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  • The first annual VTuber Awards was a win for VR | TechCrunch

    The first annual VTuber Awards was a win for VR | TechCrunch

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    On stream, Filian took the stage at the center of a colossal arena, lit with violet spotlights and surrounded by crowds of fans holding lightsticks. The streamer opened the show dressed in a vivid purple skirt, magenta bow tie and high white boots that matched her jacket — a ritzy version of her avatar’s usual sailor-style school uniform.

    “Please be patient with us. This show has a lot of tech … it’s as live as it comes,” Filian said during her opening remarks. “It’s not rocket science, but it could be.”

    Filian, a streamer with over 766,000 Twitch followers, hosted the first annual VTuber Awards last weekend. Like many VTubers — a portmanteau of “virtual YouTuber” — Filian keeps her identity secret, and instead of showing her real face, streams using a digital model.

    Filian was physically hosting the ceremony from an enclosed green box in WePlay’s Los Angeles studio, a space typically used for esports events. The virtual reality awards show is one of the first of its kind — both for WePlay, a production company that has mainly focused on hosting and producing in-person gaming tournaments in its Los Angeles and Kyiv studios over the last decade, and for VTubing, which has grown from a niche streaming genre to a billion-dollar industry in recent years. 

    The show was a first for VTubers and WePlay, the company that produced the live VR event. Image Credits: The VTuber Awards

    The event blended WePlay’s physical production space with a VR stadium. Image Credits: The VTuber Awards

    VTubers have been broadly recognized in other shows; the Streamer Awards includes a category for “Best VTuber,” and at this year’s Game Awards, VTuber Ironmouse made history by being the first animated streamer to win Content Creator of the Year. But neither award show accounts for the skills unique to VTubing, like avatar design, technological innovation and hosting virtual events. 

    The award for best tech VTuber, for example, went to Vedal987, a streamer and programmer who developed the chatbot VTuber Neuro-sama, which uses text-to-speech and AI to play games and communicate with Twitch viewers. 

    “In every awards show, VTubers are often a footnote or sometimes treated as a unique, strange thing, and so the idea for these awards is like, ‘Why not have a show for ourselves?’” Filian told TechCrunch in an interview in the days leading up the show. 

    VTubers, who typically present with animal ears, exaggerated features or raunchy outfits, are often written off as lewd anime streamers. The genre started in Japan in the early 2010s as an offshoot of idol culture, and took off outside of Asia when VTuber production company Hololive debuted its first English-speaking streamers. Filian noted that the awards show also acknowledges VTuber viewers as much as individual content creators, since fans drove the genre’s breakthrough to mainstream recognition. In addition to the category for most dedicated fanbase, the VTuber Awards also includes a category for VTuber clippers, who clip, curate and post VTuber content online.

    “And so what these people would do is post to YouTube, and in many ways, they created a massive demand for VTubers,” Filian continued. “When VTubers finally came to the west, it was primed to explode. It can’t be overstated how important VTuber clippers are and were to VTubers being where they are today … In many ways, VTubers are typically a lot more involved with their fans than a lot of other creators are.” 

    The show was a technical feat as well. The five-hour event married WePlay’s physical production space with countless hours of engineering and design. Though WePlay has used augmented reality elements in previous live productions, the awards show was the first fully virtual event that the company has produced. WePlay’s Chief Marketing Officer Iryna Chuhai pointed out that for the film and video game industry, using this scale of mocap technology is an “ordinary event.” Incorporating it into a live production, however, is more challenging.

    Planned in partnership with Mythic Talent, a management company that represents VTubers including Filian, the event was initially going to take place on a physical stage with “screens and graphics” to accommodate VTubers, WePlay’s Chief Visionary Officer Maksym Bilonogov told TechCrunch before the show. 

    “But then we realized it’s not the way, it’s not the right philosophy,” Bilonogov said. “Because it’s VTubers, it should be a fully virtual space. So we started building the technology to make it real, so the real cameraman using the real camera can shoot the virtual world.” 

    Each physical camera could capture multiple angles in VR. Image Credits: WePlay Studios

    The stream depicted a vast arena, but Filian’s avatar was essentially confined to a smaller circular stage surrounded by screens, which was a virtually constructed version of WePlay’s physical production stage. In real life, camera operators controlled three cameras linked to virtual angles, so that each physical pan, tilt and focus pull was reflected in the virtual broadcast. The physical operators could switch between multiple different angles in the stadium using iPads connected to the cameras, so that the production appeared to use at least a dozen cameras instead of just three. The physical lights on the stage were connected to corresponding virtual lights, so that WePlay could control the stadium’s spotlights by activating the real ones. WePlay also connected Resolume, a software for live event visuals, to the virtual venue to control the graphics that played on the VR stage’s screens. 

    “From a visual perspective, from the technology, it’s fully new for us,” Bilonogov continued. “We’re learning a lot. I can say that it’s the hardest technological project for WePlay. It’s fully virtual reality with virtual cues.”

    Motion capture technology is not new to the film and video game industries, but incorporating it into a live streamed event was a challenge. Image Credits: WePlay Studios

    In the control room several feet away, crew members juggled dozens of screens, which depicted Filian’s avatar on the virtual stage, IRL Filian in her mocap suit and visuals of other VTubers, who called in throughout the stream to host the pre-show and present or accept awards. 

    VTubers who appeared in the pre-show or presented awards appeared to be at the venue on the stream. They pulled it off by co-streaming Filian’s broadcast and giving WePlay access to their streams so that their commentary could be seamlessly integrated into the show. VTubers who appeared on the stream to accept their awards appeared on screens above the virtual stage. WePlay organized behind-the-scenes logistics with other streamers using Discord — not for any unique platform feature, Chuhai said during a walkthrough of the studio, but because it’s already a “familiar tool for all these gamers.” 

    Like many VTubers, Filian is fiercely protective of her privacy. A crew member stood in for photos. Image Credits: WePlay Studios

    Filian, meanwhile, hosted from a separate green screen room containing only a teleprompter. Markers on Filian’s motion capture suit dotted her limbs and fingers, capturing her body movements, while an iPhone rigged to a headband strapped around her forehead tracked her facial expressions.

    There is no industry standard for VTuber software, but many VTubers including Filian use models designed in Unity. WePlay’s virtual stadium was built using Unreal Engine, which isn’t as commonly used by VTubers. The company ended up rebuilding Filian’s avatar from scratch. Small details that would take place during a physical awards broadcast, like a mid-show outfit change, were “hard lifts,” Filian said. Switching from one outfit to another, like Filian did during the stream, involved a whole new set of animations. A more voluminous skirt, like the one Filian wore at the start of the show, wouldn’t move the same way as a form-fitting gown. 

    A crew member standing in for Filian tests the mocap suit and helmet. Image Credits: WePlay Studios

    Like many VTubers, Filian is fiercely protective of her anonymity and did not want to be photographed, so a crew member stood in for behind-the-scenes photos of the motion capture getup. Although everyone involved in the production promised to maintain her anonymity, Filian said it was “really unusual” for her to perform as her VTuber persona in front of actual people. 

    “There’s a phrase from Elden Ring that’s called, ‘Touch grass,’ and I don’t do a lot of that. And I do even fewer interactions like, outside in general. And I especially don’t do interactions where I’m making content while there are people around me,” Filian said in a call a few days after the event. “When you’re an actual human acting like an anime character, it’s very awkward.” 

    Filian added that the crew kept their distance out of respect for her privacy, which assuaged the awkwardness. It also helped that the people who saw her real face and body were people that she trusted, because she spent the last week rehearsing with them. 

    Full-body streams aren’t new to Filian, who started out making content in VRChat. Granted, WePlay setup is significantly more sophisticated than the one Filian uses for her streams, which involves a few inexpensive Vive trackers and cameras in the corners of her room. Unlike her home streams, hosting the VTuber Awards was particularly grueling because she couldn’t take many breaks. 

    Image Credits: The VTuber Awards

    To host the event, she stayed in the mocap suit for more than seven hours (including day-of rehearsals) and was afforded two bathroom breaks total, which each took at least 20 minutes of getting in and out of the suit. She stretched between hosting, and at one point during a short segment about the history of VTubing, housed a sandwich and shake to “keep the energy up.” Filian was exhausted when the show wrapped, and she said that she nearly fell asleep on camera when she tried to stream the day after. 

    “It felt a lot less intimidating to be in that box than it would have been to stand in front of thousands of people,” Filian said. “So if anything it was a bit uncomfortable, I guess, but it was just me, a teleprompter and a screen showing the actual stream, and it made it a lot easier because of that. 

    The first VTuber Awards was a major success, much to the relief of Bilonogov, who described the project as a “huge experiment” for WePlay days before the event. As Filian welcomed viewers to the surreal virtual stadium on Saturday, Bilonogov marveled at the TV streaming the show in WePlay’s lobby. He wasn’t sure how else the technology could be used, he said, but he was sure that it’s the future of live events. WePlay plans to continue experimenting with live VR events; Chuhai said that next year, the company is opening another studio across the street from its Los Angeles space specifically for VR productions. 

    “VTtubing, it’s like rock and roll or jazz. It’s an entire industry. It has a significant community. It’s a future of entertainment,” Bilonogov said. “I think the awards show is just the beginning.”

