Hello everybody, welcome back to my channel, where skincare is all about
progression over perfection. Because, perfection doesn't exist. If you've
watched any of my Instagram vs reality videos
you would know that there are a lot of brands, not just influencers,
who are okay with lies, and manipulation, and filters in order to sell their
product. And why am I doing this series? Because I
believe when brands are making a profit from their products and making a profit
from us, they're taking our money, we need to know what works. We need the
real effects. Also, I'm petty as f*ck. And in this new series
brands who lie or brands that lie, we'll check
the grammar when we're doing the title. And in this video
I'll be testing products from those brands that lie,
brands that fake results, brands that use filters, brands that use different
products that look like their products in order to give a better result. And to
kick off this series we're going to be using
the most recent controversial product, the Tarte Timeless Smoothing Primer.
Now, why this product? Well, in a still pretty
recent Instagram post on Tarte Cosmetics Instagram,
they uploaded a video in which Shanna, who I presume
is a member of the social media marketing team, I'm not actually sure, I
should check that. Shows us how to use the Timeless
Smoothing Primer to erase pores. That's a red flag there already.
"Hey, watch me shrink my pores instantly. Look at the results that
you're seeing right here. This is not a filter. Oily skin, textured
skin, meet your new best friend. It's our
Timeless Smoothing Primer. It's like a filter
without a filter." However, this video was called out by so
many people, including myself, for the super
painfully obvious, poorly done filter used to promote and exaggerate the
effects of this primer. In fact, this poorly used filter was so
outrageous, and so ridiculous, that it made Buzzfeed
news. It all kicked off on Twitter, my tweet, someone else's tweet. Jameela Jamil
ended up replying to my tweet. Because it's just so
obvious, in my opinion, legally. Oh, everything in this video is my opinion,
for legal reasons, allegedly. Tarte were pretty much forced to make a statement
because of how everything kicked off in their comments, over on Twitter. But in
that statement they said that they didn't use filters.
Which, in my personal opinion, is absolute bullsh*t.
It's there, we can see it. It's very obvious. And in fact, they did actually
delete the reel off their main grid. But you can
still see on the reels. Later that day, Tarte uploaded another video with good
old Shaz, reassuring us that a filter wasn't used.
How can you deny? How can you deny that? And in fact, their
product does help, in their own words, does a lot to
help blur their appearance. When talking about pores.
However, this video was called out again. The product on the skin looks completely
different in this video to the original video that they posted.
It's gone from 100% poreless blur, to a pretty obvious
basically mattifying primer. In my opinion, in this video they shot
themselves in the foot with this, because it just further solidifies the
fact that they were using such a heavy filter
in the first video. When we look at the video we see areas of the skin jumping,
and glitching into a blur. Areas of the skin which seems to be out
of focus for no reason, compared to the area of skin right next to it.
And of course, we see this really... what they thought was a sneaky cut,
where the blur kicks in. It's so poorly done.
There are Apps, there are programs where you can track a blur so you can do that
and assure that only the blur ends here. It's very simple to do. Now, we
do have to take into consideration that Instagram does compress videos a lot.
I've been told that there's an option to upload higher quality videos,
I've not seen it. I experienced this issue with some of my videos as well.
And I'll often get tagged in videos where people think that a filter is
being used, when really it's just a poor quality video.
So your skin is gonna look a little bit blurred, you're not gonna pick up all
those tiny details that show real skin. However, we can see on
Tarte's profile that this hasn't been an issue before. We've seen a lot of
close-up products being demonstrated. Here, you can see them side by side. And
we're not experiencing that same blur glitching, blur jumping. I've worked in
social media before, I've done social media for a lot of brands and I don't
understand what Tarte were thinking. Any good
company will have a team that works for their social media and every post is
done at least a week in advance, at least. And should go through a rigorous
approval process. I'm not sure this was approved, because
later in the day after making a statement about this video
they actually posted on LinkedIn that they were looking for a new social media
manager. Hopefully this is just a coincidence, and
hopefully, our Shaz is okay. After sharing this, supposed, in my
opinion, overly filtered video over on Instagram and on Twitter, I
received a lot of DM's saying that they actually weren't surprised by this kind
of behavior from Tarte. And being primarily a makeup brand, I
don't know a lot about Tarte to be honest with you.
I didn't even know they did skincare until like a month ago. But yes, Tarte do
have a history of shady behavior. From an intern posting racist memes on
their social media for absolutely failing to cater for black
people with their Shape Tape launch. You can Google Tarte's net worth, and
their revenues, and their income, and you can see they have enough money
for a proper social media team. And to be able to produce an inclusive collection.
