Middle-aged vlogger who used filter to look young caught in live-stream glitch | Hacker News Reader

Middle-aged vlogger who used filter to look young caught in live-stream glitch

bbc.com

208 pointsmLuby153 comments

Wow, this shows how out of touch I am with social media and technology. I know that Apple's 3d-camera phones enable chat via Animoji, but that applies a cartoon image across your face. I didn't realize reality-enhancement filters (e.g. face thinners) were good enough to work in real-time? I'm confused because the links in the article just show the woman's real face [0], and not footage of when the filter was actually working. I guess I expected to see the glitching in real-time, like the "Mission Impossible" hallway scene [1]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8m4jYaALIA

[1] https://youtu.be/qtA0JS1lBaY?t=359

Reading the article it appears that everyone knew that this was a filter. She asked for 100k donation to reveal her face, but no one donated this much yet.

The tech is pretty grown up at this point... If you open up snapchat and hold down on your face while the selfie camera is active, a lot of masks will show up that change your face in real-time. One of these swaps your gender (and does a pretty good job of it to be honest). And this is just running on a phone (including android where there's no AI chip like in iphones), I'm sure with a computer you can do much better!

Ok, I found an example (I don't have snapchat installed) of one of these filters working on video (not sure if it would work for live streaming):

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/want-to-try-that-gender-face-swa...

I guess it looks...obviously like a filter, with particular distortion around the hair? In the BBC story's lede image [0], which purports to be two photos of the same vlogger, with and without the filter, her "filtered" face is substantially slimmed, yet the hair near the software-slimmed contours of the face looks, not fake at all?

[0] https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/123E0/production...

Someone on Twitter says this:

https://twitter.com/huizhong_wu/status/1156349675831615488

> If you watch this vid from a Chinese site it says she used to cover up her face with a cartoon photo onscreen and would post filtered photos and short vids. Think it’s that she forgot to put up the photo for the live http://n.miaopai.com/media/ffdEpeNnTdRPa4ABk8DJa-zgvC~FDYrT

I was also shocked as to well the real-time filters work. I suspect it's also a sign of how china tech is beginning to lead rather than follow on how technology is used in everyday life. They have 100's of millions of people that have embraced technology as part of their daily life so companies have a large audience where they can try new tech.

It was a Photo with moving lips, not an amazing whole upper body render.

There's some images attached to this post [0], if you've used snapchat or tiktok/douyin they have pretty decent filters baked in but I guess the magic is making the video quality low enough to 'smooth' out the effect.

Also found an article [1] that looks at how much people are willing to spend and how far people are willing to go to hide their real look, things like buying silicon upper body suit(?) to get better looking boobs/frame or voice changers

[0] https://weibo.com/3824282019/HFtfQzAcw

[1] http://www.sohu.com/a/330373892_100117963 (mildly NSFW)

> Wow, this shows how out of touch I am with social media and technology.

Doesn't it have to be done in real time for selfie cameras to work? I'm also behind the 8-ball and somehow only recently learned of smartphones shipping with reality distortion fields on by default: https://www.insider.com/samsung-phones-default-beauty-mode-c....

I wonder if we'll hit the point of photo/video evidence being unadmissible evidence?

I know this is tangential to the whole thing, but this is a cool feature of the Chinese language:

>The story has been incredibly popular across Chinese social networks with more than 600 million people reading posts that use a hashtag which translates to "female vlogger experiences bug showing her old lady face" and more than 50,000 using the hashtag itself.

In english, you're never going to get a twitter trend of #FemaleVloggerExperiencesBugShowingHerOldLadyFace. Does anyone know of research looking at how more compact languages influence trending? It seems neat.

Good chance it's actually just 6 to 7 syllables long. So, not just writing but compact speech too.

Important to note, however, that spoken language information density (per syllable) and syllabic rate are strongly inversely correlated [1]; languages such as Mandarin with lots of information contained in each syllable tend to be spoken slower than languages like Spanish, which uses many more syllables to convey the same amount of information, but in a similar amount of time.

So, the compactness really is more just on the writing side.

[1] "A cross-language perspective on speech information rate" https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/16e6/43a9e39674c58acd7cdf56...

It's #女主播直播出bug秒变大妈脸# [1]. 12 syllables. I can get an English translation down to the same syllable count: #StreamingBugTurnsVloggerGirlIntoOldWoman It obviously still takes up more horizontal space; to fix that you'd need to use a font that squeezes about 3 Latin letters into the same space as one Chinese character. However, the gap in information density isn't actually that large, because Chinese usually requires slightly larger fonts to achieve the same legibility.

It's maybe also interesting to note that hashtags are delimited by # on both ends, because there are no spaces between words you could use to find the end.

[1] https://m.weibo.cn/search?containerid=231522type%3D1%26t%3D1...

Interesting. I never would have thought a hashtag that long would gain so much popularity but there you go. It must take a long time to type too.

Hmm... You could save another syllable by changing StreamingBug to StreamGlitch, which is also more idiomatic. Same number of characters though.

Do you have any idea whether this is an atypical length for a trending hashtag in chinese?