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    Morgan Sung

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  • Twitch's new nudity policy allows illustrated nipples, but not human underboob | TechCrunch

    Twitch's new nudity policy allows illustrated nipples, but not human underboob | TechCrunch

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    Twitch announced sweeping updates to its sexual content policy and content classification system, which now allows previously prohibited content like illustrated nipples and “erotic dances,” in addition to clarifying what nudity is and isn’t allowed on the platform.

    The update follows the widespread “topless meta” backlash, after streamer and OnlyFans model Morgpie went viral for appearing naked in recent streams. Morgpie’s “topless” streams were framed to show her bare shoulders, upper chest, and cleavage. The framing implied nudity, but never actually showed content that explicitly violated Twitch’s sexual content policies. Other streamers, who were predominantly male, were enraged by Morgpie’s content and called for Twitch to crack down on the apparent nudity. She was banned on Dec. 11, two days before Twitch’s content guideline overhaul. Jessica Ly, a streamer who also goes by asianbunnyx, has made similar content without being banned.

    The new policy is meticulously detailed and accounts for various situations, but also appears to contradict itself. Cartoon boobs, for example, are only allowed in certain contexts.

    “Fictionalized” — drawings, animations or sculpted renderings — of fully-exposed breasts and any butts or genitals regardless of gender are fine, but “augmented reality avatars that translate real-life movement into digital characters” (read: VTubers) must abide by the same attire requirements as regular streamers. Actual female-presenting human nipples must be covered. Cleavage is still “unrestricted.” Showing “underbust” is still forbidden.

    Twitch’s stance on sideboob remains unclear.

    A spokesperson for Twitch told TechCrunch that the platform has been overhauling its content moderation for the past year, and has focused on updating its community guidelines in response to feedback from streamers. By clarifying what is and isn’t allowed, Twitch believes that it’ll be easier for streamers to comply with its policies. The spokesperson also noted that the platform is still experimenting with nuance and context, and rather than lean on punitive content moderation, Twitch wants users to be informed.

    The update is supposed to streamline the platform’s approach to sexual content and modernize its previous policies, which disproportionately penalized female streamers. Twitch previously enforced separate policies for “sexually suggestive” and “sexually explicit” content, adding to the confusion. Those will now be consolidated into a single “Sexual Content Policy.” The company’s Content Classification Guidelines (CCLs), which rolled out in June, also now detail when streamers should label their content for “Sexual Themes.”

    “We believe that accurate content labeling is key to helping viewers get the experience they expect, and now that we can enable appropriate labeling of sexual content using CCLS we believe that some of the restrictions in our former policies are no longer required,” Twitch said in its blog post about the update. “In addition to providing clarity, these updates will also reduce the risk of inconsistent enforcement and bring our policy more in line with other social media services.”

    Under the new policy, streams tagged for “drugs, intoxication or excessive tobacco use,” “violent and graphic depictions,” “gambling” and “sexual themes” won’t be promoted on Twitch’s homepage recommendations, but will allow for more raunchy content that previously wasn’t allowed on the platform. This approach, Twitch said in its blog post, will prevent viewers from seeing content that they haven’t consented to seeing. Viewers will still be able to navigate directly to the channels streaming such content, though. Streams tagged for mature games and profanity can still be included in homepage recommendations.

    Twitch did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment about whether labeling their streams as containing such content will affect streamers’ ad revenue.

    If properly labeled, content that was previously banned on the platform is now allowed, like artistic depictions of breast, butts and genitals. The puritanical restrictions on suggestive illustrations became a point of contention for Twitch’s art community, which Twitch acknowledged in its blog post. “Erotic dances,” like strip teases, twerking, grinding and pole dancing are also fine to stream, as long as it’s labeled. Streaming from a strip club or other “adult entertainment establishment” is still prohibited.

    The updates appear to respond to longstanding community complaints over the disproportionate moderation that female streamers faced on Twitch. The company attempted to crack down on lewd and sexually explicit streams by enacting a dress code in 2018, which stated that streamer attire should be “appropriate for a public street, mall, or restaurant.” The platform updated its attire policy in 2020 with specific guidelines clarifying that streamers could show cleavage, but not nipples or underboob.

    Although wildly popular hot tub streams were allowed under the guidelines, as long as streamers wore swimsuits, the attire policy still targeted women for wearing anything that could be interpreted as suggestive. Countless female streamers have been subjected to suspensions and outright bans over viewers mass-reporting them for inappropriate attire, and many have complained that the platform’s policy was wielded as a form of misogynistic, targeted harassment.

    Twitch previously prohibited streams that “deliberately highlighted breasts, buttocks or pelvic region,” even if streamers were fully clothed. The parameters for such content were vague and inconsistently enforced. It’s now allowed — as long as it’

    “Streamers found it difficult to determine what was prohibited and what was allowed and often evaluating whether or not a stream violated this portion of the policy was subjective,” Twitch said in its announcement. “In addition, the former Sexually Suggestive Content policy was out of line with industry standards and resulted in female-presenting streamers being disproportionately penalized.”

    In its Sexual Content Policy, Twitch notes that the attire allowed on the platform depends on the context of individual streams. An outfit that’s permitted for a beach or gym stream, Twitch said in its Community Guidelines, may “not be acceptable for a cooking or gameplay broadcast.” The company also said that attired “intended to be sexually suggestive” is still prohibited, which seems like it could still disproportionately affect female streamers who can be sexualized by viewers no matter what they wear.

    Morgpie, who is still banned, praised Twitch’s update in a statement to Dexerto.

    “With the updated terms of service, content on Twitch containing mature themes will be allowed but no longer pushed on the homepage of the site,” she said. “I think this is the best possible outcome, because it gives creators much more freedom, while also keeping this content from reaching the wrong audience. Bravo, Twitch!”

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    Morgan Sung

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  • Fans were as influential in 2023 as the things they loved

    Fans were as influential in 2023 as the things they loved

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    Fandom might be something people participate in during their spare time, maybe in the privacy of online communities or convention halls, but it undoubtedly has an impact on the wider world. In the past few years, the types of strategies deployed by politicians and those leading social movements have increasingly started to look like those used in fandom. This is particularly true of tactics pioneered within the digital and physical fan spaces in order to increase visibility and impact. All the while, fandom itself is continuing to change and evolve.

    Powered by passion, fans make things happen. Sometimes those accomplishments are only important within each individual fandom — producing a zine, making a character or celebrity trend, starting a new meme. But other times they reach further than expected, outside fan spaces, and make things really move.

    Taking a look at the accomplishments of fandom communities this year is a good way to get a bird’s-eye view of what exactly fandom is, at a time when more people engage in fandom than ever. In 2023, fans showed up and made their voices heard. They launched projects, saved shows, supported strikes, and even rescued historical figures from obscurity. Here are just a few of fandom’s most impressive accomplishments from this year.

    Fans on strike

    When the Writers Guild of America announced that its members would be going on strike in May of this year, fans took the news in stride. Of course, it was disappointing to hear that production on many fan-favorite shows, like Stranger Things, would be pausing thanks to the strike action. But it was more important that fans supported the actions of the WGA, and later SAG-AFTRA, which were necessary for writers and actors to earn protections and fair wages in their industry.

    Though some troll posts led people to believe that fans were against the strike, that couldn’t have been more untrue. It was precisely the opposite: Fans worked hard to spread information about how best to support the striking writers and actors. Independent, fan-run blogs like sagwgastrikeupdates and fans4wga consistently communicated the latest news on the strikes and answered questions about how best to avoid crossing the picket line with fan activity.

    And while some fans were sad that shows that came out during the strike, like fan favorites Good Omens and Our Flag Means Death, never got traditional actor- and writer-centric press tours that fans could obsess over alongside the new episodes, fans put their feelings aside in support of fairness. OFMD fans showed up in person to picket lines and were rewarded, when the strike ended, with a deluge of behind-the-scenes content that stars like Vico Ortiz and Leslie Jones shared on TikTok.

    A plaque for Hester Leggatt

    West End comedy musical Operation Mincemeat has fostered a fandom of Mincefluencers ever since its off-West End days at Riverside Studios. It’s an oddball show, which, much like the Broadway hit Six, was written and developed by a company of Fringe Festival stalwarts. And like Six it was also inspired by real history. Like the Colin Firth film of the same name (which it otherwise shares no connection with) Operation Mincemeat was inspired by real events during World War II, when a group of MI5 operatives successfully diverted the Nazis by planting false information on a corpse.

    The musical’s main characters are based on real historical figures, including Hester Leggatt, a secretary at MI5. She contributed to the wartime operation by helping create the false identity of the corpse, writing love letters to “Bill Martin” that were planted on the body. In the musical this work is immortalized in the tearjerker song “Dear Bill.” In the song “Useful,” Hester thinks that instead of a statue she might like to be recognized by “just a small plaque / Something tasteful and small.”

    Unlike the male protagonists of the story, about whom biographical details abound, little was known about the real Hester Leggatt — just enough to create her character in the musical. But fans went much, much further, digging up biographical records at the National Archives and London’s Imperial War Museum in order to illuminate details of Leggatt’s life. Fans found census records, exam results, and handwriting samples that matched the real letter to “Bill.”

