Why Do Our Faces Look So Weird In The TikTok Inverted Filter?

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Your face looks weird in a non-mirrored selfie because the brain isn’t used to seeing this version of your face!

How can a simple filter cause hundreds of people to question their identity and self-esteem?

Well, that’s what the inversion filter from TikTok seems to do. It reverses a facial selfie and shows you what your face looks like when it’s not reflected in a mirror.

The effect of this reversal is uncanny: the inverse image looks like you, but slightly different, highlighting every defect you didn’t even know you had.

You might notice that your left eye drops off more than your right eye, or that your chin is slightly longer on the right than on the left. Or that you have a crooked smile that gives your expression of joy a distinctly “serial killer vibe”.

The image essentially looks like an uglier version of what you see in the mirror every morning…no wonder it can drive people to have an identity crisis.

But why should simply turning a picture from left to right have such a pronounced effect on the perception of our faces? Why should we think we look ugly? And is that the way other people perceive us?