Here’s a three-minute tour of why beautification features are a touchy subject—desired & disturbing at the same time.
A few sample quotes:
- “I feel really gross hitting this checkmark because it’s like I’m validating everything I’ve just done.”
- “It automatically gets rid of all these freckles like it’s something that’s a bad thing.”
- “I was more affected by it than I thought I would be.”
- “If you start seeing your friends doing something like this, and you don’t know that they’re doing it, then you start to think that real people look like this.”
- “You would be disappointed that you’re not a Photoshop.”
Of course there was an entire South Park episode on just this subject—biting & hilarious. Too bad it’s apparently not online at the moment.
[Update: FWIW on the list of top 50 free apps in Korea, 5 are for beautification. The list in China features three. The list in the US features zero. —Via Eunyoung Kim]
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