Meitu's Avatarized Selfies Now So Pervasive in China It's Considered Crude to Share Real Life Selfies With Others

You may remember the brief vogue earlier this year for Meitu, a Chinese-made app that Kawaii-ifies portrait photos, especially selfies -- basically turning real life people into avatars of themselves. But as Jiayang Fan explains in this fascinating if disturbing New Yorker story, in China, Meitu is not just an app but a phenomenon, and has become so pervasive, it's now considered slovenly to share real life selfies, instead of the avatars they're based on:

I asked a number of Chinese friends how long it takes them to edit a photo before posting it on social media. The answer for most of them was about forty minutes per face; a selfie taken with a friend would take well over an hour. The work requires several apps, each of which has particular strengths. No one I asked would consider posting or sending a photo that hadn’t been improved. When I met Meitu’s chairman, Cai Wensheng, later that day, he confirmed that editing your pictures had become a matter of ordinary courtesy. “In the same way that you would point out to your friend if her shirt was misbuttoned, or if her pants were unzipped, you should have the decency to Meitu her face if you are going to share it with your friends,” he said.

This seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon, too. I lived in China in 2013 and in my experience at least, Meitu was popular then but not to the point where it had outstripped the real world so thoroughly -- for the most part, Chinese people in my WeChat network back then still preferred sharing actual selfies. The curiosity is why Meitu and this avatarization trend hasn't really made the leap over to the West. 

Image via Crave Online

Comments

[Amanda]

I'd say the reason this hasn't become popular in the West is because of the 40 minutes per picture. That's too much work for our instant gratification culture.

[Connie Arida]

It's so hard to be outraged for a whole 40 mins.