    Finally, their research culminated in a letter from MI5 confirming Legatt’s employment, which had been classified information up until then. A plaque honoring Leggatt is set to be unveiled outside the Fortune Theater, where Operation Mincemeat is playing, on Dec. 11. Hester Leggatt is finally getting the recognition she long deserved, thanks to fans’ hard work uncovering her story.

    Save the sapphic show

    Fan campaigns aren’t new, but their persistence year after year is a demonstration not only of fans’ ability to self-organize and persevere, but the continued divergence of studios, networks, and streaming platform priorities from the desires of passionate fan communities. In 2023, the shows that fans rallied behind included animated show Star Trek: Prodigy and the CW’s Supernatural prequel The Winchesters. But the most notable fan campaigns have been behind the canceled shows A League of Their Own and Warrior Nun.

    Passionate fans hungry for queer representation have helped rescue shows like Sense8; fans have also banded together to campaign for The 100 to change certain plotlines. A League of Their Own was renewed only to be un-renewed by Amazon in August of this year, and fans immediately started organizing, seeing that it was worth the effort to push back against this cavalier treatment. Fan campaigners behind accounts like @ALOTOHomeRun have kept the show trending, hoping for a second season that will continue to explore the queer and Black characters that made the show a powerful adaptation of the original 1992 film. They have kept the show trending on X (formerly Twitter), and in return the showrunners have promised that they’re still trying to find a way forward for the show.

    Fans’ impressive show of support for Warrior Nun began late last year, when Netflix confirmed the beloved drama about an ass-kicking nun (played by Alba Baptista) would not return for a third season. After creating a Discord server called Sapphics in Pain, the fans began to organize — and didn’t stop. Well into 2023, they were spending hours of volunteer labor on professional-level analytics research papers and strategic analysis, aiming to prove conclusively to network stakeholders that their beloved show was well worth picking up for a new season. Their hard work was rewarded when executive producer Dean English announced the series would return as a trilogy of feature films — though, because of the lack of involvement of the original series’ writers, it’s a cautious victory for the hardworking fans.

    Swifties united

    Photo: Daniel Knighton/Getty Images

    Thanks to the kickoff of the ubiquitous Eras Tour, and the steady (re)releases of Taylor’s Version albums, Swifties consolidated their power and emerged as an unshakeable and unstoppable bloc in 2023. Swifties are behind trends like trading friendship bracelets and wearing glittery boots, but there’s more to it than aesthetics — the huge community of Taylor Swift’s die-hard fans have also used their influence to attempt to create visible change and move the needle on issues that are important to them.

    In early November, Swifties in Argentina spoke out against the right-wing political candidate Javier Milei, forming a group called “Swifties Against Freedom Advances” to try and convince other fans not to vote for him. However, in the end it wasn’t enough to move the needle, and he ended up winning.

    Other Swifty fan efforts in South America are ongoing. A fan, Ana Clara Benevides Machado, died at one of Swift’s Brazilian shows during an extreme heat wave. Fan outcry after this event was widespread, but American-language media was slow to report on the incident beyond Swift’s initial statement about the tragedy. Fans rose to the occasion in order to translate Brazilian news stories regarding the timeline of events and venue issues, and even raised money for the family of the fan who passed. This culminated in Swift paying for the family to come from their rural home to see her concert, where they posed for a picture with her wearing shirts with Ana’s face on them.

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    Allegra Rosenberg

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  • Gag City is a viral win for Nicki Minaj | TechCrunch

    Gag City is a viral win for Nicki Minaj | TechCrunch

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    Welcome to Gag City, the pink metropolis inhabited by stans and brands alike.

    In the days leading up to the release of “Pink Friday 2,” Nicki Minaj’s fifth studio album and sequel to her debut record “Pink Friday” that dropped on Friday, Twitter was flooded with AI-generated images of pink-toned cityscapes. Gag City, the dreamy false utopia ruled by Minaj and her Barbz, broke through stan Twitter and became a viral meme that brand accounts immediately used for their own marketing — promoting Minaj’s album for free.

    Is it an authentic stan-led campaign to build hype for Minaj? Is it a plant to game engagement for both the album and brands? What’s clear is that the viral moment is a win for Minaj, manufactured or not.

    It started in September, when Minaj teased the album’s cover art online. The image features Minaj on a pink subway car, drifting through pink clouds with a futuristic (and obviously, pink) city skyline in the background.

    She and her Barbz started referring to the album’s release as “Gag City,” NBC News reports, referencing gay slang for being so amazed that you’re at a loss for words. One might be gagged by witnessing a stunning outfit change, or by listening to a perfect record, like “Pink Friday 2.” Leading up to the release, stans started posted AI-generated images of a pink concrete jungle, joking that fictional characters and celebrities were arriving to Gag City in anticipation of Minaj’s album. In one of the first, posted on Dec. 1 according to Know Your Meme, a fan account shared an image of a pink plane labeled “Gagg City” flying over a similarly pink skyline.

    In the days before the release, Minaj told fans to “prepare for landing” and teased a description of her pink utopia. Barbz replied with AI-generated renditions of the descent into Gag City.

    X (formerly Twitter) users began crafting elaborate narratives about Gag City’s inhabitants and government. One posted an image of Barbz storming the Pink House, which another user described as the fandom’s own January 6th. Another posted an image of pink-clad citizens protesting in the streets of Gag City, calling for Minaj to release the album’s track list. Though some may believe that Gag City is a utopia, one account posted an image of a matronly Minaj handing out CDs of her album to impoverished children “on the outskirts of Gag City,” implying that the pink society also has a class divide problem.

    Gag City is also riddled with stan wars, as fans of rival pop stars posted images of their faves vying for Minaj’s seat at the head of her city’s government. In a nod to Greek mythology, one account posted an image of a Trojan horse decorated in Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” disco motif.

    Never one to miss out on an easy trend, brand accounts started joining in on the Gag City hype. Chili’s posted an image of rosy smoke billowing from its restaurant, which makes me wonder if air pollution exists in Gag City. Wheat Thins, Baskin-Robbins, Dunkin’ Donuts, Pizza Hut, Red Lobster, Oreo, Bing (??), the Empire State Building and countless others posted their versions of Gag City.

    On one hand, memes tend to die the minute brand accounts start co-opting them — nothing is more tiresome than seeing a fun joke turn into a corporate-friendly marketing ploy. AI-generated images are already ethically fraught, and critics have raised concerns over AI generators trained on artwork without the consent of the work’s artists. Artists have also criticized brands for using AI-generated art instead of commissioning work from a real, human artist. Though using AI-generated art for commercial use is legal, as copyright laws pertaining to AI are virtually non-existent, it’s generally seen as a shitty move by many in the art world.

    On the other, it’s free promotion for Minaj, and as a lifelong Barb who spent her adolescence running a stan account for “Pink Friday,” I consider it a win.

    Nicki Minaj is an artist who’s been embroiled in controversy throughout her career, from posting bad takes about Covid vaccines to defending her husband Kenneth Petty, a convicted sex offender. She may be a brilliant artist, but her problematic history makes her far from the family-friendly public figure that brands are more likely to endorse.

    But with Gag City, Minaj has brands doing all of her marketing for her. “Pink Friday 2” is an artistic marvel in itself (though I am probably biased), but the free promotion that it’s been getting as a viral meme is particularly astounding. Artists have spent the last few years trying to drum up engagement for their work by making their songs trend on TikTok, which audiences have started to resist. Gag City doesn’t bank on being the viral song of the summer to drive streaming numbers — the bit is removed enough for non-stans to enjoy it, while still revolving around the album it’s promoting.

    Brand Twitter tends to turn fun trends into advertising opportunities, taking organic community interactions and spitting out contrived versions clearly made to go viral. It may be grating, but in this case, it’s working in Minaj’s favor. This week, everyone wants to go to Gag City.

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    Morgan Sung

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  • Nicki Minaj Fans Create AI-Generated 'Gag City'

    Nicki Minaj Fans Create AI-Generated 'Gag City'

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    While the world grapples with the threat AI poses to humanity, Nicki Minaj’s fans are using it to create a fictionalized neon-pink kingdom. Called Gag City, the AI metropolis is inspired by the cover art of Minaj’s upcoming studio album Pink Friday 2, which features the rapper standing, appearing to be on her way to a bright-colored city. Pink Friday 2, out Dec. 8, marks Minaj’s first album in five years, with the exception of the re-release of her debut mixtape Beam Me Up Scotty. AI-generated photos of Gag City started circulating on Dec. 6 on X, as social media users shared renderings of different celebrities entering the city, businesses cleverly named after Minaj’s songs, and even some historical events.

    Gag City is a fluorescent paradise dedicated to the art of gaggery. The term “to gag” has its roots in the LGBTQ+ community and comes from the idea of being so blown away that you’re “gagged.” In Gag City, Minaj’s fans can share their excitement for the new album. According to KnowYourMeme, the origins of the trend are difficult to pin on one person, but one of the earliest uses of the term “gag city” came from a Minaj stan account in January 2022 and continued to be used throughout last year and this year.

