watching a virtual persona stream their development of their M1 GPU drivers is one of the most cyberpunk things I've ever seen! it's easy to forget that this world is looking closer and closer to those dreamed up by Gibson, Stephenson, etc. what a time to be alive.
I like your optimism, but it seems more like a Phillip K. Dick novel to me.
>In 2021, society is driven by a virtual Internet, which has created a degenerate effect called "nerve attenuation syndrome" or NAS. Megacorporations control much of the world, intensifying the class hostility already created by NAS.
It's an interesting set of tradeoffs - vtubing has made it possible for people to be on-screen personalities who normally would not able to as easily because it can be very hard to overcome problems with your IRL appearance. That stuff really matters if you want to succeed on YouTube or Twitch. In comparison if you want to be a vtuber, there are relatively affordable ways to grab a stock model and customize it. You can also just commission a custom one from an artist and rigger - though I think the cost of that is sadly out of reach of an amateur it's not as high as you might assume.
If you stream without a face camera at all it generally hurts your ability to grow an audience, and unfortunately our society is still pretty focused on appearance so if you don't look great you're going to potentially get a lot of toxicity in your chat. A vtuber avatar acts as an equalizer in this sense and also lets people express their personality and aesthetics visually in a way that might not otherwise be easy - they can pick eye and hair colors they think represent them without having to use colored contacts or hair dyes, etc.
A few different people I know found that having a vtuber avatar made it much easier for them to get into streaming regularly and it did grow their audience, so I'm happy to see the technology catch on and improve.
> It's an interesting set of tradeoffs - vtubing has made it possible for people to be on-screen personalities who normally would not able to as easily because it can be very hard to overcome problems with your IRL appearance.
That's not the reason most of the popular ones do it. (Ironmouse, sure, but not anyone else.)
Most of the bigger ones are corporate characters, so they're actually forced to hide themselves and it's more like they're uncredited actors. Besides that, it gives you privacy, avoids stalkers, means you don't have to do your makeup or get dressed (up or at all), things like that. Appearance still definitely matters though, but now it's your voice carrying you and not your face.
Small nit but I was confused, I think Johnny Mnemonic is Gibbson? And I had to look up NAS, I think that part of the movie not the book. I think we have another couple decades before androids and mood organs of Phillip K dick at least but I could be wrong. But parts of Gibbsonian cyberpunk is already here!
You are so right. Bizarre. I thought that was Phillip K. Dick for all of my life I think. Even worse because Johnny Mnemonic is one of my favorite movies! I’ve got the Black Shakes worse than I thought.
I was shocked to read this comment because I interpreted your original comment as meaning a Philip K Dick novel would be optimistic compared to the cyberpunk dystopia in which we find ourselves now. lol
Anyway it's pretty fair to confuse the two I think, there can't be any way Johnny Mnemonic wasn't influenced by Blade Runner (I'm guessing it's true of both the movies and of the books). Very similar themes and protagonists at a certain level of abstraction.
Johnny Mnemonic was dead tree published in 1981. (I have the issue of OMNI)
Blade Runner, the movie, was released in 1982.
And PKD's DADoES was published in 1968.
Honestly, IMHO, Blade Runner in movie form shares more DNA with Alien than proto-cyberpunk. They're both character studies rather than world-building exercises, albeit with massive credit to Ridley Scott and the design team that their "background" world is more lifelike than many world-centric films.
But Blade Runner fundamentally lacks the multi-level cutthroat competitive aspect of cyberpunk. Oddly enough, a quirk that frequently recurs in British scifi, in contrast to the more free market American themes.
Aesthetically it looks like the worlds imagined in a Phillip K. Dick novel, but none of the actual dystopian aspects are present in what GP described (rampant poverty/class disparity, environmental destruction, etc.)
I don't think someone sharing their craft through a virtual avatar is any more responsible for these things than the flying cars from Blade Runner would be.
A polity with an outmost shell of no bs ic spooks in a ratio of twenty to one cybersec defense to offense. There is the problem of sciengineers conceiving in the labs photonic computing but the committee member wage/salary slave cuts cost corners (or not but bloats up on unnecessary complexity) and we get the worsest join on the venn diagram in the industry spec.
Can someone explain this vtoon trend to me? It doesn't seem to be driven by anonymity because their real name is easily findable, so I assume it's something else? It seems very common, especially in certain communities.
In case of Marcan/Lina I got the impression that he created Lina just for fun. It started as an April fools joke (Lina 'took over' Marcan's live stream), but Marcan seems to enjoy it a lot, even going so far as contributing to the Inochi2D software (used to render Lina) to improve all sorts of facial features.
I don't have the impression that in Marcan's case it was ever about anonymity, it is more about a creative expression.
Up until Lina's introduction on April 1st, I had never seen a vTuber stream, and I must say it is quite fun to watch. Though personally I wish Lina's voice is tweaked a bit, because it can be hard to understand what she is saying.