Not about tags but I remember a lot of discussion around this concept the difference between Japanese and English twitter when the character limit was changed. This short blog links to a more academic source.

http://www.scotthale.net/blog/?p=628

It would have simply become something more compact, like #filterfail. We never got #CelebritiesPhonePicsHacked, but rather #fappening. Similarly, “Watergate” went from a location name to mean “never-ending scandal involving public figures”.

Language compression does not require ideograms.

This is just a form of digital makeup. I predict that using a young attractive avatar will become the social norm and this sort of thing will be entirely unobjectionable within a decade.

Yeah pretty much. And no one should be against this. This is allowing people to be who they want to be instead of being limited by who they are... It is no different than someone getting plastic surgery to change their appearance... which I guess some people still despise but I don't see it any differently from someone who is transgender and wants to get an operation and drugs to make them more like their chosen gender.

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

The words vanity and vain come from the Latin word for empty, or without substance or value.

When we alter our appearance, it's because we put value or merit in something that inherently has no merit.

We all want a reason to hold our head up high. Some look for it in athletics, others in academia, others in financial success. This woman looked for it by faking her physical appearance.

But the best reason is something we can't merit: we are made in the image and likeness of God. We are all little images of God, and if we truly understand that we have inherent dignity, then nobody can take that from us, no matter how poor or ugly or uneducated we are.

And then we won't feel the need to put ourselves high up. And we won't feel the need to put others below us. We'll want others to know their own dignity, so they might stand tall with us!

> we are made in the image and likeness of God. We are all little images of God, and if we truly understand that we have inherent dignity, then nobody can take that from us, no matter how poor or ugly or uneducated we are.

That's pretty easy when you invent a God. Rhetorical non-sense aside, fact is that appearance matters to people a lot... as does age. Making up rhetoric does not fix any of this, and only makes people's biases more subconscious. The best way to overcome their biases is technology, rather than words... as you can not subvert what you are seeing, as seeing is believing, where can easily subvert what you claim you believe.

> fact is that appearance matters to people a lot

Appearance matters even taking God into account. How we dress is a silent way of communicating to others what we value, what our business is, what kind of extra dignities we have, and how we think of others.

If for no good reason, the President went to the store in either his pajamas or renaissance clothing at 2pm on a Wednesday, he wouldn't be conveying his dignity as leader of a whole nation, he wouldn't be properly communicating his business there, he would be communicating his values, and he would be setting an example and a precedent.

I have some bad news for you about the Presidential Twitter feed.

The more Fulton Sheen shows I watch, the more I realize that Idiocracy doesn't have to continue to become a documentary. But that's going to require a moral change, especially among our youth. That's not the main reason I study morality and train my children in it, but if more parents do likewise, we'll have a very real chance of turning the country around. Unfortunately, most adults I've met believe the same thing I was taught growing up: there are no absolute truths or absolute morals, you have to come up with them yourself, etc. That's how you get Trump for President.

Trump is extremely popular among the people who do believe in an absolute morality, the evangelicals.

One person's vanity is another's identity. Dressing up like Bronie can be just a fulfilling as singing a hymn.

If you want everyone to stand tall with you, try meeting them where they are instead of pushing your world view as supreme.

Our outward appearance can and do represent what values we identify with. But saying "I'm worthy because I am beautiful" is shallow, which is just another way of saying empty, vain, and without substance.

Besides, why would someone want their worth to come from beauty, which is so fleeting? True and lasting beauty is in virtue, even non-religious people admire the sacrifices of soldiers for the sake of freedom, or the sacrifices of Gandhi for peace. These are truly beautiful.

Physical beauty is empty and devoid of merit. But like anything else we have, our physical height, our intelligence, our gift for music, our gift for software, it can be put to good use in the selfless service of others, at which point it becomes truly beautiful.

> Physical beauty is empty and devoid of merit.

I get where you're coming from, as my personal values have this element in them as well. I'm probably heavily influenced by my Protestant upbringing, which also gives me the moral that "laying moral judgement on others is a vanity."

That said, it's also interesting to look at moral themes and personal values through the lens of cultural evolution. For the vast majority of history, it's pretty much been a hard fact that one's physical appearance breaks down with age (Keanu Reaves being some Magickal exception).

Therefore the "beauty is empty" moral might be seen as a distilled admonition against relying too heavily on physical appearance, since that could cause some hardship later on.

Anyway, thank you for sharing. I appreciate finding other people that pursue True Beauty, whatever that may mean. The quest itself is a thing of beauty. lol

> laying moral judgement on others is a vanity

To help form our morals, we have to judge everything. This is an integral part of turning life experience into wisdom. But this isn't the same as judging people. I cannot know what's inside the mind and heart of my neighbor, even if he does something extremely evil. So I cannot condemn him for doing evil. I can condemn the evil itself, but I cannot condemn him, which is just another way of saying that he is not salvageable. Because people can change. I recognized this even before I was a Christian. That's also why it says of Jesus: "he will not quench a smoldering wick."

No need for imaginary beings to enter the picture. One just has to put value in experience and originality. When every scar and wrinkle is a sign that you have lived a bit more than others, that you have become wiser, that you have more interesting stories to tell, then it becomes easier to be proud of being older and be attracted to older people. When you value uniqueness over conformity, then it becomes easier to be proud to be (and be attracted to) less conventionally-shaped people.

> When you value uniqueness over conformity, then it becomes easier to be proud to be (and be attracted to) less conventionally-shaped people.

