Mog Battle: Who Mogs Who?

Each face gets a harmony score out of 100, and the battle compares the two whole numbers. The verdict depends on the gap alone: under 6 points is too close to call, 6 to 13 points is a mog, and 14 or more is a hard mog. The four parts are compared too, so you can see where the gap comes from.

The 6 point margin is measured, not picked. In our tests, 170 front-facing photos were each measured in 9 versions that a second photo of the same face could be: as taken, rotated 2° either way, at half the resolution, cropped tighter, cropped off one side, cropped off the top, mirrored, and saved as a lower-quality JPEG. The same photo always scores the same. Between two versions of one photo, the score moved by 5 or more points in 9.3% of 6,074 pairs and by 6 or more in 4.4%, so 6 is the smallest gap one face reaches against itself less than 1 time in 20.

The hard mog line comes from real pairs of faces. Among the 167 public figures in that set, 47% of all pairs sit 6 or more points apart and 9.4% sit 14 or more apart, so a hard mog is a gap that about 1 pair of faces in 10 reaches.

The shares are for pairs of the 167 reference faces, all straight-on photos. Photos taken at different angles land further apart, which is what the photo check on the result is for.

A 1v1 mog battle takes about a minute and needs one front-facing photo of each face. Both photos are read in your browser and never uploaded.

The result names any photo tilted 4° or more, or with the face turned to one side, because either can cost as many points as the whole margin. Retake that photo before you trust the verdict.

The mog calculator behind the battle is the facial harmony score, worked out the same way for both faces. Symmetry compares six mirrored pairs of points across the midline of the face, from the corners of the eyes to the edges of the jaw. Thirds compares the height from the brows to the base of the nose with the height from there to the chin. Fifths checks how evenly the width of the face splits into five bands about one eye wide. The golden ratio part compares face length with face width.

Each part is scored out of 100 and weighted, so a part is worth its weight times its difference: a symmetry score of 88 against 67 is worth 0.35 × 21 = 7.4 points of harmony. Each part also has its own margin, measured the same way as the 6 point one, and it only counts as a lead past that margin. Inside it, the part reads even.

Symmetry needs the biggest gap to count because it moves most between photos: a small head tilt changes it before any other part. The face symmetry test and the golden ratio face test measure two of these parts on their own.

The harmony score reads the positions of points on a flat image, so anything that moves those points moves the score, and tilt moves them most. In our tests, rotating the same photo 4° changed its score by 6 points at the median, the whole margin, and rotating it 8° changed it by 13 to 15.

A head turned to one side does the same. Among the reference photos with a level eye line, faces looking straight at the camera scored 79 at the median, faces turned slightly scored 74 and faces turned further scored 66. Those are different people rather than one face turned, but the score drops further at every step of the turn.

So take both photos the same way: arm’s length, lens at eye level, head level, looking into the lens. The result flags a photo tilted 4° or more, or a face turned to one side, and says which photo to retake.

"Do I mog?" only has an answer against someone, because mogging is a comparison. Against a friend, run the battle with both photos. Against faces in general, the attractiveness test places your harmony score on its bands. For reference, the 167 public figures this battle was calibrated on scored 78 at the median in straight-on photos, with the middle half between 74 and 81.

The result also puts both faces on the 1 to 10 scale of the pretty scale test and the 1 to 8 scale of the PSL score test, so a battle of 78 against 71 also reads 5.8 against 4.7 out of 10, and PSL 5.0 against 4.0. For a straight answer about your own face alone, the am I ugly test reads the same score band by band.

Mog face also means an expression: the narrowed eyes and set jaw people pull in mog photos. The battle is built for a relaxed, neutral face, because an expression moves the points the score is measured from, such as the corners of the mouth and eyes. Use the same neutral face in both photos so the battle compares faces, not expressions.

Height mog and frame mog are about the body, not the face. To height mog someone is to stand noticeably taller next to them; to frame mog them is to have the wider shoulders and the bigger build. A front photo of a face carries neither, so this battle does not score them.

The same goes for everything else the face score leaves out: skin, hair, grooming, body fat and style. They change who looks better in a real side-by-side, and none of them are in the number. Skin is the one SkinPal measures over time: the app scans it from a selfie and tracks it week by week.