Snapchat, the popular photo-messaging app, likes to celebrate holidays and special events by giving its users fun filters that change the way their faces look. For the stoner holiday 4/20, however, the service opted to go with… blackface.
The latest filter overlays an unsettling visage of Bob Marley’s face over the user’s own head, slightly warping the two together. Though BuzzFeed got confirmation from Snapchat that they created the filter in partnership with the Marley estate, the whole thing still seems ill-advised —partially because anything that even remotely reeks of blackface is a bad call in the year 2016, and also because it reduces the musician’s legacy to a caricature. Marley’s estate also approved an official cannabis brand earlier this year.
