Meet Meitu, The Selfie App Making Celebrities Look Like Anime Characters

No idea what Meitu is? That’s not surprising. Until very recently, the photo retouching company, one of China’s biggest developers, was largely only known to Chinese users. But since it’s rapidly taking over the internet, here’s everything you need to know about the next natural step in the evolution of selfies.

Basically, Meitu allows you to “clean up” selfies, including one-touch removal of blemishes, removal of bags under the eyes, brightening up your irises, and other little bits and bobs. While that once again raises tough questions about beauty standards and their place in culture, something selfie filters have fallen afoul of in the past, that hasn’t stopped people from goofing around with the app. And, needless to say, the internet took all of thirty seconds to decide everybody famous needed a glam-selfie, whether they wanted one or not:

https://twitter.com/MsEvilyne/status/821995234812952576

https://twitter.com/C_A_M_inc/status/822147076075257856

https://twitter.com/llcowanl/status/822148097425997824

That said, you might want to be careful before downloading Meitu to try for yourself. Reports are beginning to surface that Meitu might have some serious security problems, including running unauthorized software and strip-mining your contacts and other data out of your phone. So if you download, do so with caution. Although we can understand the siren lure of being able to inflict this on the internet: