Diehard fans turn virtual teen singer into Japanese mega-star
She wears extremely short skirts, sports blue pigtails to her knees and has the boundless energy of a playful puppy. During her 10-year career, she's released more than 100,000 songs in a variety of languages and opened shows for Lady Gaga. And yet Hatsune Miku, who boasts 2.5 million Facebook followers, doesn't actually exist — at least not in the typical way we think of a flesh-and-blood diva. Miku is a computer-simulated pop star created more than a decade ago by Hiroyuki Ito, CEO of Crypton Future Media in Sapporo, Japan.
A virtual music star, driven by fans and voice-synthesis software. Here's a sample video, if you're curious. I can't judge the voice, since I don't speak japanese, but the animation is remarkably good.
takyon: Wikipedia for Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid. Have some fun with Miku! meme (YTP version. Warning: Gets LOUD).
News? Maybe not. However, you're on the right track:
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(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday November 06 2017, @04:25PM
I know that news doesn't necessarily have to be super-fresh to be notable and culturally relevant.
TFA from MalayMail has dateline "TOKYO, Oct. 30", but Hatsune Miku was released in 2007 [wikia.com], and the underlying Vocaloid software is from 2004 [vocaloidotaku.net]. A search on YouTube.com today for Hatsuni Miku [youtube.com] returns over four million results, some of them fully ten years old [youtube.com].
"Oh, you never heard about
diet coke and menthos[xkcd.com] Hatsuni Miku? There's this cool article..."