Yassification Memes Have Taken Over Twitter, Thanks Greatly to Yassify Bot

If you’re extremely online, you’ve definitely seen the “yassification” trend — and, if so, the words “Yassify Bot” will surely ring a bell.

For the last few years, Instagram filters have been altering the way we think about beauty and makeup. Yassification takes that one step further (or, maybe more like one hundred steps) by oversaturating images with FaceApp filters to exaggerate the “beauty” features to the extent of becoming unrecognizable. Lashes, contour, highlight, lipstick, long hair... you name it, FaceApp has it.  

The term "yassification" has been circulating in LGBTQ+ spaces on social media since 2020. However, it wasn't until a still of Toni Colette in Hereditary received the yassification treatment that the meme aspect went mainstream, spreading mainly on TikTok and Twitter. In the last few weeks, Twitter user @YassifyBot has really milked the trend — potentially to its last drop.

The account, whose bio reads “not a robot I just bought a month of faceapp pro,” has racked up over 130,000 followers since posting its first yassified edit on November 13. (It was of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris if you are wondering.)

The Yassify Bot account is run by 22-year-old nonbinary art student Denver Adams. Adams might be based in Nebraska, but their blurred face edits are reaching the entire world. Before a new trend emerges — and you know some are already starting — Teen Vogue spoke with Adams about the ins and outs of the yassification trend and their views on beauty filter culture. 

Teen Vogue: What is the appeal of this “yassify” trend?

Denver Adams: Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. It’s one of those things that I think, anything that has some sort of ridiculousness to it can be funny. And I think the more ridiculous it is, the funnier people find it. 

TV: That’s kind of the case with most memes and trends these days. People just want to be entertained.

DA: Yeah, definitely. 

TV: I guess one part of it would be that it’s a laugh, and also it’s pretty much just beauty filters to the max. It’s going on FaceApp and going 0 to 100, real quick.

DA: Yeah, that’s all it is. All it is, is just me putting it into FaceApp and putting as many of the beauty filters on — or, I guess, what FaceApp deems to be beauty — onto these images and cranking it up to 100, layering it. I’ll put it through the same things five times. Whatever makes it to the point of ridiculous.

TV: You use the word “ridiculous” a lot. How do you feel about the filter culture that we’re in, where everything’s so saturated with filters? Does that tie into the ridiculousness?

DA: I don’t know if there’s a deeper meaning behind this meme trend, but if I had to theorize it, it would be that it’s kind of making light of how ridiculous this AI technology is, how smart it is, how it’s able to read faces and completely retouch them into something so artificial with a click of a button, within one second. I don’t know if that’s a scary thought, but it makes a joke out of it which I think is funny. I would say that it’s satire. 

TV: You made this account very recently. How did you come across the trend in the first place?

DA: I just hopped on a bandwagon. Since FaceApp got popular, probably like a few years ago, I’ve seen different things blow up of gender-swapped celebrities. Who doesn’t want to see what they look like gender-swapped or with this filter on? It’s kind of like Snapchat filters, you know? Everyone wants to try it. Then I saw that meme of Toni Colette from Hereditary go crazy on the internet, and I think it re-triggered people to want to see what they look like too with all that makeup. Even though it was funny, they were like “okay, I kinda wanna see what I look like though.” 

You can’t really do any of the intense beauty edits without the pro version of the app, which, like, who the hell wants to buy an app subscription? I don’t. But I wanted to see what I looked like and my friends also were like “someone yassify this." So I was like, I’ll be the one to pay the $5 for one month, so I can provide this service for everyone for a few days while it’s funny. Considering I never buy pro versions of apps, I was like "how can I maximize this purchase to the max?" I started the account after I bought the pro version and was seeing all the things I could yassify. I study art history in school, so I was putting all these classic art history portraits into the app. I thought they were hilarious.

I didn’t want to be annoying on my real Twitter, which has like 200 followers, so I made a new one specifically for that. I just started doing it, and people started seeing them and I had one blow up. It was Charles II of Spain or something. From then, I started getting 1000 likes, then 5000, then I got hundreds of requests. So I just started doing people’s [requests] being like “alright, people wanna see it." It’s kind of like the same thing as my friends, they’re not willing to buy the pro version of the app, but I already did so... Someone’s gotta do it.

TV: So you’re the one in the friend group who buys Netflix and then everybody else just jumps on your account.

DA: That’s actually very true. At least when I’m employed and I have a good job situation at the time, I have been the one to share the HBO Max password. 

TV: They rely on you. 

DA: Yeah... I guess I’m reliable. Sometimes. 

TV: Why do you think the account has blown up now? Is the trend already dying?

DA: It’s definitely already dying. I’ve joked about it a few times on Twitter, but if anyone ruined the joke, it was me. It was absolutely 100% me. I drove it into the ground, as fast as you can drive a trend into the ground. I feel like gimmick accounts are the ones that make the [decline come] so much faster with memes or trends. I’m literally just a gimmick account, which I’ve never done before. I’ve never in my life had more than 500 followers on social media. I’m always trying to stay off social media, stay off my phone, read more books, touch grass... So this is so insane to me, I don’t know why I’m the person that this happened to. The first day I got 10,000 followers, by the second day I had 30,000, then 50,000... 70,000, and I’m up to almost 120,000. But it’s pretty much capped there. 