This is merely a justification for self gratification through inordinate love of food and drink. There's a natural shame about being overweight, and it's unfortunate that people encourage others to push past that. Even non-religious people can see that this is unhealthy and just plain bad for us. I was about 50lbs overweight for a few years, but I never let go of the shame that it brought me, knowing it would mean giving up on my only hope of getting back to a healthy weight.

Man, I spoke of scars and wrinkles and you read "fat". In that particular paragraph you quote, I was thinking of people with asymmetrical features, or other features generally considered unattractive. Not once I considered weight. I would argue that you might be unhealthily obsessed with the subject of obesity and appearance.

The thread we're in is about appearance and partially about weight. And people who argue that obesity is not a problem generally use phrases like "unconventionally shaped". So I still think it was a reasonable guess at what you meant.

But I agree with you that those wrinkles are battle scars, that gray hair is the potential for wisdom, and that youth is not something to hang onto as if it were virtue itself.

To be honest, it's kind of already happening. It's long been a trend for certain people to use cartoon representations of themselves that look a lot younger/more conventionally attractive than they may be in 'real life', and there are quite a few YouTubers and Twitch streamers using either animated portraits of themselves or fictional characters as their avatars.

The big difference in future will be that more people will be using avatars that look more like actual people/deaged photographs of themselves instead.

David Foster Wallace predicted not only that, but its rise and fall. http://declineofscarcity.com/?page_id=2527

Great Read!

I'm reminded of a Nebula(?) Award winning short story about hive-rats interacting with nobility in the 'future'. The nobility is shrouded in apperance/voice/stim tech such that the AIs are more the person than anything. A princess is brought to the under-city by her father to a shop that can fix the princess' tech, as it is malfunctioning. The daughter of the shop owner tries to peer into the princess' life and psyche as the shop owner tries to fix the princess. The princess has implants that stimulate her face, voice, and body to say the right things at the right times, to move the right way, that changes her face via lightsheets to be most beautiful to the observer she is with, that causes her to say just the right thing at just the right time and be increbily witty. But the daughter of the shop owner tries to peer through the tech to see the woman behind the veil. She discovers that the person behind it all is nearly mute and has the intelligence of an infant. The tech had been installed before ego formation and the person behind it all didn't really exist. She discovers it is also true of the man that brought the princess down to them too. The entire nobility is essentially faking it.

I am SO sorry that I cannot find the link to the actual story. If anyone has the title or author, I would love to know!

Do report back if you find it! I'll check it out.

Part of the premise of the Deus Ex games (thinking specifically of Mankind Divided) is "augmentations" that can make people better in all kinds of ways, but are generally only available to the wealthy elite which leads to all kinds of trouble. What happens when the "elite" don't just seem better - but objectively (and universally) _are_ by real measures. Longer and more accurate memories, longer life spans, more knowledge of their surroundings, better judges of character, stronger, faster, smarter - etc. Not necessarily "faking it" they really do remember more, but that's because they can store their memories in a chip in their head. All at a cost that prevents the 99% from having these advantages. (Though, the progress made by these folks can be broadly beneficial.)

Yes, yes, I know somebody is already itching to comment that this is present state - I'll leave you to it.

It vaguely reminds me of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary books, which if I recall correctly have the rats, underworld, technology, and more, but it might not be it as it doesn’t have the light sheets etc, I think... I’m trying to figure out where I’ve heard this one before, it sounds familiar...

I'm really curios about it, do you remember at least the year?

Turns out I need to read the Infinite Jest.

Predicted when? I wish there were a date attached to that page.

Published in 1996, but it appears he began writing it in the late '80s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest

Reminds me of the time a "cute anime girl" streamer had a glitch that exposed him as a fairly typical otaku hikikomori using motion capture software to puppet the character (and presumably some sort of voice synthesizer to provide the dialogue).

Do you have a link? I'm amazed by the fake video generation we have now, I wonder when we'll start seeing it used for spam and (mal)advertising.

This one. You can search for the articles when searching for "Nora Cat".

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3iwL9Yz8LcKkJsnLPevOTQ/vid...

> her fans urged her to show her face and remove her filter but she refused, instead apparently saying: "I can't show my face until I receive gifts worth 100,000 yuan ($11,950). After all, I'm a good-looking host." Followers began to send her donations with the largest reported to be 40,000 yuan ($5,813, £4,780) during the session.

> The story has been incredibly popular across Chinese social networks with more than 600 million people reading posts that use a hashtag which translates to "female vlogger experiences bug showing her old lady face"

> many live-streamers simply sing karaoke in their bedrooms, or eat snacks for hours on end.

Good documentary on this comes from 'Peoples Republic of Desire'. Live-streaming is considerably more mainstream, advanced, and in many cases an actual industry in itself now, outside of the west: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWdg8d18Tfs

There are quite a few making a living from live-streaming in the Anglosphere as well. I'm amazed that men send money. (OK, maybe amazed is the wrong word.)

I remember reading a while back about some controversy that some of the female live-streamers were being reported to the IRS for unreported income, with the IRS sending audit notices to them.

I think the a bunch of trolls, probably the incel crowd on 4chan and the like got that going: https://nypost.com/2018/11/27/internet-trolls-are-threatenin...

That's it. I forgot they were sexually explicit. Apparently those in TFA are not.

From what I recall from various forums and reddit threads it was not just users who generated sexually explicit content, but any streamer judged to be a “thot”.

One phenomenon across the animal kingdom is the nuptial gift, where giving expensive resources is used to prove fitness for mating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuptial_gift

I first came across the concept in the delightful book "Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation", which covers the evolutionary biology of reproduction in the form of an advice column with letters from birds, insects, etc: https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Tatianas-Sex-Advice-Creation/dp/08...

I want an interview with someone who is willing to donate over a thousand dollars to a person they're watching talk on a webcam.

It is crazy, they aren’t even promising heaven or sex. I guess they must get a sense of companionship?

Go on some of the most popular Twitch.tv channels, you'll see lots of that happening. Too many to count on two hands. It's unbelievable and quite sad.

> quite sad.

I wonder if you can expand on that.

I think the idea is the trope that people who donate "thousands of dollars" to a random person on twitch are probably lonely.

I'm not into the streaming community much though, but that would be my assumption of what they meant

It’s not sad if you can afford it and enjoy the content created by the streamer. I can see why one might call it sad though if you are donating significant amounts of money relative to your spending capacities to someone that you wouldn’t donate to if they looked differently.

I cannot conceive of how being able to view someone carries an equal value for a person as a week or two in Cancun chilling - or how they can spend money that easily that took them weeks of their life to earn through labour[1].

[1] There's a segment of the population that I'm ignoring those that are either trust fund babies or useless economic leeches, when those people blow 100k on a car that they immediate crash I just shrug - but I know a lot of the people following these cams are actually working people (probably white collar, but still actually working for a living).

I'm friends with a fairly well off single guy who has admitted a great deal of his spending to me at times. Keep in mind he's a steadily working guy in oil field inspections which pays close to $300k a year, which is pretty damn good in our poor area in the southern US.

According to him in the last year he's spent $18K+ in clash of clans alone and its not the only mobile game he plays. I've watched him drop thousands in a single night on cam girls when he strangely invited me to come along for the private viewing. He's paid for cam girls to come over for a week or more to his house. (nice house, nice looking guy tbh). He's dropped $30K on legos along in the last two years because he wants a lego room in his house. This is just a few of the things he's admitted and shown me the spending records on.

As a single guy in his 30's he has extreme amounts of expendable income for how cheap it is to live in our area. It blows my mind the money he spends on things. The Lego purchases alone were more than my last year's take home pay. I can't really fault him for using his money as he see's fit given he's a self made man who worked his way up from an extremely poor area.

Sorry, to clarify - 300k is a pay rate so far beyond what most people make that I'd consider it to fall under my caveat. Any person who is making enough money to be replaced with a well compensated manager leading three entry or low mid-level pay (120k for the manager, 60k each for the team member) is... sort of astounding. I don't know what level of productivity you'd need to hit to rationally be compensated at that level while other people get so little.

And to clarify a bit more, 11k for a person making 300k a year is just a single week's take home, so maybe a more measured response is just that this is equivalent (for a person making 300k to a person making 60k) as blowing 1k at vegas on a weekend.

Observers generally experience sad feelings from seeing someone waste resources, and experience anger when someone is taken advantage of, probably because we perceive our risk increasing (in a tribal sense). Soliciting (and receiving) outlandish "donations" from strangers can look like both a waste and a con.

By tribal risk increasing I mean that if Ogg loses his harvest fording the river, now the tribe has to feed him. Or if Ogg is swindled out of his pelt, now the tribe has to worry about him freezing and make sure nobody else falls victim. In context, this is when your uncle Ben donates to some internet personality and then has trouble making ends meet, and you might have to step in to assist him.

A third unrelated explanation is relative value, where the observer might feel upset watching someone throw good food to a dog, rather than giving it to a starving person nearby because the observer feels the starving person is more deserving of the resources than the animal. In context, this is when your uncle Jerry donates to some internet personality instead of using the money to help you or some other more deserving local charity case (not using that pejoratively).

> from seeing someone waste resources

I think the word "waste" really doesn't apply to just shifting money between people. Although there may be waste elsewhere (or it may be just unfair).

1. If you have enough money to throw around $2,000, you should be able to invest in yourself enough to get real attention, not buy it. If you can't, due to some dysfunction, that's sad. Not sad in a derogatory sense, but sad in the sense that you are so *cked that even $400,000/year can't fix it.

2. If it's not play money, it's sad how irresponsible the person is.

This isn't exactly complicated.

Invest in yourself how? Don’t just throw out empty rhetoric, lay out a plan about how you would spend that $2000 dollars to “get REAL attention”. Money isn’t a magical cure all.

"Money isn’t a magical cure all."

Yes it is. Workout. Dress well. Eat right. Learn things. Time to do so.

Also, I called out $400,000 a year, not $2000.

You can pay a beautiful person for a few hours of their time for that price, where as this gets you a shout out and maybe a image of a boob. The former may boost your confidence to meet someone who likes you for who you are, the former will make it worse.

It's a gamified leader board kind of thing. The more you donate the higher in ranking you go. The big whale of app games are moving to the camming world.

The article links to this video of the incident:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8m4jYaALIA

Without video of the filter in action, I'm skeptical of the claim.

It seems plausible that the person on the left is using a filter of some kind.

Yeah, the tech is not at the level of side by side images shown in the video. Only at the level of taking forever to replace a face in another video.

I'm skeptical, too, that this isn't a stunt.

Oh dear, these filters are now so sophisticated and realistic, that they are able to distort reality and can fool anybody. It is getting easier to fake anything these days, and I can only see this being common place in the society dependent on social media being a source of news online.

The importance of the 'Don't believe everything on the internet' advice is becoming increasingly important these days, as there are many Wizards of Oz out there hiding behind the computer screen and Instagram/Snapchat filters.

I think a reading of the relevant passage from David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" (from 1996) re: video conversations is appropriate here.

http://declineofscarcity.com/?page_id=2527

I was actually looking through the comments to see if someone would reference DFW videophony.

Same - exactly where my brain went.

When you reward people for their physical appearance (and certain standards of beauty), it is no surprise that they take advantage of technology to look as expected by the public.

To look at it another way, some people have a natural advantage in life that they did not earn. This helps even that playing field.

There's bias for good looks. And cosmetic/health industry spends billions of dollars on marketing to re-enforce and further strengthen the bias. So is it any surprise people would want to game it to get a better chance of success.

I have trouble believing the fans didn't know at some point. The article implies they didn't, but also isn't specific.

Perhaps they knew but and the mystery was part of the show?

I haven't seen any software generally available that wouldn't be somewhat obvious that it is in use.

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde

I'm a guy and I have no idea why some guys throw ridiculous money at good looking girls online. You have no chance of meeting them, let alone anything else. If anything, throw money at not so good looking people, their lives are harder on average.

Pay-for-attention is what's occurring there, in most cases. They're attempting to buy attention from the woman in question. In a context of competition, where there are many men trying to talk to one woman, spending money is a means of stepping above the crowd that is trying to get her attention.

It mirrors what goes on in the physical world. Men spend extraordinary sums of money to attract/buy the attention of women, using status objects or spending lavishly.

And of course the perpetual debate between whether this is a normal biological behavior for signaling purposes, or whether it's mostly society induced and isn't necessary or useful.

It's the same reason people blow tons of money at strip clubs. They want someone to like them, they don't care if the feelings are fake. Some of the popular streamers also do fan meetups for their biggest donators, where they'll go on a single "date" with them.

There are people who only tip good money in restaurants when the waitor is not so good looking, to counter balance this tendency for many people. Looks should not matter when it comes to serving food (although they seem to do in reality).

When the product/service is based on people's good looks (e.g. models in adverts, Hollywood movies), the story would be different. The online streamers probably belong to this category to some extent, because people do like looking at beautiful people.

That's like asking why do people watch porn when they won't "meet" the pornstar.

I can totally get why someone would pay for interactive porn (although I personally spend my money on my own (wasteful) interests).

I'm impressed by how far technology has become to the point that she could do this.

Right?! I think there's lots of honest debate to be had about how superficial we are, but honestly, my reaction to this is "That worked? wow!"

This is exactly why I have problems with all the "AI / self-driving cars / CRISPR / etc" articles that correctly point out how long we've spent with revolution "just around the corner"....that corner might be far away, or it might be close and there's every reason to be skeptical of any given claim. But when it happens, it WILL be dramatically rapid, and poo-pooing the idea of thinking about it in advance just leads us to a society that was warned long ago of a coming adjustments yet is always somehow surprised.

This should send a clear message to all those people trying to look younger: use makeup.

Yeah, here's a great makeup tip: draw a 3d barcode or marker on your face so that the tracking doesn't fail as easily.

All I see is a filtered woman on the left and a different unfiltered woman on the right, the whole time. At what time does the glitch occur?

If you’re talking about the YouTube video, I don’t think they captured the glitch from A to B, just the unfiltered capture.

Everyone is presenting false versions of themselves, especially the people who present themselves as a true version of themselves.

I'm admittedly quite sadenned by the continued commodification of female appearances in this manner. I am curious if male vlogging has similar tricks to get more $$$.

I don't agree with this. At least except not in the most pedantic philosophical sense. My role models were people who acted the same when they didn't know anyone was looking, or there was no reward. They didn't put on fake personas or dramatically code switch. They didn't primp and accessorize to meet some vain expectation. They were of course respectful of others expectations and wouldn't go to a funeral in pajamas or anything selfishly ridiculous, but they were genuine, empathetic, kind....honest. I try to emulate them the best I can. Any human failings in that trying is not at all the same thing as the fraud that this article and so many perpetrate to gain something.

The examples you provide are more exaggerated than I am saying. Even your greatest role models have probably genuinely thought harm to others in flashes of anger, done things to people that they later regret, have their moments of genuine cruelty to other. But interacting with them doesn't mean you get a list of all their sins and insecurities at the time, and neither are you obligated to them, which makes them seem untarnished by all their bad things they done, thought, believed, so on and so forth. And they won't tell you either, not until you get to really know them.

As I said, the normal human failings/thoughts/emotions are not the same thing as this articles premise. I also do not accept that everyone has moments of cruelty. Cruel thoughts are not the same thing. We all think things and choosing how we react is the difference. I feel that trying to claim even the best people are secretly hiding evils is an attempt to feel better about one's own feelings or actions. I am confident in the examples I look up to be sure I "know" their true natures.

