It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology

Whoop whoop! Insane Clown Posse fans may have stumbled into a way to combat public
surveillance

Ming Lee Newcomb

July 8, 2019 | 12:11pm ET

Last year, Ticketmaster and LiveNation invested in a former military facial recognition
company, with the hope that the technology could be used to both strengthen and speed up
event entry. If that prospect thoroughly creeps you out, here’s a simple life-hack to defeat Big
Brother: become a Juggalo. In a revelation that is sure to freak out the FBI, Insane Clown
Posse’s passionate fan base have unintentionally unlocked the secret to thwarting facial
recognition.

It turns out that Juggalos face makeup cannot be accurately read by many facial recognition
technologies. Most common programs identify areas of contrast — like those around the eyes,
nose, and chin — and then compare those points to images within a database. The black bands
frequently used in Juggalo makeup obscure the mouth and cover the chin, totally redefining a
person’s key features.

As Twitter use @tahkion points out (via Yahoo!), the black-on-white face paint tricks most
facial recognition into incorrectly reading a person’s jawline and, presumably, eye area. They
broke down the basic results in a pair of tweets:

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Unfortunately, the Faygo-loving clan are not totally safe from all facial recognition technology.
While most common software uses areas of light contrast to register identifying features,
Apple’s Face ID instead uses depth perception. Since makeup only changes the apparent shape
of your chin and not the depth of your dimples, Apple’s facial recognition renders the Juggalo
makeup workaround useless. But at least you’ll be able to sneak past LiveNation’s facial
scanning.