What I like about Lina and Alyssa is the increase of visibility of LGBT+ people in the more "hardware" part of software development.
As your get more low level, less visual and more niche, there's less and less diversity of software developers. And everyone should feel welcomed into hacking the kernel.
Everyone being welcomed into contributing to the kernel can result in a natural lack of diversity, as it selects for people interested in technical programming.
It is the ham-fisted attempts to increase diversity for its own sake have ended up being discriminatory. [1]
If there are barriers stopping people contributing, these should be removed. I expect these to be economic barriers, rather than those based on particular characteristics.
Why is it that whenever gender and identity is mentioned in a technical community suddenly people start talking about "ham-fisted" and forced inclusions?
There's nothing forced about people getting into programming and becoming relevant for it, that just by chance it turns out they are not cis+heterosexual.
Nobody in the Asahi crew was "a ham fisted attempt to increase diversity".
The only forced thing here is the "forced inclusion" topic. That, for whatever kind of reason, people stubbornly keep trying to bring to the front.
I think the point is about many engineering orgs adding "minorities" for the sake of PR rather because these "minorities" are great resources.
It is obvious that there's terrific engineers and professionals regardless of sexual orientation and we have countless proofs behind it, last but not least the linked article and many of the other asahi contributors.
But when the likes or Google or Facebook are obviously hiring because you are a minority it's when the solution to gender or sexual discrimination is simply...reversed.
> Why is it that whenever gender and identity is mentioned in a technical community suddenly people start talking about "ham-fisted" and forced inclusions?
You answered your own question; it’s a technical community. Centering political activism is counterproductive to the fundamental telos of being a technical community.
Existing members, unsurprisingly, push back against colonization of their community by those more interested in gender ideology or identity politics than technology.
My point was criticising your underlying assumption that the lack of diversity is due to an unwelcoming environment, presumably as a result of intolerance to certain characteristics.
I might be wrong here, but I have always been under the impression that they are the same person. I didn't even realise that is was supposed to be a secret.
Simple things like Lina en Marcan using the same hostname for the development machine (Raider), using the same IDE (Kate), using the same bash aliases (the one I like most if 'stfu' that appears to suppress terminal output), and a huge overlap of knowledge. Then there is also the same fast-paced speaking style that Marcan has.
I did notice Lina always (rather jokingly) denying being Marcan, especially during the April 1 debut, but I always assumed that that was just part of the joke.
Again, I might be wrong here, maybe they are not the same person after all, but as far as I can tell it's just Hector Martin having fun.
> Isn't it the opposite, though?
You mean Lina being first, and Marcan being an alter-ego? Marcan (Hector Martin) is a real person, he has done quite a few interviews on camera. https://youtu.be/dF2YQ92WKpM?t=496
Some people just prefer their public persona to be in the form of an avatar instead of their real face. They want to have something there to represent themselves instead of just streaming a screen and nothing else, but they would rather that representation be an avatar or character rather than their physical selves.
Personally, I like the idea. IMO, we lost something when it became normal/expected to link our real-life self to our internet selves. We arguable gained some unpleasant things too (thinking of Facebook here).
A persistent avatar/alias as an internet persona seems to match the real-life to internet-life relationship better. IE, for many, they’re different and rather separable aspects of life.
There was a Black Mirror episode that makes plain the downside of a virtual representation: it can be taken from you and manipulated by someone else. The persona becomes a sale-able commodity, and can be separated from your control.
I remember hearing that this exact thing happened a few years ago in either Japan or South Korea.
There was a talent agency that had three-four performers who took shifts streaming games through a shared vtuber persona who had build up some popularity. At some point the agency fired the performers and replaced them with a new performer who didn't have the same performance.
The fans weren't told but it was immediately apparent, so they started demanding the changes to be reverted. The fans were ignored and both the vtuber's popularity and the agency fell back into obscurity.
I guess the lesson here is that personas are personal.
Also Japanese viewers like this better, and you don’t have to look good, and if you’re streaming from inside a soundproof box in summer without AC then you don’t even have to wear clothes.
If you were the Genre of person who got rude / explicit / insulting comments whenever you showed your actual face on camera, the vtoon trend would be quite easy to understand
Hector Martin (assuming they're the same person) looks perfectly fine on camera. They're an average looking person but I fail to find anything anyone would criticize about his looks.
My first response was a bit curt so I've removed it. (Edit: I can't seem to remove it.) Yes I'm aware a lot of women get harassment when they show their face streaming. It's one of the reasons it's so popular in Japan for women to be vtubers rather than show their face while streaming while the popularity for men doing it is significantly less (though there's still plenty who do it without changing their voice).
However Hector Martin is not a woman living in Japan and they look perfectly fine/average.