My agrument is not the article's premise applies equally to everyone in severity. My argument is that people are never who they present themselves to be. This is due a variety of things, a mix of intentional avoidance of topics and impossibility to completely share a lifetime experience with another, atomic human mind.

That you assume this claim is itself a deceptive act is an easy cognitive shortcut from parsing that I could be potentially as honest as you in my viewpoint. Why do that?

Because I don't see the fact that we have to present ourselves to the outside world with some form of restraint or self censorship to function (your technically correct "not who we appear to be") as remotely the same thing as fraud designed to manipulate/profit. I don't think it's reasonable at all to put those in the same box as some proof "everyone does it".

The requirements of society are to practice restraint and portray ourselves at our best. It’s manipulation, mutually agreed upon and without negative connotation. Being able to observe extreme and moderate things at the same time doesn’t make them completely different actions that aren’t at all related.

Yes, steroids. The usage is rampant.

No, I mean why doesn't pewdiepie accent his cheekbones some more via technology. Maybe make his arms bigger. IDK.

Male beauty is not valued as highly among men and women as female beauty. It's all too easy to speculate on the evolutionary and sociocultural reasons why, but it is the reality.

Citation needed

Really? I thought that was common knowledge. But regardless: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

"Beauty is only skin-deep, but the perceived absence of beauty may lead to damaging social bias. Compared to men, women may suffer more from social anxiety, prejudice, and inequality based on their appearance [1,2]. To comprehend beauty-related socio-cultural phenomena, many studies have examined the pursuit of beauty related to body image, body perception, a body-related self-concept, and body satisfaction [3–5]. These studies have clarified factors that impact and result in the pursuit of beauty. However, although numerous previous studies on these aspects of beauty have been conducted, there is still a considerable controversy about why women, in particular, are focused on with a beautiful appearance."

Are you kidding? My office is located next door to a gym (which I use). Guys care a _lot_ about their beauty.

I personally work out five days a week and have a skin care routine. But my comment still stands: female beauty is valued more highly than male beauty. I did not say male beauty wasn't valued - I'm saying it's valued less than female beauty.

> I am curious if male vlogging has similar tricks to get more $$$.

This Chinese incident is just another example of 'female beauty as a commodity'. You can also see this effect with Instagram influencers (where females vastly outnumber men), the modeling industry, the cam model industry, etc.

This sounds like the setup for a Black Mirror episode.

Why does it matter if a cam girl is not who she presents herself as?

And why not.

Getting plastic surgery is also used to make people look good and it has become a practical necessity for any aging female performer. Filter is cheaper.

But isn't this just reinforcing that necessity?

It's interesting BBC noticed so called four great sorceries of Asia (亚洲四大邪术). Applying digital makeup to someone to the point that his or her mama couldn't recognize the person is certainly one of them.

I wasn't aware technology had progressed so far that retail consumers have access to this kind of software for live video. I would be very interested in what kinds of software these people are using.

Yes... The screen shot in the article looks a lot more like the 'filter' in use is actually another actress. Though I'd love to be proven wrong.

There is a video linked in the article. And I highly doubt one can produce such realistic hand movements in real-time . I mean why would Disney spend years in making a movie, then?

Edit: Okay, I think only lips are copied from real person to a pre-recorded footage of some celebrity. That is a easier problem than what I thought what was going on.

I want to live in a world where everyone is confident in themselves and doesn't care what others think about superficial details outside of character.

In the far-far future that may never come, I imagine people exist in a virtual continuum and can change all aspects of their appearance such that they never feel slighted by their perceived place in a fitness gradient they cannot change.

Maybe technology is helping us get there. Or maybe it's showing the deep facets of our evolutionary makeup and our learned societal pressures, and we're incapable of doing anything but pay it lip service.

Being human animals kind of sucks, because intellectually we strive for more. But we're tied to these basal frames.

On casting Sir Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard:

Reporter: "Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness."

Rodenberry: "No, by the 24th century, no one will care."

I doubt even a few hundred years will wash out vanity and the worst parts of us, but here's to hoping.

I have lots of gray hair before 40 and don't even think of dyeing it.

Of course, this is not so different than vanity on my part, as I'd be mortified if I was dyeing it and someone found out...

I have a brother-in-law who's been dyeing his hair, and wears a toupee (a very poorly fitting one) - for whenever he's at some kind of formal function or whatnot.

This is a guy who drives dump trucks and excavators, and could crush you with one hand - I swear to $DEITY. He's not a bad guy - actually a very nice man. But if you got on his bad side, watch out. I once saw him lift a full large wheeled garbage bin up and over his head and shake it out like it was nothing - like it was kitchen garbage can. Not someone to mess with.

He normally - in everyday life - doesn't care what he looks like, smells like, etc - he'll go right into a grocery store covered in oil and grease from working on his backhoe in the middle of summer, buy a soda and walk out, and he'll smile and wave, call ya "hon" and "boss" - pet the dog on the way out, ya know.

But clean him up and put him in a suit - all of a sudden he's embarrassed that his hair is thin and gray, etc. I've told him that he should shave himself bald, because he's got that classic "Mr. Clean" head shape that would make it look good. Few people can rock bald, but he won't do it.

