If you’re anything like me, then you’re chronically online (please don’t be like me). You waste away replying “ratio” to the social media intern running the Duolingo Twitter account or showing your mom a viral TikTok only for her to say, “Who is that?” I don’t know who it is, Mom. It’s just funny.
If you're also like me, then you’re fully obsessed with the newest, nonsensical, and totally unexpected trend taking over Twitter — yassification. Yassification is the process of editing any celebrity, movie character, or notable figure’s photo to have full glam and fabulous hair that would make you say, “Yaas!” It’s basically a glow-up for people like Abraham Lincoln. A Slaybraham Lincoln, if you will.
Where did this meme even come from? All roads lead to Toni Collette, when one Twitter user gave this scene from the 2018 horror movie Hereditary a makeover.
The absolute travesty of referring to Miss Toni Collette — known for classic films such as Little Miss Sunshine, Knives Out, and my sister’s favorite movie Clockwatchers — as “this lady.” Not on my watch. But also, what makes this specific image from Hereditary so meme-worthy? (Why is the sky blue? Where do we go when we die? If I sat here and dissected every last bit of meme culture, I’d be here for a long time.) It is arguably the ultimate climax of the movie, right after SPOILER ALERT she watches her husband burst into flames. I think we just can’t take anything seriously on the internet. No thoughts, head empty.
The beauty of yassification is that anyone can be yassified. By using the photo editing app FaceApp, anyone can achieve full perfection with just one filter. The app can even morph your face into a baby or see what you would look like as a dude. I’d be hot as a guy, just putting that out there. Oh, the irony of taking a face-tuning app used by influencers and celebrities, only to be made the butt of the joke. Take that, unattainable beauty standards! What does that even mean, though — to “yassify?” Of course, almost everything in our internet culture is picked, plucked and downright stolen from queer communities and creators, including the phrase “yaaass queen,” which went mainstream in 2013 after an episode of Broad City. It’s like corporations rainbow-washing during Pride Month — “Slay queen with free delivery only with Amazon Prime!” Leave it to straight mainstream media to make something lose all sense of meaning, but maybe its void of meaning is exactly why we love it.
It wasn’t long before yassification was elevated to the next level. Just a week ago, Twitter user @YassifyBot started receiving thousands of requests via Twitter DMs and went viral for its edits, like this first one here.
No one is safe from yassification. Your favorite shows, movie characters, world leaders, and acclaimed geniuses have been yassified. Here are a few personal favorites:
Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and we all know how the internet loves to run anything funny into the ground. Remember the red flag meme? I don’t. As one Twitter user, nay Keynesian economics scholar, pointed out, our timelines simply can’t keep up with the oversaturated supply of yassified memes. Like the circle of life, all things must go. And on the internet, viral memes have a lifespan of about two weeks. It’s hard to say how long yassification will be around. But what’s important is that she dies as she lived: absolutely slaying!