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The virtual vloggers taking over YouTube
A young Japanese woman sporting a giant pink bow and white opera gloves looks into the camera and gleefully greets her YouTube audience. She's about to try and solve a puzzle. Before diving into the game, she boasts with a smile: "Well, compared to all you humans, I can clear it much faster. No doubt about it!"
Yes, this YouTube personality isn't a real person. While she's voiced by a human, she's a digital, anime-style cartoon. Her name is Kizuna Ai, and she has more than two million subscribers to her channel. She's the most-watched "virtual YouTuber" on the site. Kizuna Ai is part of an emerging trend where 3D avatars – rather than humans – are becoming celebrities on YouTube, with dedicated fanbases and corporate deals. It's becoming so popular that one company is investing tens of millions in "virtual talent" and talent agencies are being established to manage these avatars.
It's a movement that has big implications for the future – it could change how brands market their products and how we interact with technology. It could even let us live forever.
Yes, that's right. It could let you "live" forever. The true immortality: being remembered only as an anime girl.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @03:01PM (3 children)
A cartoon voiced by a person, uploaded to YT as a digital media file. Where have I seen something like that before? Think, think, think.
Since Scooby-Doo is also a cartoon voiced by a person, our canine cartoon friend can help us evaluate the gushing claims of this story by applying the "Scooby-Doo Test": Using Scooby-Doo's name in place of the alleged gee-whiz alleged brand-new alleged disruptive cartoon they are swooning about and making sure their ideas still make sense.
Please put on your safety glasses. Here we go:
1. "Scooby-Doo has more than two million subscribers."
Result: Hype detected. While cool, Scooby is not earth-shaking, and not a new thing (his first cartoons came out the year I was born, and that wasn't recently). The three top-viewed videos-featuring-Scooby on YouTube have a combined quarter of a billion (with a "b") views. Yawn.
2. "Scooby-Doo is a virtual YouTuber."
Result: Nonsense detected. Even if Scooby were audio-edited to break the fourth wall, as the cartoon in TFS seems to do, that would not make him a "virtual" anything. Like the cartoon in question, he is a cartoon.
3. "Scooby-Doo is part of an emerging trend where 3D avatars – rather than humans – are becoming celebrities on YouTube"
Result: Nonsense detected. Scooby-Doo has been popular for almost fifty years. This means that cartoons have been popular for at least that long. They are not an "emerging trend". They are not "3D" in any meaningful sense, save that they are two-dimensional cartoon representations of a three-dimensional cartoon universe (as is any cartoon).
4. "Scooby-Doo is a movement that has big implications for the future."
Result: Nonsense detected. Cartoons are cartoons, and have been for a long time.
5. "Scooby-Doo could change how brands market their products (with big implications)"
Result: Nonsense detected. Sure, brands market with cartoons sometimes, but the occasional Joe Camel doesn't mean that cartoons have nor will turn marketing on its head.
6. "Scooby-Doo could change how we interact with technology (with big implications)"
Result: Nonsense detected. Sure, someone could design an interface that communicated with a user by Scooby-Doo saying "rut-roh Raggy" when an error occurs, for example, but this hardly has big implications for technology interaction.
7. "Scooby-Doo could even let us live forever."
Result: Nonsense (surprise!) detected. Scooby-Doo is not--cartoons are not--a vehicle by which human life occurs nor is preserved.
Thank you for attending today's testing. You are encouraged to discuss the results.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday October 05 2018, @03:39PM (2 children)
You missed one thing: With Scooby-Doo the drooling is on the animation side, whereas with the hot-chick Anime the drooling happens IRL.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @04:01PM (1 child)
Well... Let's apply the "other" Scooby-Doo test.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:14PM
Anime is far more attractive, though.