Instead, he just puts a ball cap on if he's out in the sun, and ignores it I guess.

When I realized I had started to bald (yaaaay genetics) I had a bit of a personal identity crisis, but I didn't really try to hide my stress about it. My coworkers joked that I hadn't accepted it yet, and they were right.

I don't like that it happened this early, so I'm fighting to delay it for a bit, but I'm sure my baldness will catch up to me eventually. It's fine really. My grandfather rocked the look and his appearance will always remind me of the strength he carried. When my time comes, and what little vanity I still have fades, I'm happy to carry on that legacy.

I shave my head, but I dye my grey beard. I know it probably looks like a "dye job" but so what? Is it any different from tattoos or other body modifications? And I can undo it by growing it out.

My argument is that I have the same basic impulse, it is just that I respond differently to it.

That's a cool quote, but I think the reality of the situation is that as technology gives us more control of our personal appearance looks move from an explicit status indicator to more of a fashion choice.

Vain people will definitely still exist, but excess weight or baldness will be probably be a conscious presentation choice and social signal, rather than a marker of genetics or dietary habits.

In this environment it would be incorrect to say "no one will care", but hopefully people will care less and less as they age out of that period of their life in which self expression and fashion choices tend to have gratuitous importance based on our insecurities of youth.

I imagine your assessment to be more realistic, and the quote to be far too optimistic, even though I wish for the opposite.

I know women have an entirely different level of pressure in this arena and the idea of not wearing makeup or being fashionable enough has a larger impact on them socially...as a man I recognize the differences...but have still never cared about such things and not wanted to invest myself in those who would judge me or someone else because of shallow things. I will, as I mentioned in another comment, be respectful when it matters, and not say go to a funeral in pajamas and unkempt, as to not make it about me. But in my daily life I leave vanity at the mirror. My behavior defines me to anyone I care about and theirs to me, not looks or trends.

I believe vanity of some sort is an innately human trait, I doubt societal changes will eliminate it. Rather I see a future that the reporter was alluding to, where our bodies are just as customizable as a digital filter like the streamer used. Who knows, as crazy as it may sound, perhaps in a few hundred years most social interaction will be "assisted" by VR, AR, or some other reality changing technology where we do present ourselves as digital avatars.

That VR future idea sounds horrifying to me. I want to know the genuine person, not fakery. It just ruins the point of any relationship for me...which is to share experience, honestly, vulnerability. If it all becomes a performance then why do we even need people? Just some AI pretending to be some character is good enough.

While I agree with you, I don't know why exactly I agree you. Allow me to explain. The "real you," the "genuine" you, is nothing more than some random, arbitrary (for the most part) stuff you got from genes and the environment surrounding you (as in, it's effect on you) and, to usually a lesser extent, some of the life choices you've made. Now, it is you in the sense that you've lived with it for your whole life (some could say, put up with it, depending on your luck of the draw and what you think//how you feel about it).

I think the real you is really your mind. Our minds are so special, and on such a higher level, that the physical manifestation is very simplistic in comparison. To illustrate: we seem to look down on those who do as this woman did, but if someone was, say, a burn victim with 1st-degree burns all over their body including the face, we wouldn't think twice about using technology to improve their lives this way (btw, anyone know if this used in any such capacity?).

I'm providing some food for thought as I am challenging my own initial knee-jerk reaction which is "this is horrible, what have we become?" If there's one thing I learned about human behavior, it is that there is usually a whole lot more than what meets they eye (pun semi-intended) going on.

I understand. Our mind is "us" and not something we can really let anyone else see. I guess I believe that some people live more in genuine sync with who they are, which can be done in a functional way that still allows you to exist in society, and some are wearing mask over mask over mask in order to manipulate the system or people. It sounds exhausting to me and makes it hard to trust people.

About the burn victim example, I wouldn't feel "normal" hiding my scars no matter how severe. I don't feel using tech to hide scars or alter appearance is an improvement. It speaks poorly to society that people think they NEED to to fit in or not be discriminated against. It's up to us to treat each other with respect despite such things, not up to the person with those issues to hide them to blend in...in my idealistic view I mean. I know that's not how it works...sadly.

> I want to know the genuine person, not fakery

Mot actually possible, since we all wear masks, depending on who we’re around. In the office, I am different from when I’m remote, which is different from when I hang out with my RPG buddies, which is different from my church face, etc.

There’s a different drivingmenuts for many occasions, but they are all me. Just different me’s.

This is normal for everyone.

The one thing I don’t do is mask up to defraud people knowingly.

Right, you'd have to get rid of the visual aspect of sex appeal. Impossible.

Part of the thing that's left mostly somewhat unsaid of the whole fictional arc of the Star Trek universe is that there was a full-exchange nuclear war, which led (IIRC - I am not a major trekkie, though I prefer it to Star Wars - each has its place, though) to the contact with the Vulcans.

Then again, I am not sure that if we actually went through a full scale nuclear exchange, that in the end if we would change socially. I have a feeling that rather than change for the better, humanity would change for the worse.

In that vision, "Mad Max" would be a utopia in comparison.

> I want to live in a world where everyone is confident in themselves

This lady has plenty of confidence. She has as much confidence as any confidence man and was making plenty of money off of it.

People forget "con" is short for "confidence trick."

