“The yassification of language, if you will.”Īdams, the Nebraska art student behind says they hope the memes entertain people - at least for a few more weeks, as they warn they won’t be paying another $4.99 for another month of the FaceApp subscription. “It’s just so much fun, and I think a natural part of how humor can devolve to meaningless words that are only funny because of the process it took to get there,” Gallegos said. “It felt like a corporation trying to communicate with a queer person,” said Gallegos, “or maybe an overly-enthusiastic ally trying to seem non-threatening, or even a white person misusing AAVE (and I think it’s important to acknowledge that many of the words the queer community uses comes from ballroom culture and black queer people).”Īs Gallegos’s video makes clear, when this slang gets layered on top of one another and spoken again and again, it loses any semblance of reality - much like semantic satiation or the FaceApp filters. Gallegos told BuzzFeed News that his video was inspired by some audio he had heard in which someone said, “Wow, queen, you look so vagina slay.” “Happy Pride month! We are sashaying away with deals!” “Hi, gay!” Stalter said vacantly in a phrase that has since been embraced by the LGBTQ community. Think of comedian Meg Stalter’s extremely viral video from June in which she pretended to be a butter company spokesperson who was uncomfortable with queer slang. “The bottom line is it’s a satire of this ageist technology and insane beauty standards through these artificial intelligence apps,” they said.īut the meme’s embrace of both camp ridiculousness and vapid emptiness feels reminiscent of the ways parts of queer culture celebrate a sort-of performance of extremes, whether it be over-the-top drag, reclaimed limp wrists, or even language.Ĭrucially, most of the fun for the LGBTQ community involves being aware of the artifice of this performance, as well as the extent to which outsiders - from straight people to corporate brands on social media - then try to participate.Įven the word “yassify” - a derivation of the term “yaaass queen,” which has roots in 1980s ball culture but went mainstream in 2013 thanks to Broad City and a video of a Lady Gaga fan - is an example of this: something that started as slang but has since morphed into popular nonsense that many queer people would now probably never say in real life. “Technology like this has a creepy way of making it so uncannily realistic that it makes people uncomfortable.
I think there’s a conversation to be had about how unhealthy that culture is,” said Adams. Here, the FaceApp has just turned the volume up to 100 so the subjects now sit in a sort of social media uncanny valley. We’re used to seeing women channeling this overstylized glamor on magazine covers and in Instagram influencer posts.
With lips plumper than a Kardashian, contouring better than Adele’s, and a complexion that has been smoothed over more than Calista Gingrich’s on FaceTune, each yassify photo looks cartoonishly ridiculous - but also strangely familiar.
If all of this sounds absurd to you by now, that’s kind of the point.