I can't talk about that that much but there are some great videos out there
that go into detail about this. I missed the boat on this, I'm not
100% sure what happened. Whatever it was, it was wrong.
So, let's get into using the actual product.
This is makeup I guess, right? So I'm not overly familiar with
makeup but what I'm going to do is actually ignore the instructions on the
box, and we're going to follow the video and use it exactly how
Shana, Shanna used the product. On their website they say that this is a skincare
infused primer, delivers a filtered soft focus finish,
innovative blurring and filling technology.
And this even more pushes the idea that they used a filter
to exaggerate their claims. Smooth's appearance of pores, fine lines,
and wrinkles. Provides perfect canvas to enhance wear of makeup. Perfect
within skincare and makeup is another red flag word for me. So they
say it's a skincare infused primer, it contains Vitamin E.
They say this is a natural preservative and acts as an anti-inflammatory
ingredient. Vitamin C which is an antioxidant. And this is where I think
the pore minimizing claims come in. Brands can make these type of claims
on skincare. And I think they're saying here, because they got Green Bean
Extract, which they say is known for anti-wrinkle and pore
minimizing properties. Not a lot of research done on that.
That doesn't mean that it's not true, it just mean it's,
it's possibly unlikely, or there's no evidence.
They also say mineral pigments which soothe and soften the skin.
So when we look at the ingredients, there's not much that sets it apart from
other primers. There's nothing in here that's going to give you that miracle
smoothing poreless look. We have Silica in here, that can matten
the skin. Mica, which can reflect light, and Vinyl Dimethicone, which can give the
skin a silky blurred look. However, it's not gonna make it look like
a filter, or will it? We don't know. We're gonna test it.
Okay, let's try it. I'm gonna zoom in. I'm gonna watch this video, and we're gonna
do a side by side comparison. This is a 4K camera, so you're going to see a lot
of detail that you might not necessarily see on the phone.
We're going to see the real effects. I'm also going to record on the front camera
of my phone and then upload it into Instagram so we
can see if any compression was the issue. It feels very smooth, it's got kind of
like a jelly consistency to it. Can see a lot of pores here, right?
Hmm. Going to put this texture under my eye, I don't know if you meant to put primer
this high up but let's see. I need to trim my nose hair.
Let's do it here.
I mean, it's definitely mattifying. I wouldn't say it's filtering or
smoothing. You can still see that I have pores.
Really for me, that's just mattifying my skin and taking away that shine, kind of
takes the reflection off your bigger pores.
so you don't see them as much. Let's record it on my front camera on my phone.
I'm shooting on an Iphone 12 something, Pro. In fact, if
anything... God it's terrible, terrible. In fact if anything, my front
camera actually shows up way more than you can see in real life. Oh, that's
horrible. And as you can see when uploaded into
Instagram reels, there's a tiny bit of compression
but nowhere near the blurring effect that happens here. If
it was a real compression issue, her whole face would be blurred, you won't be
able to see these standout pores here and there. There we go,
what a surprise, it didn't blur the skin at all. This is clearly, clearly, a filter
being used. And the fact that they had the cheek
to deny that a filter was being used takes the piss out of us.
The fact that they think that we're that stupid, uneducated,
and pretty much blind to seeing what they're doing,
it takes the piss. It's obviously a brand that doesn't respect its consumers, in my
opinion. The weird thing is, is this product gets
amazing reviews, it gets great feedback. A lot of the
feedback was actually, why are you doing this? You don't need to
do this, this is such a good primer, there's no need to
use a filter to exaggerate what it does. I mean sure, it doesn't get rid of your
pores and smooth out your skin just like that. No one really believes that.
But looking at my skin now, taking away that little bit of shine
does add a smoothness to my skin. It's a primer.
What I love about this, is that the brand was called out in the first place.
My stance on filters is, knock yourself out,
have fun with them, create whatever you want to create with filters.
Photoshop, Face Tune. But if you're selling me a product that claims to do
certain things to your skin, and you have to lie
in order to prove that, because your product doesn't actually do that,
that's where I have an issue. I mean, it's a good... my skin looks nice. I don't mind
it, I don't mind this slightly mattified effect. But
it just doesn't do what it says it's gonna do.
Stop it. Like don't do it. Let me know what you think in the comments below, and
also brands that you've seen using filters in order to sell their
products. I'll leave my Instagram versus reality playlist here,
and some general light entertainment here, and I'll see you over there.