Humans have been on Earth for 200,000 years, but, until now, we’ve had no idea how strange we look shaking our heads. Shakeface is a nice, simple internet trend. Take a picture of yourself shaking your face around. Put it on the net. E-mail to chums. The end.

The highest expression of shakeface art is a video created by production company Action Figures , in Austin, Texas, which used a high-resolution, high-speed camera to take pictures of people being punched in the face. It sounds predictable, but the results are mind (face) boggling – with heads looking like the wobbly, liquid-filled balloons they really are.

Shakeface on the web centres around the 850 or more images in the Shakeface group on Flickr – page after page of hipsters with bulging cheeks, flapping lips and streams of drool flying from their mouths. It’s not without hazards. One shaker writes: “My jaw is killing me after all that shakeface action last night! ” Sometimes it’s hard to be avant-garde.

Times recommends

• Make 3D images with your own camera
• Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games
• Anti-spam tool used to translate old books