DA: So have you yassified yourself?

DA: Oh yeah, for sure. But that’s like, I don’t know, to be honest, I never really thought that the trend was that funny, and I don’t mean that to sound snobby or anything. Some of them were very funny to me, some of them made me laugh a lot. But I’ve probably posted 400 by now, and I think maybe 10 have made me laugh out loud. Maybe that’s just because I’m doing so many, I’m just over it. I got over the joke so fast compared to everyone else. But I do not know how people think some of these are that funny. Also, it’s like, you can just get the app, if you’re that obsessed with it just get the app like I did. 

TV: Pay your $5.

DA: Yeah, like what is so interesting about seeing a celebrity with more makeup? I think the more ridiculous ones were very funny, like the Robert Pattinson one and anyone where it’s not an actual person, like a creature. Those are funny. I got so many K-pop requests, and these people just want to see a girl version of their favorite K-pop boy and I’m like, how is that fun? I’m not judging, I just don’t understand how that’s funny. [But] those were were my favorite when I was first doing everyone’s requests.

TV: What’s your favorite one that you’ve done? 

DA: The one that made me laugh the most, which I think was my most popular, the Robert Pattinson in the kitchen one. It was such a blurry image too, so the editing of how FaceApp read it was this blur of hair and smooth skin. But it’s so [pixelated], it made me laugh so much.

TV: My favorite one is Carlisle from the Twilight saga and his decapitated head. I may have missed it but did you do the baby?

DA: That’s what I forgot. The ones I loved the most were the f*cking Renesmee ones, those were so funny. I did two of them. The one where Rosalie is carrying her, and the other one where it’s the doll version of her and it’s all cracked. Those were so funny. And then I did Bella when she’s like dead or whatever. 

TV: Is there anyone who you would never yassify? 

DA: I didn’t do Kyle Rittenhouse, even though I got a thousand requests. When I first started, I was doing everyone’s requests, people from all over the world, so I didn’t know who the majority of these people were. I just did them without knowing who they were and then I went back and looked at what people were replying. I got so many notifications so fast I did not see how people were reacting to them. So I went back and looked back at the ones I did on the first two days and people were asking me to do pedophiles and dictators and criminals. I was like, you guys, is this funny? I don’t get it. Why did you ask me to do that? So then I just deleted them because I was like, I don’t like it. 

TV: It’s almost like giving infamy and notoriety to people who always wanted it but should never get it.

DA: As a queer person, you don’t wanna be like “yaass” to someone who shot at Black Lives Matter protesters or killed people, you know what I mean? It’s bordering on the line of “should this be a joke or not?” Maybe it’s just safer to not joke about that. 

TV: On that note, you mentioned that because the app lightens skin tones by default, it’s an example of techno-racism.

DA: I wanna clarify I don’t know a lot about what that means. I know what techno-racism looks like in facial recognition technology, and it is definitely a very serious issue. I don’t know what you’d consider this AI beauty app in terms of that. But from what I’ve seen, sometimes it’s just really gross when you put a person of color in there and you want people to be able to see their request of this funny meme, but it happens to be a person of color. I put the person in and use all the same settings ... but the app just turns them into a Caucasian person. It’s not funny anymore, it just makes me sad. 

TV: You’re an art student, so is any of this project eligible for credit?

DA: Not in school right now, no. But I’m sure it would be interesting. That’s why I started with the art history ones. Those I feel like were genuinely bordering on an art piece, a critique of modern beauty standards. Imagine if you showed a yassified version of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to someone back then when it was made, they’d probably literally explode, you know what I mean? They’d probably have a stroke and die. You wouldn’t know how to process that, like, what is that? I think it could be a cool art piece.

TV: Speaking of beauty standards, Teen Vogue published an article last year about beauty filters and apps being used more in pandemic isolation. Now that we’re returning to work and the world, do you think that could be why we’re finding meme value in this trend?

DA: I’m not sure how it relates to lockdown, but when I’ve been asked to theorize the reasons why it’s popular or funny to people right now, I feel like it is trying to make light of something that is obviously an issue. Bella Hadid recently went on this whole thing about how unhealthy beauty standards are due to Instagram and social media. FaceTune and filters are constantly used. I’m not trying to hate on any person who uses a filter at all. There’s definitely not a reason to do that. I hate when people are so quick to sh*t on women especially saying “your beauty isn’t natural.” Who cares? Let them do what they want. Stop critiquing them like they’re not a person. I don’t know, there is something unhealthy about the culture of unrealistic beauty standards becoming seemingly normal. You can’t tell what’s real through an Instagram photo. There is no way to tell if it’s real and it’s hard to remember that when you’re constantly comparing yourself to others on your Explore page. Obviously, the technology is so smart now that anyone could fake anything. 

TV: You bought a month of FaceApp pro. What will you do when the month is over?

DA: I started the account a week ago, and it’s already on the decline. I think three more weeks is probably already pushing it for the joke. I’ve already pushed it far enough. I don’t wanna buy another $5 subscription. I have no clue what to do with this account. I never ever thought this would happen to me in my life. I own a meme account, like, what is that? I never thought I would say those words in my life. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Let us slide into your DMs. Sign up for the Teen Vogue daily email.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out:

• Instagram Filters Are Changing the Way We Think About Makeup
• Social Media Isn't Just Addictive — It's Addictive By Design
• We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs