A TikTok filter called “Liberalize Yourself” shows users what they’d look like with colorful hair. The filter, which plays upon common stereotypes of liberal appearances, took off on TikTok over the weekend.
“Liberalize Yourself” is mostly being used by conservative TikTok users to ridicule progressives, and utilizes the likeness of two actual people with dyed hair—not stock photos.
When used, the filter takes a photo of TikTok users’ faces and then transposes their likeness onto what the filter deems “a liberal,” or an individual with colorful hair. The “blue-haired liberal,” or liberal with colorfully-dyed hair, is a stereotype that originated on 4chan, an imageboard website well-known for being used by far-right netizens.
Liberalize Yourself seems to shuffle between a handful of base images that combine with TikTokers’ faces to create a “liberal version” of the user. Three of the images are of individuals with dyed green, pink, and rainbow-colored hair—and one of the images is of Hillary Clinton.
Many conservative TikTok users that have posted using the filter said they found it hilarious.
“I can’t even with this,” a TikToker user whose face was transposed onto a photo of a person with short, rainbow hair wrote in their TikTok caption.
@original_staff_sausage I cant even with this!!
♬ Hell To Da Naw Naw Naw – Bishop Bullwinkle
Another TikTok shows a woman’s face transposed onto that of a person with dyed green hair.
@achasteen22 Liberalize yourself 🤣🤣🤣 that face got thiccc. #liberalizeyourself #trend #justwhy #sleepyjoe #bidenfails ♬ Spongebob Tomfoolery – KENGKUZ MUSIC
Some users who were turned into Clinton while using the filter are seen laughing in their TikToks, too.
“Heckkkkkk no,” a TikToker whose face was transposed onto Clinton’s wrote in their video’s caption.
@smilezdr Heckkkkkk no. #comedy #liberalizeyourself #liberal #trump2024 ♬ Spongebob Tomfoolery – KENGKUZ MUSIC
While Clinton’s image has been meme’d and used as fodder for satire many times over, Liberalize Yourself uses the faces of real, non-public figures as its other base images.
The Daily Dot spoke with Whitney Lehn Meltz, whose professional headshot showing them with rainbow-dyed hair was used in the TikTok filter. Meltz said learning that their face was being used to make fun of people was “jarring.”
“As a stereotypical ‘blue-haired liberal,’ it’s disappointing knowing that these people are trying to mock me… going out of one’s way to steal my headshot for a callous joke seems particularly childish,” Meltz told the Daily Dot. “The users of the Liberalize Yourself filter will be scandalized to learn that I, too, am one of those they/them pronoun-using nonbinary people.”
This also isn’t the first time Meltz’s photo has been weaponized online: They told the Daily Dot an internet troll used their headshot to “spread transphobic vitriol on Quora,” a question-and-answer website.
After the Quora fiasco, Meltz decided they wouldn’t be taking the headshot off the internet because they “deserve to live [their] life as publicly online as anyone else.”
“I’m not ashamed of who I am,” Meltz told the Daily Dot. “Even if other people think I should be.”
Liberalize Yourself is taking off on X as well.
Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, posted a photo of himself using the filter on Friday.
And videos of the TikTok filter were also posted by right-wing X accounts Libs of TikTok (@LibsofTikTok) and I Meme Therefore I Am (@ImMeme0). The former is an anti-LGBTQ account run by Chaya Raichik. The account’s posts and Raichik’s online presence have been connected to bomb threats nationwide.
“The new A.I. filter that turns you into a crazy leftist lunatic is so spot on,” I Meme Therefore I Am tweeted of the filter. Raichik posted a similar sentiment, and both tweets have gone viral.
Given the filter’s limited outcomes, it remains unclear if its momentary popularity among conservatives will last.
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