Dubsmash: your face, somebody else’s dialogue.

You could know a film dialogue by heart and still be surprisingly bad at Dubsmash. The voice would begin, your mouth would follow a fraction too late, and suddenly the performance needed another take. It was only a few seconds long. Surely you could get this right.

That was an easy way to spend longer with the front camera than you had intended. Choose an audio clip, record yourself performing along with it, and see whether the result was worth sending to somebody. A familiar voice coming out of the wrong face was enough to get started.

In India, where a favourite film line hardly needs an invitation to reappear in conversation, there was plenty of material to work with.

Even Sonakshi Sinha was doing another take

By May 2015, The Indian Express was following Sonakshi Sinha’s Dubsmash videos (opens in a new tab). Its examples included a Dabangg line and a clip with Salman Khan performing dialogue from Shatrughan Sinha’s Mere Apne. She shared the videos on Instagram. The report also mentioned her versions of Fight Club and Johnny Bravo.

An actor borrowing another actor’s voice made the activity look agreeably unserious. You could be perfectly capable of delivering your own dialogue and still enjoy mouthing somebody else’s.

The sound also gave a viewer something to recognise immediately. If you knew the line, you could pay attention to what this person was doing with it: an expression held too long, a sudden change of face, or an amount of commitment the setting absolutely did not require. A phone held at arm’s length could accommodate quite a lot of drama.

The useful part was how little you had to invent

An empty recording screen can be discouraging. What are you going to say? How long should it go on? Dubsmash let you skip those questions. You had a line, a running time and a fairly clear idea of when the big moment was coming.

You could still make the performance your own. Try underplaying an angry speech or giving a completely ordinary sentence far too much importance. The voice stayed the same, so a changed expression had something familiar to work against.

And you could make a clip without persuading all your friends to join another social network. Sinha’s Instagram posts are a useful reminder of that arrangement: Dubsmash supplied the recording tool; an existing feed could supply the audience. Someone could enjoy the result before deciding whether to try making one.

The closing date came much later

The 2015 Indian craze and the end of the app are separated by years. Reddit acquired Dubsmash in December 2020. In its November 2021 announcement (opens in a new tab), Reddit described bringing the team’s video tools into its own platform and set 22 February 2022 as Dubsmash’s last day. Downloaded copies would stop working too.

That makes it possible to put an actual date on the product’s ending. The performance is much easier to recognise outside that particular app. Borrowed dialogue and an expressive face remain a perfectly workable combination.

If an old Dubsmash clip turns up now, listen for the line, then watch the person waiting for their cue. There is a decent chance that was the take they finally decided was good enough.