I started seeing these filters that show spirits and folkloric entities like the Saci, Iara, and stuff like that in a really funny way. I thought it was hilarious, but I got curious about where all this came from.
I saw these filters going around for a while and honestly I thought the creativity was pretty funny. The thing basically started when independent creators and small visual effects studios in Brazil began making filters for Instagram and TikTok using the platform's resource library. The idea was to tap into Portuguese and Brazilian folklore - saci, iara, headless mules, all those creatures - and give them a comedic and visual twist instead of a scary one.
What accelerated all of this was the pandemic, when people were spending more time on social media, and then it kind of became a trend. Creators started making compilations, commenting on the filters, and it went viral. There wasn't one specific filter that started it all - it was several creators, some Portuguese and Brazilian, doing similar things at the same time, but it's the visual style and comedic approach to folklore that created this wave. Some of these filters gain more traction when they appear in viral videos or when influencers use them.
The Instagram platform made it pretty easy because anyone can create filters with their tools, and the algorithm ends up pushing fun stuff to the front. It's like that typical meme cycle - someone does something creative, it spreads, other people make variations, and it becomes popular for a while until it moves on to the next thing.
These filters mainly came about between 2023 and 2024 when Brazilian content creators started exploring the possibilities of Instagram and TikTok filters with folklore themes, and people just ran with the idea - there are generic "haunting" filters that anyone can mess with in the editor and throw a saci or an iara in there that ends up looking kind of tacky and funny precisely because of that. The thing nobody mentions is that a lot of these filters come out with terrible lag, and that's actually part of the charm because the more glitchy it gets, the funnier the meme becomes.
I started seeing these filters going around because my sister wouldn't stop sending me videos of herself as a creepy iara, and then I looked it up a bit. Most of them came from Brazilian creators, but the real boom happened when some TikTok communities started making some pretty funny remixes with these folklore entities, like taking the aesthetic of generic "haunting" filters and applying them to characters we grew up hearing about. Like, someone made the first version with the saci and then it just snowballed because it's too funny seeing a creature that's supposed to be scary suddenly pop up on your camera doing ridiculous poses.
The thing is, these filters don't really have a single "creator" - it was more of an organic wave that came out of nowhere. What happened was that when Instagram and TikTok opened up filter creation tools for anyone to mess around with, people started playing around with Brazilian folklore. Someone made one with the Saci, another with the Iara, and then it became a meme because people started filming themselves with these creepy creatures and posting them. It blew up because it's the kind of humor that works really well on social media - scary but funny at the same time.
The guys above captured well that it was Brazilian creators who actually touched on this, but I think they underestimated the randomness factor a bit. Nobody planned some campaign like "let's explore folklore in filters" - it was just happening naturally when independent designers and content creators started playing around with these tools. Like, one guy makes a scarier Iara filter, another riffs on the joke and makes a ridiculous version, and suddenly everyone's making videos like that. It's the internet, you know... 😄
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