Some videos associated with the trend have amassed millions of likes.
Many of these videos show people removing their clothes and dancing in their underwear or nude. As Twitter has fewer restrictions on nudity, some versions on the site include more explicit imagery than TikTok or Instagram. This challenge is a variation of previous internet challenges like the Anime Silhouette Challenge, which was popular on TikTok in the summer of 2020.
These videos are typically set to a remix of the song “Put Your Head On My Shoulder” by Paul Anka, created by TikToker @giuliadinicolantonio.
The videos start with someone standing in a doorway with loose clothes on and when the beat drops, they transition to show off their figure as a dark silhouette on a red backdrop. At the time of writing, there are over 41,000 videos on TikTok that use this sound, and videos associated with the hashtag #Silhouette and have received over 350 million views
The trend appears to use Snapchat’s “vin rouge” filter for the red light effect. As a silhouette, participants wear less clothing than in the first part of the video, occasionally wearing lingerie or posing nude.
Similar trends in which users choose to show their bodies in tight or revealing clothing have gone viral on TikTok before; most recently the “Body” challenge saw users posting photos of themselves in form-fitting clothing, bikinis, or without shirts.
The silhouette trend was intended to be a sexy, body-positive challenge, but it was hijacked by individuals who used software to remove the red filter from the videos to reveal women’s bodies in full, whether they’re clothed, partially clothed, or nude. And although a subreddit featuring these edited TikToks has been banned by Reddit, there are still dozens of videos on YouTube instructing people how to edit the videos. Some of them have hundreds of thousands of views and at least six of them feature ads, indicating that they are monetized. The most popular of the videos has more than 233,000 views and they tend to be uploaded by tech product review and hack channels
People are apparently searching for the term so frequently that “how to remove red light in silhouette challenge” shows up in the auto-complete underneath terms like “how to paint house exterior” and “how to remove squirrels in your attic.”
Youtube Frequent Search For How To Remove Filter Of Silhouette Challenge
As the tutorials have spread, many creators have taken to TikTok to warn women against participating in the challenge, or urging them to pay special attention to what they’re wearing if they choose to participate. “Be cognizant of what you’re wearing before editing the final product because anyone can take those images and easily revert them back to the original,” one TikTok user warned in a video that has more than 778,000 views.
On YouTube, the tutorial videos do appear to violate the platform’s community guidelines against sexual content, particularly content that depicts “non-consensual sex acts or unwanted sexualization.” Google, which owns YouTube, did not immediately respond for comment.