What is TikTok’s ‘hot or not’ composite images trend?

TikTok user does hot or not trendTikTok: mali.nalli

One popular trend on TikTok sees people use an ‘attractive face scale’ along with the viral shapeshifting filter to figure out whether they’re ‘hot or not’ — here’s everything you need to know.

Many of TikTok’s most popular trends are based on the physical appearance of the participants, and often involve the use of one of the app’s many filters to alter the way you look.

The ‘shapeshifting’ filter is one such effect that people have been using over the past year to find out who they look most similar to. Most of these trends involve using a sheet full of the faces of people from a certain TV show, or particular types of dolls, and then letting the filter decide who you look most like.

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One version of this trend has been the ‘hot or not’ challenge, which was particularly popular throughout 2021.

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Using data from the Hot or Not website where people rank others based on an attractiveness scale, Flickr user Pierre Tourigny created multi-morph composites of images from the site to find out the average face of each score.

Attractive Face Scale He compiled these into one image, and that’s the picture that people have been using to decide whether they’re ‘hot or not,’ with the face that the filter blends them with supposedly being the one they look most like.

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How to do the ‘hot or not’ TikTok trend

In order to do this trend, or any variation of it, you will first need to have an image of several faces saved to the camera roll of your device.

Once you have that, do as follows:

  1. Open TikTok.
  2. Go to the ‘Discovery’ tab.
  3. In the search bar, type ‘shapeshifting.’
  4. In the search results, press the pink record button next to the filter, then ‘Try this effect.’
  5. Select the image you saved to your camera roll.
  6. Press the record button, and the filter should blend your face into one of the faces on the image.

While many claim that the app morphs you with who you most look like, it’s not particularly accurate, so bear that in mind when participating in any of these trends.


If you want to find out more about which challenges you can do on TikTok, you can check out our guides here:

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