Róisín Ingle ... on superfun face-swapping

Always thrilled to languish a long way behind every curve going I find myself behind another one, looking on in horror and bewilderment. I can report to those of you also not in the loop (there is no shame in it) that people of all ages are going completely and utterly buck mad for something called face-swapping.

I was at a party once – somewhere by the seaside in Co Wicklow is all I’m saying – where I was told there was actual wife swapping going on right under our noses, but I have to tell you I find this face swapping trend far more disturbing.

If you are a proud “behind the curver” too, let me explain that face-swapping is another new thing made possible by the wonders of modern technology. Space travel, heart transplants, a remote control to fast forward through the ads on your telly and now an application on your phone (Masquerade) or a lens on Snapchat which allows you to swap faces with someone else in a photograph.

Everywhere you go looking for information on face swapping they use the word “fun”.

The word “hilarious” comes up a lot too. In the interest of research I have examined a lot of these photos online and there must be something wrong with me (well, more wrong than I already knew about) because I don’t find them fun or even a tiny bit hilarious. The other word people use a lot is “addictive”.

“The face-swapping lens on Snapchat is supereasy, wildly addictive and hilarious!” they insist. (Another thing that is happening, behind the curvers, is that everything these days is prefaced with the word super. It’s all “supereasy” to use. Or “superdelicious” to eat. Which is, of course, SUPERANNOYING.)

This is more of the kind of thing people are saying about face-swapping on the internet: “Millions of people are swapping faces with their friends, pets, robots, and what not! The new exciting feature lets you take selfies with a person while swapping your face with his or hers. Imagine you having the face of your dog while your dog’s body has your head on it!”

Imagine.

When I first heard about face-swapping, I ignored it, hoping the fad wouldn’t last long enough for me to have to engage with the thing in any way.

Unfortunately, last weekend I bumped into a very old friend who needed to show me a load of face-swapping photos that had been taken of her by her husband and children.

While we waited to pick up our children from music class we surveyed the face-swapping carnage together: She had swapped faces with her husband, with her daughters and with her son.

She swiped through the phone showing me the result of this reckless face-swapping spree.

I think the correct response was polite amusement but the photographs just gave me the creeps and I couldn’t hold back. “That is just horrific,” I said, relieved to hear that they had creeped her out too. So much so in fact that she began having an existential crisis right in front of me.

The photos of her face transposed on to her husband’s head, were the ones that did it. She felt, all things considered, that she looked too much like him when her face was on his. She wondered if the thing people say happens had finally happened: she had been with her husband so long that now she had started to look like him.

And to follow this logic, did that mean she now looked more like a man?

And if she looked more like a man in these face-swapping photos, that must mean that she looked more like a man and so less like a woman in real life.

And if she looked less like a woman in real life then the only thing that could mean was that her “looks” might be “fading” or had maybe they already “faded” without her noticing and this was not something anyone wants to discover by way of a “fun” app on their son’s phone.

(It’s important to note that the “faded looks” nonsense is rubbish and that the woman in question is still as lovely looking as she ever was. It’s the Face Swap thing that’s all wrong.)

Anyway I won’t keep you any longer because I’m sure you want to rush off immediately and take advantage of this exciting new technological advancement. I mean, imagine, if you will, the following scenario: you having the face of your dog, while your dog’s body has your head on it! Or perhaps you could swap faces with your Easter egg!

You have to admit both sound like superfun.

[ roisin@irishtimes.com ]