Internet Time Machine
I’m Deleting Snapchat, and You Should Too
Keep your whitewashed filters
This story is part of the Internet Time Machine, a collection about life online in the 2010s.
Snapchat is a prime example of what happens when you don’t have enough people of color building a product.
Yesterday, in the Audacity of Whiteness: Snapchat released a blatantly racist yellowface filter, which excessively slants your eyes, rounds your cheeks, and adds buckteeth for good measure. The company maintains this filter is “anime-inspired.”
Buuuullshit. Anime characters are known for their angled faces, spiky and colorful hair, large eyes, and vivid facial expressions.
This is quite literally yellowface, a derogatory and offensive caricature of Asians.
Snapchat faced a similar controversy less than four months ago, when they thought it was a good idea to create a Bob Marley filter on 420, which gave users dreadlocks and digital blackface.
Even filters that aren’t as overtly offensive subtly reinforce white superiority and reveal a lack of…
