Using a beauty filter on your photos and videos can be a double-edged sword.

On one hand, you get to look nice and flawless (which is important if you’re a public figure prone to scrutiny), but on the other, you might be subjected to unfair comparisons between your digitally enhanced and unretouched selves (like what happened to Cecilia Cheung and Rosamund Kwan).

Last Monday (Jul 12), Hongkong singer-actress Rain Li started a live stream to interact with her fans, and she announced that she would be joined by a mystery guest.

Since the 37-year-old gained popularity after appearing in 2011 Chinese drama Home Temptation, viewers were hoping for one of her co-stars, such as Chinese actor Ling Xiaosu, to show up.

However, after a very long wait, the mystery guest turned out to be an influencer called “Little Ruby Lin”, who recently became famous for — as you may probably have guessed — impersonating Taiwanese actress Ruby Lin.

Fans were disappointed at the anticlimactic reveal, not to mention unhappy with the fact that a ‘real’ star like Rain was made to wait for such a long time for a ‘mere’ influencer, but that wasn’t what got the internet talking in the end.

Just as the live broadcast was about to end, Rain, who was clearly using a filter that gave her very smooth and fair skin the entire time, accidentally disabled the effect, revealing her true #nofilter appearance.

Without the filter, she was shown to be wearing very heavy make-up, with coarsely drawn-on eyebrows and thick contouring around her nose.

Netizens also cruelly nitpicked on her “darker skin”, “laugh lines”, “wrinkles around her eyes”, and “eye bags”, saying that she looked like she immediately “aged by10 years”.

Despite the nasty remarks, some came to her defense, saying that Rain has actually done a good job at maintaining her appearance and physique.

Still, we think it would be nice if the world could just stop with all this age-shaming nonsense, not just for women, but also for men.

Photos: Rain Li/Weibo, 偷吃瓜/Weibo