    “Gag city” met AI on Dec. 1, according to KnowYourMeme, when a different Minaj stan account on X uploaded an AI-generated photo of a fuchsia-tinted airplane with the words “gag city” on it flying over a similarly-hued city. This was one of the many memes that ignited the current trend, leading fans’ imaginations to run wild.

    By Dec. 7, X was flooded with fake photos of celebrities making their way into Gag City. One person uploaded an AI photo of YouTuber Trisha Paytas, known for her love of the color pink and drama, and she responded: “Is this AI or am I there?” 

    Celebrities like Ariana Grande, Michael Jackson, and Lana Del Rey were all granted access to Gag City and Minaj’s fandom, the Barbz, marked their arrivals in style.

    Fictional characters like TikToker @psyiconic’s character Terri Joe, Game of Thrones’s Daenarys Targaryen, and Peppa Pig were also admitted.

    There is a system in place when seeking entry into Gag City, according to the Barbz. One post says that “all those attempting to enter gag city must have a valid queencard or risk being turned away and deported immediately.”

    The citizens of Gag City have a wealth of establishments to spend their hard-earned money at with brands also making their way into the city. Converse, Urban Decay, and Spotify already have their own offices in the ever-expanding metropolis. 

    Minaj is obviously the leader of Gag City and she already comes with lore. According to some of the AI-generated images, Minaj was elected by Gag City’s citizens to be president—meaning there is a democratic system in place. Users shared an image of Minaj delivering her “I Had a Gag” speech that was said to have inspired the citizens ahead of her new album release on Friday. Not only is she a fearless leader, one AI image suggests that she is willing to give back to the community by providing “free copies of her CD to the poor on the outskirts of Gag City.”

    Minaj seems to be in on the joke, posting a video to her Instagram with a message for the citizens of Gag City as a snippet of a new song plays. The alert warns them to “prepare for impact” as Pink Friday 2 makes its way to their civilization.

    And on Thursday evening, Minaj teased that the album’s tracklist would soon come to Gag City.

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    Moises Mendez II

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  • ‘Authentic’ Is Merriam-Webster’s Word of 2023

    ‘Authentic’ Is Merriam-Webster’s Word of 2023

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    In an age of deepfakes and post-truth, as artificial intelligence rose and Elon Musk turned Twitter into X, the Merriam-Webster word of the year for 2023 is “authentic.”

    Authentic cuisine. Authentic voice. Authentic self. Authenticity as artifice. Lookups for the word are routinely heavy on the dictionary company’s site but were boosted to new heights throughout the year, editor at large Peter Sokolowski told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview.

    “We see in 2023 a kind of crisis of authenticity,” he said ahead of Monday’s announcement of this year’s word. “What we realize is that when we question authenticity, we value it even more.”

    Sokolowski and his team don’t delve into the reasons people head for dictionaries and websites in search of specific words. Rather, they chase the data on lookup spikes and world events that correlate. This time around, there was no particularly huge boost at any given time but a constancy to the increased interest in “authentic.”

    This was the year of artificial intelligence, for sure, but also a moment when ChatGPT-maker OpenAI suffered a leadership crisis. Taylor Swift and Prince Harry chased after authenticity in their words and deeds. Musk himself, at February’s World Government Summit in Dubai, urged the heads of companies, politicians, ministers and other leaders to “speak authentically” on social media by running their own accounts.

    “Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We don’t always trust what we see anymore,” Sokolowski said. “We sometimes don’t believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself.”

    Merriam-Webster’s entry for “authentic” is busy with meaning.

    A screenshot of the definition of authentic in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary.Merriam-Webster.com

    There is “not false or imitation: real, actual,” as in an authentic cockney accent. There’s “true to one’s own personality, spirit or character.” There’s “worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact.” There is “made or done the same way as an original.” And, perhaps the most telling, there’s “conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features.”

    “Authentic” follows 2022’s choice of “gaslighting.” And 2023 marks Merriam-Webster’s 20th anniversary choosing a top word.

    The company’s data crunchers filter out evergreen words like “love” and “affect” vs. “effect” that are always high in lookups among the 500,000 words it defines online. This year, the wordsmiths also filtered out numerous five-letter words because Wordle and Quordle players clearly use the company’s site in search of them as they play the daily games, Sokolowski said.

    Sokolowski, a lexicologist, and his colleagues have a bevy of runners-up for word of the year that also attracted unusual traffic. They include “X” (lookups spiked in July after Musk’s rebranding of Twitter), “EGOT” (there was a boost in February when Viola Davis achieved that rare quadruple-award status with a Grammy) and “Elemental,” the title of a new Pixar film that had lookups jumping in June.

    Rounding out the company’s top words of 2023, in no particular order:

    RIZZ

    Slang for “romantic appeal or charm” and seemingly short for charisma. Merriam-Webster added the word to its online dictionary in September and it’s been among the top lookups since, Sokolowski said.

    KIBBUTZ

    There was a massive spike in lookups for “a communal farm or settlement in Israel” after Hamas militants attacked several near the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7. The first kibbutz in Israel was founded circa 1909.

    Read More: Their Kibbutz Was Attacked on Oct. 7. They’re Determined to Rebuild

    IMPLODE

    The June 18 implosion of the Titan submersible on a commercial expedition to explore the Titanic wreckage sent lookups soaring for this word, meaning “to burst inward.” “It was a story that completely occupied the world,” Sokolowski said.

    DEADNAME

    Interest was high in what Merriam-Webster defines as “the name that a transgender person was given at birth and no longer uses upon transitioning.” Lookups followed an onslaught of legislation aimed at curtailing LGBTQ+ rights around the country.

    DOPPELGANGER

    Sokolowski calls this “a word lover’s word.” Merriam-Webster defines it as a “double,” an “alter ego” or a “ghostly counterpart.” It derives from German folklore. Interest in the word surrounded Naomi Klein’s latest book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, released this year. She uses her own experience of often being confused with feminist author and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf as a springboard into a broader narrative on the crazy times we’re all living in.

    CORONATION

    King Charles III had one on May 6, sending lookups for the word soaring 15,681% over the year before, Sokolowski said. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the act or occasion of crowning.”

    DEEPFAKE

    The dictionary company’s definition is “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.” Interest spiked after Musk’s lawyers in a Tesla lawsuit said he is often the subject of deepfake videos and again after the likeness of Ryan Reynolds appeared in a fake, AI-generated Tesla ad.

    Read More: How to Spot an AI-Generated Image

    DYSTOPIAN

    Climate chaos brought on interest in the word. So did books, movies and TV fare intended to entertain. “It’s unusual to me to see a word that is used in both contexts,” Sokolowski said.

    COVENANT

    Lookups for the word meaning “a usually formal, solemn, and binding agreement” swelled on March 27, after a deadly mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter was a former student killed by police after killing three students and three adults.

    Interest also spiked with this year’s release of Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant and Abraham Verghese’s long-awaited new novel, The Covenant of Water, which Oprah Winfrey chose as a book club pick.

    More recently, soon after U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson ascended to House speaker, a 2022 interview with the Louisiana congressman recirculated. He discussed how his teen son was then his “accountability partner” on Covenant Eyes, software that tracks browser history and sends reports to each partner when porn or other potentially objectionable sites are viewed.

    INDICT

    Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on felony charges in four criminal cases in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C., in addition to fighting a lawsuit threatening his real estate empire.

    Read More: The Historic—and Entirely Predictable—Indictment of Donald Trump

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    Leanne Italie / AP

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  • The Meaning Behind TikTok’s Orange Peel Theory

    The Meaning Behind TikTok’s Orange Peel Theory

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    Can peeling an orange indicate true love? TikTok seems to think so. A trend dubbed the “Orange Peel Theory” has been going viral on the social media platform, asking people to consider the ways small acts of service, such as peeling an orange for a partner or making coffee in the morning, can show an individual’s commitment to their relationship. At the time of going to press, videos tagged with the #orangepeeltheory have been viewed over 27 million times.

    What is the orange peel theory?

    The orange peel theory suggests that the small acts of service, and a partner’s willingness to perform them, indicate a healthy relationship. 

    “If someone asks you to peel their orange you might think, ‘They’re perfectly capable of doing that themselves, that’s not a big deal,’” said TikToker @neanotmia in a breakdown of the trend. “It might not literally be about peeling the orange. They’re asking you for a small favor to see your reaction, to see if later they can ask you for bigger favors. How are you going to make them feel when they ask you for that help?”

    “Their response is indicative of much bigger things than just merely peeling an orange,” said TikTok user Anna Birmingham in a post about the trend. “Even a super tiny thing like that reveals so much about their attitude towards you and your relationship.”

    Birmingham notes that acts of service, regardless of how small they might be, are simply about expressing kindness without any conditions or expectations. “[It’s about] wanting to do things for someone to see them happy even if it inconveniences you, or even if there’s nothing in it for you,” she said in her video. “That, at the end of the day, is true, raw, unconditional love.”

    When did it become a TikTok trend?

    The trend is believed to have begun with a TikTok slideshow featuring a text exchange from a former couple reminiscing about their relationship. “I miss when you would peel my oranges for me in the morning,” one text read, as the person explained that, when they try to do it themselves, they “still get juice all over and stab my nails too deep.”

    The text exchange ends with the message, “I peeled my orange today,” delivered in green after a stream of blue messages, indicating that the sender had been blocked. The video has been viewed over 2.5 million times since it was first posted at the beginning of November.

    Since then, many users have jumped on the trend to share the kind ways their partners have brightened their days. In one, a baker showed a video of her boyfriend surprising her with pre-separated egg whites, after she had complained to him that she had been struggling with the task due to her long nails.

    “It was honestly just a little rant that I didn’t think he paid much attention to,” she wrote in a caption over a video of the surprise, “But he saw me! Never thought egg whites would make me cry.”

    Others note that the theory is applicable to any relationship—not just romantic ones. “Everyday after school my six-year-old asks me to carry his backpack in the house for him and I always enthusiastically will after learning about the orange peel theory,” one parent shared.

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    Simmone Shah

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  • Aliyah’s Interlude on “It Girl”

    Aliyah’s Interlude on “It Girl”

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    Aliyah Bah was already popular on TikTok before her debut single, “IT GIRL,” became one of the most popular songs on the app. Known for birthing the AliyahCore aesthetic—distinguished by layers of fishnets (on the legs and the arms), denim booty shorts with belts (yes, multiple), moon boots (preferably furry), and most importantly, lots of bright colors—Bah’s blending of Y2K fashion with Harajuku style caught the attention of many other creators who wanted to take on the look.

    [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

    The hashtag “AliyahCore” currently has over 400 million views on the app—it’s safe to say Bah was already an It Girl well before she dropped the song at the end of September.

    Since its release, “IT GIRL” has taken off on TikTok. Bah’s song has been used in over 912,000 videos, and it currently sits at No. 4 on the official TikTok Viral 50 Music Chart, which tracks the most popular songs on the app based on how many videos use the song, the views those videos get, and its overall engagement. It’s hard to scroll on TikTok without coming across at least one video using Bah’s song, a bouncy, pop-house track where she raps about being “that b-tch” in a similar cadence to Azealia Banks or Nicki Minaj.

    @aliyahsinterlude

    IT GIRL OUT TMRW AT MIDNIGHTT🤭💋💗💖 PRE-SAVE IN BIO !!💋💗 #fyp #aliyahcore

    ♬ IT GIRL OUT SEPT.30th – aliyahsinterlude

    As the “IT GIRL” phenomenon grows, Bah told her fans in a video posted to TikTok that she is working on a remix and asked for suggestions. Previously, she’s collaborated with with other in-demand creators as well as celebrities like Lizzo, PinkPanthress, and most recently, the perennial It Girl, Paris Hilton.

    In an interview with TIME, Bah says she’s secured a featured artist—a “New York it girl”—for the remix and that they are recording their verse now, with hopes to release the new version by the end of the month. While we wait to see who will join Bah on the track, here’s a conversation with the TikTok star.

    You were obviously popular online before your song came out, did you always want to make music?

    I’ve actually been making music since I’ve been an influencer. I was kind of perfecting my craft and making sure that I really knew the sound and what I wanted to make before I made it because I didn’t want to just be one of those influencers who just make music for a bag. I actually want to do it because I actually love music.

    How did you go about thinking about your sound and the type of music you wanted to create? What were some of the artists or projects that influenced you?

    I listen to a lot of Azealia Banks, Ayesha Erotica (who has a popular song on TikTok right now called “Juicy Couture,” popularized by Tube Girl), Ice Spice, Nicki Minaj. I always knew I wanted to be a diva, I wanted to have that energy just coming through. I was going into the studio, even before I made “IT GIRL,” I was perfecting my cadence and how I would say different things to bring that energy out. Even through my videos, you can feel the energy too. I was listening to Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE a lot and I love house music, so I thought let me hop on a house beat and see how I eat on it. It ended up just going crazy.

    Did you work with a producer to make the beat?

    It’s a YouTube beat that I scoured the interwebs to find. I found the producer’s Instagram, paid him to use the beat exclusively, and after I made the song, I let him know that the song was coming out and he’s been pretty cool about it.

    Did you guys end up working on the song together?

    No, he made the beat and it was already online and it already had thousands of views, I just rapped over it.

    What was the songwriting process like? Did the word ‘It Girl’ just come into your mind and you needed to make a song about that?

    When I write music, I like to write down what I want the song to be about. So I wrote down that I wanted it to be girly, fun, and have a pink vibe. I always call myself an It Girl because I am an It Girl so I thought that should be the name of the song. When I listen to a song, I can hear the hook before I hear any words and that’s what happened with this song, I was just listening to the beat over and over again, then I started spelling out I-T-G-I-R-L on beat, “you know I am that girl,” what I came up with first, and then I wrote the song around it. Even the first line, “B-tch, you know I’m sexy,” I thought, I need something that’s real, something that the girls would relate to.

    After you had the music all ready to go, did you have a plan in mind about how you wanted to promote the song on social media?

    I’m not gonna lie to you, no. I knew they were gonna gag though just because I never did music before and it’s something new for the girls. So when I dropped it, the song just went crazy immediately and wanted to make all the promo based on just like me being super cute and stylish. That’s what the song embodies, so that’s what I’m gonna do with all the promo.

    How have you kept the promotion of the song authentic to who you are? A lot of people, especially influencers that are making music come off as inauthentic and seen as selling out, but the way you’ve promoted the song works off the persona you’ve created.

    The song is like an embodiment of me. All the content that I was already making was already it girl-esque. Even if the song wasn’t mine, I’d probably be using it all the time, too. I think that’s why people really like it too, because it’s just real.

    You said you’re doing a remix for this song and were looking for suggestions. Have you secured someone for a featured spot yet?

    I have secured someone on the remix and it’s someone that the girls have been dying to be on the remix. It’s going to be iconic. I have so much new music coming up and there’s a new song that’s even more iconic than “IT GIRL” coming out in December with a music video.

    Can you say more about who is on the remix? Is it a New York It Girl? When are you planning on releasing it?

    Yes, it’s a New York-It Girl and I’m hoping to release it by the end of the month, so you’ll just have to wait and see.

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    Moises Mendez II

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  • Retro game streamer AshSaidHi built a lively community out of nostalgia

    Retro game streamer AshSaidHi built a lively community out of nostalgia

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    Surrounded by a sizable, colorful cascade of plushies — largely Nintendo-themed — and an impressive retro game collection, Ash goes live on Twitch five days a week. She’s played everything from Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion to Sierra Entertainment’s Quest for Glory, focusing on games that evoke a sense of nostalgia. The one thing that stays the same each stream is the way Ash ends them, with a message to her viewers: “Don’t forget to tell your friends Ash said hi!”

    When Ash, who goes by AshSaidHi online, first envisioned her Twitch channel, she started with the name. “I knew I had to have a tagline or a call to action,” she told Polygon. “That’s where the name AshSaidHi comes from, because I wanted it to be like, Oh, that friend, they told me to tell you hi. It sticks in your brain a little bit.”

    Over the years since Ash started her Twitch channel in 2019, she’s worked to build a community and a business that matches her values — a place where she could have a work-life balance that her previous career didn’t allow for, and a community of support Twitch can provide.

    “People go to Twitch to connect about the things they love and find other people that are into the things they love,” Ash said. “That’s how I built an engaging community.”

    Ahead of TwitchCon 2023 in Las Vegas, Polygon spoke to Ash about how she’s carved out her own space on Twitch.

    [Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

    Polygon: First, I just want to let you know I love the collection in the background.

    AshSaidHi: Thank you! That’s years and years of work. My parents got me into video gaming when I was really young. Even my mom, she still plays video games. I texted her the other day and was like, “Did you download Lies of P?” and she was like, “Yeah, but I really like Lords of the Fallen.” And I was like, “What?”

    She’s a big Soulsborne, like Elden Ring, player. She just bought a PS5 and was like, “When are you getting a PS5?” I was like, “Mom, I play retro games on Twitch. OK?”

    I know you started your Twitch channel in 2019. What prompted you to start streaming?

    I was working in an industry where I didn’t have a work-life balance. And after I left it, I was like, Oh, I want to get into content creation. And I got into a different industry. It allowed me time to create content. So I was like, I think I’m gonna start on Twitch. I have a degree in advertising. The first thing I wanted to do was create a concept for my channel. And I knew I had to have like a tagline or a call to action. So that’s where the name AshSaidHi comes from, because I wanted it to be like, Oh, that friend, they told me to tell you hi. It sticks in your brain a little bit. And so it’s like, “Oh, don’t forget to tell your friends Ash said hi.” That’s how I always wanted to end my videos.

    I started on Tetris 99 and Breath of the Wild. Those were the first games I broadcast on Twitch. But I have this big backlog of video games. Why don’t I start getting into retro games? And that’s how it it really snowballed. I got into a retro games, and the community was wonderful. They taught me the ropes, I met a lot of friends — friends that I still have to this day. It changed my life for the better in so many different ways.

    I really, really love being a creator on Twitch. The magic is in the sense of community that you get when you meet people and they share the love of the same things. I met like people who were into Amiga 500 gaming, and Commodore and NES and Super Nintendo and all that kind of stuff. I knew I found my people.

