We are the ultimate propagandists

Laura Dodsworth has an interesting Critic piece on the weird world of TikTok filters.


The self(ie)

Filters seduce, but what happens when the flattering reflection becomes a carnival mirror?

I regarded my face on my iPhone screen. It didn’t look like my face. After applying the infamous Body Glamour filter on TikTok, my skin was smooth and liberally daubed with perfect make up — the sort of make up you have seen a thousand times on more expert examples of the female species than I. My nose was a little slimmer, lips fuller, and my eyes were brighter and bluer.

I looked great. I wondered if I could learn to do make up that well. I wondered if my lips were a bit too thin in real life. Disoriented, I switched back to my own image on my phone. I’d never looked so plain and dull-eyed. I switched again to the picture of the pretty woman. I wanted to look like her. I wanted to be her. If her face was so well put together, maybe her life was, too?

In Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the young, handsome protagonist sells his soul to remain young and beautiful forever. Instead, his portrait ages and becomes hideously ugly with each immoral act.

Modern-day filters do the opposite. Our bodies and faces inevitably give away our habits and hedonism, whilst our social media portraits can hide a multitude of sins with a filter. You can be sweaty from a run, bleary-eyed with a hangover, just a plain old Jane, but a filter transforms you into youthful, glossy, homogenised perfection — or a chimeric cute half-kitten, half-person. Whatever you like really. There is a filter for it.


The whole piece is well worth reading as another insight into the modern reach and significance of an ancient problem - vanity. 


Once upon a time, we settled for the fact that we are born baby smooth, must age, fall ill, become decrepit and eventually die. We don’t settle so easily these days. If the human body used to be a canvas of historical record, it is now a work of fantasy and science fiction, written as much in the electronic ether as in the flesh. People at the fringes of bodily transformation aren’t just weird outliers; they are canaries in the coalmine.

Even if you don’t apply a filter, you might choose the best of several photos to share. You probably share the highs but not the lows of day to day life on your socials. We filter our faces, our personalities, achievements, experiences and truth. We separate, compartmentalise, embellish and even fictionalise. If we don’t expect the complete truth from ourselves, why would we expect it from other people or organisations? In other words, we lie, and we risk becoming more tolerant of lies. We are the ultimate propagandists.