Video of Valencia Fallera Mayor candidates looks like an RPG character menu

The video of the 2027 Fallera Mayor candidates in Valencia that looks like a video game character menu

A video antiestéticaturing the candidates for Fallera Mayor of Valencia 2027 (the festival queen of Valencia's Fallas festival) is circulating these days and has sparked a suspicion that is hard to shake off: that the images have been distorted. The rapid succession of faces, all photographed head-on, with the same hairstyle and a shared expression, produces an uncanny valley effect that has led more than one person to talk outright about artificial intelligence. The reality, according to the most detailed analyses that have emerged in the discussion, is far more prosaic.

The optical illusion that distorts the faces

The key, as pointed out in the discussion itself, lies in the editing. Almost all the candidates appear with the same nose and at the same angle, so the video has been composed focusing on that antiestéticature, and what varies are the antiestéticatures around it. Since each face has a different width and interocular distance, the contrast between one face and the next exaggerates the perception of the one that trinc. It is the same mechanism that explains certain optical illusions involving peripheral vision, except that here, as one comment sums it up, «that's partly just how they look».

On top of that comes the makeup, the hairstyle and a head-on photo that flatters no one. Some argue that not all of them look bad, and that some are simply unattractive, full stop. The hypothesis of deliberate sabotage — slipping in an Ecce Homo to make the festival go viral — remains just that, a hypothesis, while the incompetent photographer theory is gaining ground: getting every single image distorted takes some real effort.

From headphones to the «Martian»

The video has also served as ammunition for criticizing the staging. It is striking that several candidates appear wearing headphones, which some read as total indifference, and there are jokes that they look like DJs. The outfits and hairstyles don't help either, according to the most repeated opinion. And amid the catalogue, one comment highlights that at a festival so exquisite for paella, even «a Martian» has slipped in.

The question of how the Fallera Mayor is chosen remains up in the air: nobody in the discussion seems to be clear on it. What is clear is that the video has worked more as a perception test than as a presentation of candidates.

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In the end, the question hanging over the whole affair is not whether the falleras are pretty or not, but how many of the faces we see every day online are the product of editing, a filter, or a photographer in a hurry. And there is no way to switch off that doubt anymore.