Comment by dimator
3 years ago
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.
from Johnny Mnemonic
What can we do to make it more utopian?
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.
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> already here
Just unevenly distributed.
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.
> I like your optimism, but it seems more like a Phillip K. Dick novel to me.
Is it?
It's basically forums & avatars brought in the medium of audio and video communication.
That's probably what everyone would say if they didn't read books. But some read books so...
OMG CYBERPUNK DYSTOPIA PHILIP K DICK
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.
I feel like this is insightful but also I do not understand what you are saying. Can you perhaps elucidate?
> What can we do to make it more utopian?
Move to Mars and start over.
Not falling for it! I’ve seen Total Recall! Based on an actual Phillip K. Dick story.
I have no hope that would work or is what Elon wants. I know he wants to set up the world’s most exclusive gated community there.
> watching a virtual persona stream their development of their M1 GPU drivers is one of the most cyberpunk things I've ever seen!
What would really push it into cyberpunk territory is if it turns out this is not an actual human but an AI-controlled virtual person.
Which is using this to seed memetic triggers that will allow it to take control invisibly later.
Damn, I hope someone gets this into a script soon.
Is she not real? :-o
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.
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Isn't it the opposite, though? https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1582930401118806016
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Oh I didn't realize that is what was happening. This makes all the HN commentary around it even funnier.
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.
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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.
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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.
That’s generous. I find it weird and creepy, interestingly the Hololive kids are exclusively young women with childlike affects.
It’s not fooling anyone to pretend like this is normal self expression.
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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
Which is what Zuck is trying to get us all into with the Meta, but the world is not ready yet.
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.
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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.
The difference is Zuck wants to control it. He wants to de-democratize the movement so he can more easily profit from it.
No, Zucks Metaverse just sucks. "The world isn't ready for my brilliant ideas" is the rallying cry of people with ideas but no execution ability.
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.
And then their avatars could have cloth masks, you know, just for show, like why TV anchors wore them.