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10 Popular Makeup Hacks That Just Don’t Work

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The internet’s favorite makeup hacks are mostly a bad idea.

A new roundup from TheThings Celebrity, “10 Out Of The Box Internet Makeup Tricks,” pulls together the DIY beauty tricks that keep circulating on YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest and asks the obvious question nobody in the comments seems to: do any of these actually work? The answer, according to the breakdown, is mostly no. Several of the tricks that get millions of views as “life hacks” are flagged by beauty experts and dermatologists as messy at best and dangerous at worst.

• The video singles out substituting cheap hairspray for cosmetic setting spray as the most widespread — and most warned-against — hack in circulation.
• Dermatologists cited in the roundup say hairspray’s alcohol and aerosol content clogs pores, irritates skin, strips moisture, and can irritate the eyes.
• Other hacks flagged include using tape or cutlery as eyeliner and contouring stencils, and swapping in colored art pencils as makeshift eye or lip liners.

The Hairspray Problem

The setting-spray swap is the trick the video spends the most time on, and for good reason — it’s one of the oldest “hacks” on the internet, resurfacing on beauty blogs and TikTok-style tutorials for years before this compilation. The logic sounds reasonable: hairspray is cheap, it’s strong-hold, and it’s sitting in everyone’s bathroom cabinet already, so why not spritz it on your face to lock foundation and powder in place?

The problem, as the video lays out, is that hairspray was never formulated to touch skin. It’s built for hair fibers, loaded with alcohol and aerosol propellants designed to stiffen and hold — not to sit on a pore. Dermatologists warn that repeated use clogs pores, dries out the skin barrier, and triggers redness and irritation, with the aerosol mist also posing a real risk of eye irritation when it’s sprayed anywhere near the face.

Hairspray is built to hold hair in place — not to sit on skin for eight hours a day.

Stencils Made From Tape and Cutlery

The second cluster of tricks the video covers involves using household stationery tape or actual cutlery as makeshift stencils for winged eyeliner and contouring. The appeal is obvious — a straight edge is a straight edge, and a spoon curve looks like it could trace a cheekbone. But the roundup points out that these household objects were never designed with skin contact or precision application in mind, and the results routinely come out patchy, uneven, or smudged compared to what a proper cosmetic tool produces.

Similarly, the video flags the trend of raiding an art supply box for colored pencils to use as eye or lip liners. It’s a hack that trades pigment quality and hygiene for a few dollars saved, and the compilation notes that unorthodox household adhesives and binding agents show up in the same category — cheap substitutes that promise professional results but skip the safety testing that actual cosmetic products go through.

Persistence of Viral Misinformation

None of this is new territory for viral beauty content — cost-effective “life hack” framing has driven engagement on YouTube and Pinterest for years, long before dermatologists start weighing in on the comment threads. The video’s throughline is that convenience and virality aren’t the same thing as safety or quality, and purpose-formulated cosmetic products exist specifically because household substitutes weren’t built for the job.

It’s the same pattern that shows up across plenty of viral internet trends that spread faster than anyone fact-checks them — a cheap workaround gets framed as a genius shortcut, racks up views, and only later do the experts catch up to explain why it was a bad idea all along. If you’ve seen the hairspray trick pop up on your feed again this week, the video’s advice is simple: skip it, and spend the few dollars on actual setting spray instead.