MEMES

Why FaceApp Memes Are Over, According to Mariah Carey

FaceApp memes are over because Mimi said so.


Mariah Carey Welcome Event For Her Las Vegas Residency "MARIAH #1 TO INFINITY"
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You’ve no doubt seen the images on your feed of people sharing what they expect to look like in old age. That’s all because of FaceApp. And now, thanks to Mariah Cary, the meme, like so many others, it’s dead to us.

Basically, FaceApp takes a scan of your face and uses what the Russian company that developed it calls “neural network technology” to generate a realistic transformation. You can make yourself look old, make yourself look young, or even give yourself a beard. It’s a little bit curious that FaceApp has gone viral in 2019, when the app has already been around for over two years. But leave it to celebrities to popularize something that everyone else has already had a grip on.

There are, of course, some concerns around the app, like the fact that you are essentially training Artificial Intelligence to recognize your face and enter your data into some sort of security database. According to its privacy policy when you allow FaceApp to scan your face, you are also giving the app consent to capture your location and IP address. That’s pretty standard fare in the world of targeted ads. But the terms of use also include granting FaceApp “a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you.” Whew. Still, some celebrities don’t really seem to care.

Of course, while some celebs are into the meme, others, like Griffin Dunne and Katie Couric, have refused to give in to the viral temptation.

And perhaps most importantly, the reigning meme queen Mariah Carey refuses to even acknowledge FaceApp’s existence, thus rendering this entire trend over.

Just a couple of weeks ago, she put an end to the bottle cap challenge (that meme where everyone was going around kicking off the caps of bottles in sometimes extreme ways). Before that, she ended the “10-year challenge” meme. And over a year ago, when everyone was doing “If you don’t love me at my” meme, she ended that one too. Basically, once Mimi gets involved, a meme is over. Finished. Done. There’s no use in trying to swipe the cap off a bottle when the elusive chanteuse has already sung a cap off with that upper register of hers. There is also no use in continuing the FaceApp nonsense, either.

She is, after all, the same woman who does not acknowledge birthdays (they’re “anniversaries,” okay? Why, then, should anyone expect her to acknowledge an app that ages the face? It’s just not for her.

Related: Mariah Carey Turned One of Her Most Famous Memes Into a Music Video