FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The first Guinness World Record ever for faceswaps
San Francisco, CA – (July 7, 2014) Today, GoPop is thrilled to announce that Guinness World Record headquarters in the UK has officially endorsed the creation of a new category: ”Largest online album of face-swapped photos.” On Thursday, July 10th, thousands around the world will attempt break the record in a 24 hr faceswap marathon.
“We communicate with facial expressions every day, playing off the emotional cues that other people give us,” says GoPop Co-Founder Jesse Shapins. “The faceswap is the most basic form of this human exchange through media. By trying to set a Guinness World Record, we want to show the ways that mobile media is enabling truly new, global forms of communication.”
The faceswap is a popular Internet meme that began in the early 2000s. In its infancy, people used Photoshop to digitally swap the faces of two or more subjects in a given photograph. Images like this — grandparents swapped with babies — are typical of the early faceswaps that emerged on sites such as Flickr and 4chan. Since then, many new tools have emerged to easily create and share faceswaps — from SnapChat to Slingshot to GoPop. In contrast to the early meme, this next generation of faceswaps is highly collaborative, where people riff on each other’s expressions, from imitating a face of utter surprise to deep thought.
The GoPop community has been mobilizing internationally in pursuit of the record. Events will be held from the Gold Coast of Australia to London pubs to a skateboard warehouse in Miami to Speaker’s Circle in Columbia, MO. In San Francisco, the GoPop community will be making faceswaps throughout the city, from imitating lemurs at the zoo to the many faces in the murals of the Mission.
“For Thursday I’m most stoked to see some double chins,” said Boston resident and frequent faceswapper @donutsack. “Or triple chins.”
Anyone can participate and be a part of history by making faceswaps via the GoPop app. The evolution of the album will be livestreamed at www.worldfaceswap.com.