    Do you stream full time?

    It’s what I mainly spend my time doing. It’s always a funny question because when people say “stream full time on Twitch,” they imagine it means eight hours a day, five days a week. But I think it means that I put all my focus on it. I do a lot of sponsorship work and a lot of offline work for my channel. So technically, yes.

    How long did it take to get to the point where you could spend that time on Twitch and the business behind it?

    I started in 2019 and then I got Twitch Partner in November 2020. And I was like, OK, wait a minute, people really like what I’m doing here. I have an engaging community, I try to never miss a message in chat — I literally have chat up on like three or four screens.

    Once I hit Partner, I found out about the Twitch Ambassador program, because I saw somebody with a check and I clicked it. I applied and talked about all the skills that I had learned. And I talked about why I was passionate for what I do. They called me back a few months later and were like, “We want to invite you into the program.”

    I was announced March 2021, and at the time, they also had a billboard in Times Square. I’m originally from New York, but I no longer live there. They put my picture up on that billboard. And at that point, it kind of gave me a kind of sense that there’s credibility to what I’m doing, which is really important for me. I flew up from where I live back up to New York, and I told my mom and she was freaking out. It was such a surreal moment. For me, in my hometown — the crossroads of the world — here is a picture of me. Then it snowballed from there. I knew I wanted to take it seriously.

    One of the things that I do that helps me sustain my business is sponsored broadcast. Because of my professional background, and the way that I communicate — I work on trying to build good bonds with developers or marketing people. I make sure that I do my due diligence, to be on time and to be mindful in the moment and be professional. Whenever I’m called upon for a job, I put a lot of pride into what I’m doing. I knew things were getting serious when people started paying me to play video games.

    I love that it allows me freedom to be able to travel to things like TwitchCon. And it allows me to go spend time with my mom, or to just take time to relax, like I can have that work-life balance and not have to request this time off or things like that. And my mom is really proud of me. When I talk about it to my family members, they’re always so happy for the things that I’m doing.

    It’s cool to hear you talk about that work-life balance, because I think sometimes when you hear about people doing Twitch, it can be grinding out streams for 12 hours straight. It’s nice that you’re able to have a balance.

    That’s key, right? I can’t do my best work if I’m not taking care of myself. I understand why that’s the mindset of constantly streaming, like you’re not discoverable if you’re not live sometimes. That’s the conundrum. But I do feel like if you put your time and effort into things like, I’m going to start writing a little bit, or I’m going to start making short video that I can post on social media so people can get a sense of who I am. Even when I’m not broadcasting, people can find AshSaidHi. When I’m not live, those things helped me bridge the gaps.

    What have you learned since you started streaming about carving out that engaging community you mentioned earlier?

    I learned to be authentically myself — be present in the moment. I always tell people this when they meet me in person, that you’re meeting the Ash that you see on camera. I’m always talking about my mom and my dad and how they got me into video games. I feel like I’m sharing the best parts of myself — what I grew up with.

    I talk about food all the time on my channel. If you meet me, I know all the places in New York where you could get some good food, you know what I’m saying? Like, that is like a big part of who I am. I love Star Trek, I love Nintendo, I love drawing, I love all of those things. And I love sharing those things with people. Being excited about the things that we love… I think that’s key — being able to share the things about you would that you could connect with people.

    I think that that’s also the magic of Twitch — connecting with people. It’s a people platform first to me. We go on there, we play video games — whether it’s playing video games or cooking, exercising, ASMR, chatting or whatever it is on Twitch. People go there to connect with people. People go to Twitch to connect about the things they love and find other people that are into the things they love. That’s how I built an engaging community.

    What should people know about your career as a streamer, or about Twitch itself?

    I would love to share the power of community on Twitch. There is the Twitch Women’s Guild, which is incredible, because not only does it connect women and empower women to be who they are on Twitch, but it’s a place where we cheer each other on. It is a safe space for us to kind of talk about the things that impact us in our daily lives as broadcasters.

    I did a Creator Camp with some of the women that are in that group and it was incredible. And I also did a show called Streamer Strategies. I try to do a show once a month where we talk about different strategies that you might be thinking about for streaming. The first one I did was creative monetization. But the next one I did was collaboration. I feel like a lot of really wonderful opportunities come from being able to connect with other people like that. And it’s such a great program. It’s one of the best things that Twitch created because it gives us a space to learn. And it gives us a space to speak about our experiences. They also give a lot of tools to us to help us extend our skills.

    Especially for women, Black people, people of color, things like that solidify the fact that we belong in this space. And I think that it is so important to inspire people who feel like they don’t know if they belong, right? Because we see so much of that. I’m really grateful for all of those opportunities that I’ve been given. I just want to make sure that people know how awesome those kinds of tools and resources are, because without things like that, you question whether or not you can do it.

    How many times have you worked on something and people are like, “Oh, can you really do it?” They’re questioning your intelligence, or they’re saying, “You just got by on, like, certain qualities.” But no — there’s so many hardworking individuals that get a space because of things like that. I just love that space for us.

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    Nicole Carpenter

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  • Anonymous YouTuber Spill Sesh Reveals Face. What to Know

    Anonymous YouTuber Spill Sesh Reveals Face. What to Know

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    The person behind one of YouTube’s most popular drama channels finally revealed their face after five years of anonymity. Spill Sesh, who breaks down the biggest controversies and scandals engulfing the internet’s biggest stars on the channel, revealed her identity in a video posted on Friday. Spill Sesh is a woman named Kristi Cook, nicknamed Spilli. In the video the beauty guru Manny Gutierrez (known as Manny MUA) does Cook’s makeup as she explains how he served as the subject of her first-ever video in 2018. Having him be a part of her face reveal felt like a “full-circle moment,” she said.

    Cook runs the YouTube channel, which has over 700,000 subscribers, and has worked on more than 1,300 videos. Her thoroughly researched almost-daily videos on the scandals unfolding online have included topics like Colleen Ballinger, David Dobrik’s Vlog Squad, and the Try Guys, and gained over 350 million views. Over the five years of operating Spill Sesh, Cook, a former TMZ employee, never revealed her face—prompting fans and followers to theorize about who ran the YouTube channel. Some users speculated that it was Shane Dawson or his sister-in-law, Morgan Adams. Cook says she wanted to reveal her face now to set the record straight.

    In the video, Cook and Gutierrez chat while he does her makeup about why she is choosing this moment to reveal her identity. Cook called it her “Hannah Montana wig-off moment,” adding that it felt like the right time, five years into running the channel. “I also really want to expand and make new content,” she says in the video. Going forward, she adds, Cook won’t be showing her face in the videos, but she will be using her real voice from now on.

    In an interview with the New York Times, Cook said that she was “fascinated by the fact that people were interested in news about YouTubers because, at the time, I didn’t think mainstream media was covering it.” She says in her video that she’s had a few different YouTube channels that she had tried to get off the ground, but none of them ever took off until she started the drama channel. Her first big video (which she has seemingly deleted) was about Trisha Paytas’ video denouncing the Vlog Squad after her breakup with Jason Nash. Then, she made a video about the college admissions scandal involving Olivia Jade Giannulli and Lori Laughlin. That video didn’t perform well, but another video highlighting all the times Giannulli flaunted her wealth for six minutes became the most-viewed video on her page. Spill Sesh quickly became a go-to channel for an analysis or breakdown of the biggest online dramas. The videos began gaining a steady audience, bringing in an average of $20,000 a month through ads, Cook told the Times.

    Staying anonymous for so long was not easy, Cook said, noting one scary moment when a stranger sent her a message saying they figured out her identity, leading her to scrub her personal information from the internet. She ends the video on Friday thanking her fans and saying they “changed [her] life.”

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    Moises Mendez II

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  • YouTube has AI creator tools, but creators are too busy battling AI to care

    YouTube has AI creator tools, but creators are too busy battling AI to care

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    In mid-September, YouTube announced a collection of new artificial intelligence tools coming to the platform. The tools touch basically every part of the content creation process, from generating topics to editing and even generating video footage itself through the Dream Screen feature. But even as AI features have caused an uproar in so many other creative industries, the response to YouTube’s new suite of tools has been muted. Instead, YouTubers are sharing other concerns about the ways generative AI is already affecting the platform.

    It’s been a watershed year as generative AI tools have made it easier to create images and text, all generated from internet scrapes of others’ art and writing. Artists and writers have typically pushed back, citing issues like copyright and their own work being undermined — in September, high-profile authors including George R.R. Martin and Jodi Picoult filed to sue OpenAI for scraping their books. And then there’s generative AI’s issues with hallucination and inaccuracies.

    On the other side of the coin, these tools have been used by many people, either experimentally or professionally. Prizes have been won by AI art, while some news sites cut their staff and put out AI-generated articles. AI has also become a cornerstone of TikTok, particularly AI-powered filters. Creators use the Bold Glamour filter to apply makeup, a Ghibli filter to look like characters from the studio’s films, and even pay a fee for filters that generate themed avatars — like the hugely popular ’90s high school photo filter.

