While everybody and their very concerned mother has been busy fretting over Snapchat’s new mapping feature — it’s great, I swear! — Snapchat quietly rolled out something even better: an augmented-reality hot-dog filter. “A whaaaat?” you and your very concerned mother may be asking. Yes: It’s a dancing, animated hot dog that you can add to photos and videos using the front-facing camera in Snapchat. To access it, open the camera in the app and tap once anywhere on the screen. You’ll see a number of filters, the same as you would if you were going to put a flower crown on your selfie; scroll right until you find the hot dog. You can resize the wiener by pinching it with two fingers, as you would with an emoji or text. Once you’ve sized it to your liking, watch the dog dance. It’s absolutely joyous.
Perhaps the best part of the hot dog is that, like stickers and text in Snapchat videos, you can affix the little dude to anything in your clip and it’ll move with it. Like this perfectly timed, ill-fated shopping-trip video.
It’s a hot dog. That break-dances. What is not to love?
There are a few unanswered questions about the very good hot dog, though. On Reddit, users are frantically trying to figure out which techno-pop tune the sausage dances to. Meanwhile, I would like to know why there is so much relish — which frankly looks like a layer of lettuce — as compared to ketchup and mustard atop the dog. The ratio here is way off. Also, does the hot dog have a name? An origin story? Strangely, Snapchat did not respond to Select All’s inquiries about these very pressing matters.
As with all things Snapchat, we don’t know when or if the hot-dog filter will leave our phones. It could be gone in five minutes or five days. Enjoy it while it lasts.
