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6 Bizarre Beauty Trends That Are Taking Over TikTok
From nose waxing to teeth filing, these trends are physically and psychologically dangerous
I have to confess — I’ve never used TikTok before. Like a typical curmudgeonly and out-of-touch millennial, I’ve refused to download the app. I’ve only been exposed to its noxious content through YouTube, and occasionally Instagram.
But even through my minimal exposure, I’ve still managed to notice some extremely disturbing trends.
Not surprisingly, many of those trends are related to beauty. I say “not surprisingly” because beauty is at the core of TikTok’s business model.
TikTok has been revealed to use a “beauty algorithm” that employs AI-based technology to promote content featuring conventionally attractive faces and bodies. (How AI can profess to quantify and “calculate” attractiveness sounds like a load of bullshit to me. Why is it that those deemed attractive by the AI are mostly white?)
And on top of that, one of the app’s most popular genres revolves around “beauty hacks,” which are usually either too-good-to-be-true, bizarre, or downright dangerous.
Here are some of the worst ones I’ve encountered.
