You might think there are enough face filter apps. You would be mistaken. Current Affairs is pleased to announce new apps in development that can be expected in the coming year.
FuckYourFace
A raunchy, fun new app that replaces your face with a closeup image of penetrative sex.
UnFuckYourFace
A rejoinder app to FuckYourFace that takes the image of penetrative sex that previously replaced your face and replaces it instead with a more attractive version of your face, even though you never uploaded a picture of your actual face to UnFuckYourFace—how’d it get there?
ReFuckYourFace
An app that will take the image generated by UnFuckYourFace and replace every object with genitalia except the more attractive version of your face created by the previous app’s AI—again, how did it do that when you never uploaded a picture of your actual face? Also, the name of the app is misleading because your face is actually the only thing that’s not replaced with fucking? It’s being fucked around, as are you.
LinkedIn Headshot Generator
An app from the professional networking giant that claims it can transform your selfies into clean, polished, respectable portraits that will catch the eye of any recruiter. Simply upload a photo of yourself in casual clothing and the app will do the rest, superimposing a blazer onto your shoulders, smoothing your hair, lightening your skin, lightening your hair, lightening your eye color—whoops, this app just makes everyone look white. That’s not good.
LinkedIn Headshot Generator 2.0
Following backlash against the original LinkedIn Headshot Generator app, this improved version corrects the unfortunate tendencies of its predecessor and just adds glasses to uploaded selfies. Nobody uses this extremely useless version of the app, which is good, because if you did, your facial information would be sold to a company in Sweden that’s developing 3D-printed masks from every selfie uploaded to LinkedIn Headshot Generator 2.0 which can fool even the most advanced surveillance cameras.
CandyCrushMe
A customized version of Candy Crush that allows you to replace certain candy icons with your own face or the faces of other people. Almost everyone who uses this feature uploads photos of personal enemies so that they can make them appear to explode during gameplay. However, the only person required to consent to the use of a photo is the player—the people whose faces are used may never know their likenesses are being submitted to Candy Crush and then resold to various data-sharing partners. When they turn on the news one day and see footage of someone who appears to be themselves commandeering a French naval vessel and flying an Iranian flag from the mast, they will have a panic attack so severe that they are unable to coherently defend themselves when arrested and tried for high treason.
FaceBaby
An app that generates an image of you as a fetus in utero. By using the app you are automatically signed up to receive anti-choice mailing materials. Later updates to the app give it access to your Apple Wallet, allowing anti-choice organizations to debit your account for small, almost unnoticeable fees which, when multiplied by the millions of users who have forgotten they even downloaded the app in the first place, adds up to enough money to fund the elections of five anti-choice governors.
MeHottie
An app that turns you into a stone cold hottie. Just a 10 out of 10. Wow wow wee wow. Boi-oi-oi-oi-oing!!! Awoooooooga. This app sells your biometric data to Saudi Arabia where they use it to train drones to identify enemies of the state and shoot them down on sight.
PutMyFaceOnADogsBody.exe
Just a blatant virus. Why the fuck did you download this? It’s a “desktop only app” that you couldn’t find in any app store—how was that not a tip-off? Now you get ads for penis enlargement where the person in the ad is you. Congratulations.
Fruitee
A fun, cute app that turns you and your friends into cornucopias of fruit! Owned by Amazon via Whole Foods, and used to harvest facial data that Whole Foods then sells to paramilitary forces around the world in exchange for forcibly seized farmland.
Work of Art
This app turns your selfies into AI-generated works of art in the style of early 19th-century portraiture. In 2019, the user agreement for this app is ironclad—your uploads won’t be used nefariously, and will be deleted immediately after the portrait has been processed. However, a few months after the app becomes so popular that the website crashes daily from too much traffic, the researcher behind it will suddenly die. Cambridge University will then claim the rights to his research—he was an adjunct professor there—and the rights to the app by extension. His family contests the claim, but is unable to take on the University’s powerful legal team with their own limited means. Cambridge then adjusts the user agreement to allow them to store the uploaded photos indefinitely, and adds opaque language about access to other apps on your phone and computer, including your entire photo library.
Three years later, you get a phone call from an unlisted number. You don’t answer calls from people you don’t know, so you just let it go to voicemail. You forget about it entirely until later that night, when you see you have a transcript of the voice message in your inbox. It reads, “Hello. This might sound a little crazy, but… I’m you. Please meet me outside your job at noon tomorrow and I will explain.”
So you do. As you exit the lobby of your WeWork you see them… you… a person with your face, your body… a mirror, a mime, a nightmare.
They try to put you at ease. They say that they were made for you. To keep you company, to help you work, to make sure you’re happy. To help you sleep better, exercise more often, take your medication. They grab your hand, but you run. They run after you, and they’re fast. They’re faster than you. But you see the Elon Musk Memorial Monorail train coming and before you can think you’ve already spun around, grabbed this creature with your face and your voice, whose bottom front tooth is just a little bit chipped just like yours, and flung them onto the tracks. You don’t stay to watch but you hear the sound of it happening behind you as you run, and keep running. You don’t stop until you’re home. As you unlock the door you wonder how long it will take for the police to come. Will you have time to leave a note for your family explaining what happened? Will they believe you? The door opens. And there you are, uninjured, calm, smiling, sitting on your couch. Waiting for you.
Illustration by Kirby Allen.