    Maybe it’s the fact that YouTube’s tools aren’t available to the general public yet. But the quiet reception still seems to buck the trend. On the YouTube Creators account on X (formerly known as Twitter), the announcement only picked up a few hundred likes, doing similarly to engagement-bait tweets like “how do you make your audience feel seen and heard?” On the main YouTube account, it performed worse than a tweet reading “stars are kinda just sky rocks.”

    On the platform itself, it’s difficult to find videos discussing the tools at all, despite a thriving community of YouTubers who explain how to use AI tools in making videos — just not the ones announced by YouTube. Instead, these videos focus on explaining existing tools to generate scripts and voice-overs, and to create and edit together images for the video visuals. YouTube’s new tools basically give creators an in-house option for much of this: Creators will be able to generate video prompts and script outlines, automatically edit clips together, and create AI-voiced dubs into other languages.

    The main potential draw is that these AI tools would generate content based off of creators’ own historical output. For example, YouTube says the “insights” tool will be personalized so that new video ideas will take into account what a creator’s audience is already watching, something that other text generators can’t do without access to YouTube’s data. It also aims to recommend music for videos, including royalty-free music that hypothetically should help creators know what won’t get them troublesome copyright strikes.

    But existing creators don’t seem particularly interested one way or the other. “No one’s heard of it yet,” says Jimmy McGee, a YouTuber who recently made a video titled “The AI Revolution is Rotten to the Core.” As the title might suggest, he’s not a huge fan of YouTube’s proposed tools, but he says it’s “strange” how they’ve been received.

    He thinks it may be that these tools are mainly geared toward creators, and viewers may not notice if, for example, a video is edited with the help of AI. He doesn’t think the more obvious tools, like the melty generated visuals of Dream Screen, will take off in the long run. “People will get sick of those quick enough that it’s not really a problem,” he says. But the other tools might lead to longer-term issues in the creator space.

    Viewers might not immediately notice if AI software is used to edit videos, but McGee worries that it will undermine those who actually use it. “It’s going to de-skill newer people on YouTube,” he says. Although he finds it unlikely that it will replace professional editors in its current form, it will prevent newer creators from growing their skills. YouTube is billing the feature as an easier way in for people who might not be as confident in their skills yet. It’s also aimed toward Shorts, YouTube’s vertical-video spinoff, so it might make things easier for those who only have their phones to edit on. But McGee thinks that relying on it may end up discouraging video creators in the long run as they struggle to grow creatively.

    “I think the more decisions you can make in your video, the better the video can be,” says McGee. “Maybe it won’t be [at first], but the ceiling is higher. That’s what worries me. If someone goes in earnestly trying to use these tools, it’d be very sad to see them give up.”

    That potential pitfall depends on whether YouTube’s tools stick around. Parent company Google has a habit of shuttering things — including features it has hyped up a lot more than this one. And generative AI is currently running at a loss for most companies. “We’re probably going to see a decline in its popularity pretty soon,” says media and fandom critic Sarah Z. “[In the meantime] I hope these tools are helpful to creators and serve as a way of empowering them to better execute videos that serve their visions rather than a way to undercut creators.”

    But some creators already feel undercut by AI on the platform. Just before YouTube’s tool announcement, creator Abyssoft released a video about a potential case of plagiarism. In it, he detailed the similarities between a previous video he had put out and a video uploaded by a different channel and speculated on how AI could have been used to perform the theft, including using speech-to-text programs and AI voice-over software.

    Contacted for comment, Abyssoft pointed out that this is already a widespread issue on the platform. In May, science communicator Kyle Hill spoke out against YouTube channels using AI to create unverified but attention-grabbing content on the site. These videos are often misleading and in some cases appear to copy topics that Hill himself had made videos on.

    In his video, Abyssoft says that he isn’t sure what the solution to these issues is. But one thing he suggests is that YouTube should disclose when AI is being used in video creation. He’d also like to see “a punishment or strike system for people that fail to disclose and are proven to be using AI.”

    This would be easier if it were YouTube’s own AI tools that were being used; the platform would already be aware. In response to a request for comment on whether Google was considering implementing this feature or any additional measures to avoid plagiarism and misinformation on the platform, Google policy communications manager Jack Malon stated that all content is subject to the existing community guidelines, and that these are “enforced consistently for all creators on our platform, regardless of whether their content is generated using artificial intelligence.”

    Although Abyssoft considered some of the other generative AI tools as potentially useful, like the music tool helping creators avoid copyright issues, he continues to fear what easy access to AI tools might do to YouTube creators. “AI facilitates plagiarism in a way we haven’t seen before, and with a bit of effort it will soon become undetectable,” he says. “Competing in a sea of faceless AI channels will be a tough challenge for creators who make a living this way, as their upload cadence will be greatly outpaced by the AI.”

    However, he doesn’t think that AI will necessarily produce interesting videos. “I’m assuming the tool that suggests video topics is only going to suggest ideas that it thinks will do well in the algorithm,” he says. “Things will get incredibly formulaic if [it’s] relied on too much.”

    He does acknowledge that channels with technical content, such as his own speedrunning history videos, have the advantage of research and understanding that can’t be carried out by AI. McGee similarly feels somewhat protected by his own style. “My videos are messy and I like them that way,” he says. “I can make all the melty, weird visuals myself and make something I’m actually proud of.”

    But other channels might not be able to survive. “Someone that covers current news will see AI upload videos before their editing is finished, since it can just scrape whatever articles have been published for the day and render out a video and voice-over in less than an hour,” says Abyssoft.

    YouTube’s tools haven’t yet launched beyond a few test countries, so it’ll be some time until we see the impact they’ll have on the platform. But while creators have concerns that they might add new issues for both existing and upcoming video makers, they also have prior concerns about the use of AI that they feel aren’t being addressed by the platform. It seems to be these that are holding creators’ attention, not any new announcements.

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    Jay Castello

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  • Rosanna Pansino Says MrBeast Edited Her Out of Video

    Rosanna Pansino Says MrBeast Edited Her Out of Video

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    YouTuber Rosanna Pansino has accused MrBeast of editing her out of a video in the YouTube “Creator Games” series. Created by MrBeast, the “Creator Games” challenge pits popular YouTube personalities against each other in games like rock-paper-scissors or hide-and-seek.

    Pansino, a baking and lifestyle influencer, who has appeared in all three installments of the “Creator Games,” says that in the 2021 games, which was titled “Extreme $1,000,000 Hide and Seek,” she came in third place. But the video, posted in December 2021 does not feature her in the top three. Instead, it shows other YouTubers Logan Paul, Larray, and Zach King as the top three contenders. 

    Pansino initially brought this up during her appearance on the most recent episode of Trisha Paytas’ podcast, “Just Trish,” saying she waited to speak out about the incident because she did not want to face the wrath of MrBeast’s fanbase. On Thursday, she posted a lengthy statement on X about the situation.

    “MrBeast (Jimmy) had edited the video to make me look like I performed worse than I did,” she writes. “This was extra upsetting because I genuinely believed him when he said that his videos are ‘authentic and real.’” She says that the top three actually consisted of Quackity, Zach King, and herself.

    Neither Pansino nor MrBeast immediately responded to TIME’s requests for comment.

    More From TIME

    In her statement, Pansino writes that the games were a large-scale version of hide-and-seek and took place in SoFi Stadium. The participants had earpieces connected to walkie-talkies so they could hear when they needed to switch hiding places. If they didn’t move, they were immediately disqualified, she writes, and she heard them announce that they found Paul. They filmed for over 24 hours straight. She was offered money to quit, she writes, but she declined and kept playing.

    She says that she was found while moving to a new hiding spot, and she thought she placed fourth, but Larray had fallen asleep—which meant that he was disqualified, moving her to third place. “I placed third, Quackity placed second, and Zach placed first. This is what actually happened,” she writes. “Despite Jimmy editing out the ONLY FEMALE in the top three, I was proud of what I had achieved.” 

    People online immediately questioned the accuracy of Pansino’s claims and asked her to provide evidence. She responded to one person saying that Quackity made a video in May 2022 corroborating her story. Users began posting clips of his old videos, where he discussed getting second place.

    In another statement, Pansino thanked her fans for supporting her in speaking out. “I was scared to tell my story for a long time because of how much hate others have gotten in the past for speaking up about their own experiences.” Pansino says she has received at least three messages from other female creators who have dealt with something similar with MrBeast.

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    Moises Mendez II

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  • Twitch is bleeding talent — is the new simulcasting policy the answer?

    Twitch is bleeding talent — is the new simulcasting policy the answer?

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    Twitch is further broadening its simulcast rules, the livestream platform announced on Friday. As shared during TwitchCon in Las Vegas, streamers can now live broadcast streams onto even more platforms — YouTube and Kick, for example. That said, streamers with an “agreement with Twitch that requires exclusivity” won’t be able to do so.

    “We truly believe that Twitch is the best service to be a live, interactive creator, and we want to give streamers more freedom in just how they want to build their communities,” said Twitch VP of community product Jeremy Forrester during an interview with Polygon at TwitchCon.

