7] @ronnynosebleed posted another prank video as well, gathering over 250,000 plays and 30,000 likes in a month (seen below, right).

On March 21st, TikToker^[8] @goldfishandnoodles posted another example of the prank demonstrating their process, gathering over 530,000 plays and 60,000 likes in two weeks (seen below, left). On March 24th, TikToker^[9] @lftwzp then posted a similar example, gathering over 11 million plays and 1.9 million likes in a week (seen below, right).