It’s like getting a specific haircut, choosing what model of glasses to get, or getting a nose job, or a tattoo. Or even just picking what style of clothes you want to represent yourself in. I.e. it’s simply choosing your appearance, using more modern technology.
Number one: you're using an overloaded term, but I suppose that your specific social conditioning has given you a specific concept of the definition of normal self expression that this clearly falls out of those boundaries.
Number two: this person's goal CLEARLY isn't to fool anyone, it's not a deep fake video, and it's frankly none of your business or concern that they enjoy using an animated avatar.
When they were new, most people thought of nose jobs (and other cosmetic surgery) as being weird and creepy. Some people still do. What is “normal” is a function of commonality, and at least VTooning does not cost a fortune and risks neither complications nor needing further surgery for years to come.
Very well articulated comment from someone with highlights such as
"you write for the Gaurdian and relentlessly spout feminist propaganda"
"destruction that activist hooligans created in Portland"
"Neurodiverse isn't a real medical term"
Sounds like you've got a very particular axe to grind from a very particularly narrow world view. I hope one day you learn to enjoy your fellow human beings for who they are
Don't forget to dissociate the concept of virtual worlds which already exist and are quite popular (MMOs etc.), and the idea of a virtual world owned and imagined by Zuckerberg which has been a terrible failure so far.
The opinions around facebook’s metaverse are hilarious when things like Second Life, WoW, EVE, VR Chat, and even Roblox have been so massively popular yet unrecognized for what they are.
I kinda think to some degree those words are the reason those opinions are the way they are. The metaverse is being sold as this new, groundbreaking, fantastic thing, when they've already existed for decades.
Also, VRChat is infinitely better than the Metaverse, does not require you to sell your soul to Facebook, does not require a branded headset (OR ANY AT ALL, YOU CAN PLAY IT 2D), runs well, HAS LEGS ON YOUR AVATAR FFS, and massive community support in and out of game.
Also it didn't require billions in investment. Facebook could have literally burned $900 million on hookers and cocaine, and then thrown $100 million to buy VR chat, and be better off than they are now.
I feel that Facebook's metaverse push is a desperate attempt to reverse the evolution of our identities from baseline, offline, unitary identity towards constructed and abstract, online, contextual, anime girls form. I don't know precisely why it's always specifically anime && girls, but everything else seems to fall face first so I guess it's survival of fittest.
I agree with everything except for the billions of dollars part. It seems quite obvious (but maybe I'm wrong?) that most of that investment went into the hardware that Meta has been developing over the years, and some of the "platform" capabilities that surround that hardware (think their app store for example). Sure, the virtual experiences are part of it. But I think it's not where the majority of the money went.
They currently have the most popular VR hardware platform. And it's the only piece of hardware that Meta really has, everything else they make is software. If Meta wants to keep growing, being the leading producer of "the next big thing" in hardware would certainly help. Zuckerburg is betting on VR/AR being that next big thing. Only time will tell I guess. But I find it a little weird when I see people commenting on Meta's investment as if all they did was create a basic second life clone. They're building some of the most innovative consumer hardware at the moment. I'm not hugely into it because Meta doesn't really seem like the company I'd like to entrust with cameras pointing at my eyeballs, but you can't deny that the hardware they've built so far is quite impressive.
They've already existed, and had fun, engaging content. Meta in that sense is putting the cart before the horse. You can't convince us all to get into this world and then figure out what we're supposed to be doing there later on.
Everyone just pretends there wasn't a time when people were spending years of their life in an MMO.
That was ruined by games trying to appeal to more mainstream people (with less hardcore Features like losing all your possessions upon death) and the micromonetization strategies that everyone hates.
I wonder if VR will even have games like early Everquest, WoW, EVE, etc but in VR.
The difference between Facebooks Meta and other worlds is the difference between getting a billion+ people into the same virtual world. How big is Second Life? or Roblox?
Facebook is going to struggle to get a billion people on to their website/app soon. I really don’t see this many people wanting to use a shitty VR chat app.
I didn’t make myself clear enough, I was talking about people brushing off the core concept as intrinsically unfeasible. Obviously their specific version is tonedef and lacking features but the baseline concept is proven valid by those other versions.
Vtubers are popular because they aren’t in a virtual world you have to go visit. You just open up YouTube/Twitch and they stay in that little window without the possibility of getting trapped in an MMO where you die in real life if you die in the game.
Although some of them are designing “virtual worlds” as an excuse to get around YouTube moderation and taking 30% of superchats.
Same thing was said about full touch screen iphones circa 2007.
VR/AR just hasn't been done right as of now, but its getting close. Demand is there. Imagine virtual schooling during time like Covid, but instead of Zoom, kids actually see each other in VR and can interact with each other.
Yeah it's pretty great, though I hope it won't be leveraged to reduce physical presence in social settings. The real world is still the place to be when possible, but it would be great not having to fly across the world for face to face meetings. Teams is just not good enough. VR might eventually become so.