I don't think she was using the filter because she was self concsious, she was trying to mislead young men so they'd give her money. Similar things happen on twitch. There was one woman on twitch who hid her marriage so people would think that if they donated enough money, they'd have a chance at a relationship with her, and people who donated thousands of dollars to try and win her favor were really upset when they found out she's married. The streamers are just selling a relationship fantasy to lonely young men.

mislead is a very loaded word here. Those men have no special entitlement to a woman on the internet being sexually available to them. The idea that they should have such a thing reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Blue

> mislead is a very loaded word here. Those men have no special entitlement to a woman on the internet being sexually available to them.

And she has no entitlement to their money. She is misleading them to get money, and whether they are entitled to her being sexually available is, actually, entirely irrelevant to the truth of that description, and nothing about such an entitlement is implied by describing her deception as misleading.

They do, however, have a right to an affectional preference. And if a person is selling affection for money, lying isn't OK.

I don't think this is a matter of self-confidence. It's a business decision. Appearing young/attractive means more money for your efforts.

We can’t deny reality though, underneath all our behavior is sexuality and violence. Beautiful people will always be treated differently, physically intimidating men will always be treated differently.

If you were born 500 years ago would you even be alive today? I had a hernia when I was 3 so I would have just been one of the millions of babies who never even made it past 5. I am constantly torn by your vision (a world of perfect equality) which is also a world of pure stagnation, and our current world.

I think it's unlikely that "beautiful people will always be treated differently". For one thing, this is much less true today than it was a few decades ago, but probably more true than it was a few centuries ago. Further, what is considered beautiful changes constantly. I am attracted to women and what I found physically attractive in women 5 years ago is different from what I find attractive today. And you can see the same in broader society.

Maybe at the extremes, people will always be treated differently but I don't think that's a given.

> I want to live in a world where everyone is confident in themselves and doesn't care what others think about superficial details outside of character.

The only way to do that is to get rid of clothes, haircuts, and shaving.

Not to get religious on you, but Adam and Eve realized that we're naked around the time we evolved into humans.

I like changing my appearance. It's just part of who I am. I hope you take joy in picking your clothes, hair, ect.

I don't think anything of groomed middle aged man who are gray or are in the process of graying out, they're wearing their age gracefully, but when I see one with a bad hair dye, the instant judgement I get is one of weakness, lack of confidence in oneself, clinging to their past youth.

> I imagine people exist in a virtual continuum and can change all aspects of their appearance

in our actual reality, that sentence is completed with "given they have enough money to purchase visual upgrades, and those without money using default skins are the ones that are discriminated against." (Sad, that I think that's what it would be, I too hope by the time we have that kind of virtual reality we're beyond money and discrimination.)

This woman is trying to trick men into sending her money. Don't be naive.

Trick men? In return for what?

What a hilarious spin on this. Are you implying they signed a contract or something? The fault is on the men who were stupid enough to send money to begin with.

The outright chauvinist attitude of tech bros is funny and sad, to say the least. "It is the women who are to blame for me acting horny!"

>What a hilarious spin on this. Are you implying they signed a contract or something? The fault is on the men who were stupid enough to send money to begin with.

Agreed. They fell for her... trick. Why do you believe the two are mutually exclusive?

There is no trick without some mutual agreement on what will be given in return. And there wasn't any agreement.

Your reasoning is the same as this: a guy takes a girl out to an expensive dinner, expecting sex in return. And then he yells foul when she declines, even though there was never any agreement on her end. "But she tricked me into thinking she would!"

You are parroting the same bullshit, chauvinist reasoning that is so pervasive in the tech community.

>There is no trick without some mutual agreement on what will be given in return.

Says who? You? Even though I think you're being purposely obtuse, here's the definition.

>a cunning or skillful act or scheme intended to deceive or outwit someone

She used a filter to appear attractive to lonely men who will send her money. What is difficult to understand here?

>You are parroting the same bullshit, chauvinist reasoning that is so pervasive in the tech community.

Jesus. I'm sensing that you enjoy being outraged.

If you bothered to RTFA, you would see that she disclosed that she was using a filter.

My analogy still stands. She wasn't promising anything in return for their money. There was no trick.

>The Global Times reports that all was as normal and that her fans urged her to show her face and remove her filter but she refused, instead apparently saying: "I can't show my face until I receive gifts worth 100,000 yuan ($11,950). After all, I'm a good-looking host."

She is not "a good looking host", as evidenced by the mass Exodus from her stream after showing her face accidentally. She lied to get donations. This is all very obvious.

>My analogy still stands. She wasn't promising anything in return for their money. There was no trick

No it doesn't and you're inventing your own definition of the word "trick".

Without making any comments about my moral stance on this, I am pretty confident that this will never happen with the current biological makeup of humans. The best we can hope for at some point is beauty and physical attractivity available cheaply and for everyone, at their own choosing -- whatever and whenever they'd want.

Humans are evolved to be attracted to certain physical things, and although it would be nice if we could get around that, I think the easier thing would just be to accommodate for it.

Are they really superficial details? You can't separate "character" and a persons desire to look good, have good posture, be athletic, not consume too many resources (and be overweight), know how to move, walk, and talk with poise. Yes, some people are born with a good set of genes, but much of this is also accomplished through hard work. And that hard work comes from _character_.

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