What exactly is TikTok’s ‘old’ filter telling us?

With all the horrors going on in the world right now, do people really want TikTok to show them how they'll (allegedly) look when they're old?

Yes, it turns out a lot of people do.

The trend, which has been going around TikTok for the last month, involves a wipe effect from a CapCut template, and an old-face filter from FaceApp, according to this tutorial. A 2019 FaceApp "challenge" trend used the old filter as well, but this one is more TikTok-centric.

Alphaville's "Forever Young" has been used in numerous TikToks engaging in the trend, some with miraculous results. (The song was also used in the teenage filter trend earlier this year.) Stéphanie Kim's TikTok showing a photo of her parents now and when she was a baby has more than 20 million views.

"imma have to wrap it up at the age of 40 if this filter is accurate," said one commenter.

@stephaniekim

Crazy to see our parents grow old like this 🥺🫶🏻 I’m gonna cry over this trend

♬ Forever Young - Alphaville

@jacyalana 🥹🫶🏻 #agefilter #foreveryoung #mamajules #capcut #1989 ♬ Forever Young - Alphaville

As you'd expect, some people got emotional when they turned the filter on themselves, and others took a more humorous approach. This trend obviously isn't something to get upset or hopeless over; the point of so many aging and "beauty" filters is to play with perception, and not always in a positive way, as creator Michael Anderson said back in February, when the teenage filter was popular.

@mandertok Seriously, they are making the "now" look worse to make it more dramatic, right? Right?! #teenagefilter #foreveryoung ♬ Forever Young - Alphaville

But it is weird to see TikTok basically become the beach from Old.

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