    This news comes on the heels of Twitch bleeding big-name talent. On Oct. 19, Kick signed massively popular streamer and co-owner of FaZe Clan Nickmercs in a one-year contract worth roughly $10 million, according to a Forbes report. This summer, the upstart company also signed Amouranth, Twitch’s most popular female streamer, and former pro-Overwatch player xQc (the latter of whom, Kick offered a $100 million deal). This is not to mention talent that moved to YouTube: In the last three years, YouTube signed Valkyrae, Ludwig, Sykkuno, LilyPichu, and more. Some of these streamers left in the wake of Twitch changing its revenue share split from 70/30 (in favor of streamers) to 50/50.

    Forrester said this talent departure was not the motivator for the expanded simulcast policy, instead calling it “community driven” and saying that it was an example for Twitch developers to demonstrate that they “listen” to creator’s “concerns, and react to them when we can.”

    The most interesting part of the new guidelines might just be all the way at the bottom of the FAQ. Streamers who left Twitch now have a chance to become Twitch Partners again. Per the guidelines, Twitch Partners whose previous agreements were “terminated” because they left for another service — and they notified Twitch beforehand, thus not violating the agreement — will be “eligible to reinstate their Partnership status.”

    Twitch also seems to finally be acknowledging the value of cross-platform discovery. In August, Twitch updated its simulcast guidelines to include TikTok and Instagram. During TwitchCon, streamers told Polygon that TikTok had become a vital way to draw in new fans — TikTok’s short video format basically functions like a highlight reel for Twitch streamers to post their funniest moments. “Being able to curate the highlights from your stream and feeding that into the TikTok algorithm is your chance for an entirely new audience to see you,” streamer Alex Labat told Polygon in anticipation of TwitchCon. And earlier this month, Twitch introduced its own short video feature, “stories.”

    Even as simulcasting options broaden, there are still rules to follow that more or less ensure streamers won’t use Twitch to direct traffic to their other platforms, or attempt to interact with their fan communities on various platforms at the same time. Streamers must “ensure” the quality of a Twitch users’ experience is “no less than the experience on other platform services” — and this includes engaging with the Twitch community via chat. Nor can streamers use a third-party app to for “merging chat features,” for example. Streamers also can’t provide links during a Twitch stream, encouraging followers to leave Twitch for a simulcast on another platform.

    “We believe that creators will do it with the intent to help bring people to Twitch,” Forrester said, optimistically.

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    Nicole Clark

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  • If you want to be a Twitch streamer, you probably need to be a TikToker too

    If you want to be a Twitch streamer, you probably need to be a TikToker too

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    You may have felt it: Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are all competing for an increasingly overlapping user base as social media platforms all introduce similar features.

    But for streamers and influencers, these platforms have symbiotic relationships — one platform can be important for growth in another. Twitch and TikTok may seem antithetical, as one targets long-form, hourslong broadcasts over the other’s bite-sized clips, but Twitch streamers have realized that both platforms can be crucial for audience growth.

    TikTok is an attention behemoth — Twitch’s user-base numbers don’t even come close — that can be essential to broader success on Twitch as a livestreaming platform. Twitch seems to recognize this relationship, having released new tools this year to make it easier to reuse Twitch content on TikTok. Twitch’s Clip Editor is a web-based application that lets streamers edit clips, including the ability to convert them into portrait mode. Twitch also has CapCut, a more in-depth editor, that makes editing more accessible. TikTok recently added a feature that lets users post to TikTok directly from Twitch and CapCut, closing the loop on the ease of creating short-form content. And earlier in October, Twitch itself introduced a new short-form “stories” feature.

    Alex Labat, a Twitch streamer and TikTok creator, has seen exponential growth to his Twitch streams after using TikTok to promote “highlights” of his content, like his infamous Twitch Plays streams, where he gets Twitch Chat to use text commands to play games like World of Warcraft.

    “Twitch is where you want to be to see those [unscripted] moments happen in real time,” Labat said. “The ‘you had to be there’ moments. TikTok, on the other hand, is where you go to highlight and/or showcase those moments. Being able to curate the highlights from your stream and feeding that into the TikTok algorithm is your chance for an entirely new audience to see you, for them to say, ‘OK. I have to see what this is about.’”

    Some of Labat’s most popular TikToks only required editing Twitch clips into short-form videos; the effort, he says, feels low risk with the potential for high reward. TikTok videos can get tons of views on the platform itself, but the other crucial element that Labat says is often ignored is how often TikToks are reused and reposted on other social media platforms. “Instagram Reels, tweets… sometimes when things take off you aren’t even the arbiter of that growth because something you’ve produced has been shared/remixed on a platform you haven’t even touched,” he said.

    Short-form content is also more likely to be viewed by other content creators doing reaction videos and the like; Labat credits a massive Twitch traffic spike to popular World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold viewing his Twitch Plays video on stream. “Very rarely will you ever see a streamer watching someone else’s stream while they’re live,” Labat added.

    It’s hard to track whether TikTok audiences are sticking around for longer Twitch streams, but Labat said he does see TikTok users getting involved in the community. Some of his TikTok viewers even signed up for Twitch, after which he helped “onboard” new viewers.

    “TikTok people will make it known,” Labat said. “‘Hey. I’m here from TikTok, sort of unsure how things work here.’ And I commend my community for this greatly, they welcome them with open arms.”

    He said he even gets people regularly coming into his Twitch stream to ask about a shiny Pokémon stream — a conquest that included four Nintendo Switch consoles — that he did on TikTok in 2022.

    Bringing another platform into the equation, Labat said Discord is the other crucial part of making all these different content avenues work. It bridges the gap between TikTok and Twitch, ultimately bringing his community together. “Discord provides that space so that people can find me and where I’ll be providing that content, regardless of said platform,” he added.

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    Nicole Carpenter

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  • The Store-Bought Pesto TikTok Trend

    The Store-Bought Pesto TikTok Trend

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    The latest TikTok stitching trend begins with a woman’s video about not liking store-bought pesto.

    In September, Susi Vidal, a home-cooking influencer with 3.5 million TikTok followers and over 1.4 million followers on Instagram, shared an unassuming recipe for homemade pesto.

    “Call me crazy if you want, but I never liked store-bought pesto,” Vidal says in the video.

    The video accumulated over 10 million views as people began stitching it to lightly poke fun at Vidal’s delivery with sarcastic replies. One of the earliest viral stitches came from @payjthegemini, who joked, “Oh my god, you’re freaking crazy girl!”

    @payjthegemini

    #stitch with @Susi so freaking crazy dude!!!! #fyp #viral Just jokes 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼

    ♬ original sound – K Payj Burns 🍄

    Prompt trends have always been popular on social media—on X, formerly Twitter, for example, users will often ask their followers a question or ask for an opinion on any given topic, sometimes leading thousands of people to give their answers and sparking a trend. The idea has evolved on TikTok, where people can respond to each other’s content by stitching videos of their own.

    The store-bought pesto video has created a prompt trend of beautiful chaos, as people began stitching it to share their wildest stories, ranging from the mild to the unruly. No topic is off-limits. One woman shared a story about a weird smell in her apartment that turned out to be her neighbor’s rotting corpse. Another person spoke about when she was an intern on Stephen Colbert’s show and clogged a toilet at a company party but didn’t have a plunger, so she had to figure out a way to unclog it. A popular stitch on Vidal’s pesto video routinely racks up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views.

    Some celebrities got in on the trend, including Josh Peck and John Green—who had a story about a “fourth-tier soccer” team.

    @literallyjohngreen

    #stitch with @Susi there wasnt even any scores. And the worst part is i had an amazing day and regret nothing.

    ♬ original sound – John Green

    Vidal is in on the joke. After users left comments on her video like, “Susi, I’ve heard so many fascinating stories because of you” and “I’ve seen so many diabolical stitches that I feel obligated to watch your recipe,” she responded with gratitude. She even participated in her trend (truly giving ouroboros) and told her followers about the first time she got drunk.

    @susi.vidal

    #stitch with @Susi one of many crazy stories i have 🤣 felt like i had to share since everyone else is bahahahaha

    ♬ original sound – Susi

    Around this time last year, Nicki Minaj’s “Super Freaky Girl” was a trending sound on TikTok and prompted people to tell wild stories—in that instance, by reciting them to the rhythm of Minaj’s song. It’s impossible to predict what the internet will latch onto and morph into a trend, but hearing stories from TikTok users is forever entertaining.

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    Moises Mendez II

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  • Twitter Blue Subscribers Now Allowed To Hide Blue Checks

    Twitter Blue Subscribers Now Allowed To Hide Blue Checks

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    X, the site formerly known as Twitter, is now letting its Blue subscribers hide the once-coveted verification “blue check”—the status symbol they pay $8 a month for—on their account. What do you think?

    “All the best goods and services are too embarrassing to be shown publicly.”

    Jeffrey LaFontaine, Cousin Therapist

    This Elon Musk Deepfake Cannot Be Real

    “Just to be safe, I’m blocking everyone.”

    Melanie Adams, Systems Analyst

    “Now they’ll all wonder about the mystery man behind the reply ‘Hilarious, Elon!!!’”

    Dante Purwin, Lawn Advocate

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  • Steam’s Subreddit Is Running An Excellent Protest

    Steam’s Subreddit Is Running An Excellent Protest

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    As we’ve been covering, things are not going well over on Reddit at the moment, with the site’s ownership currently engaged in a running battle with readers and moderators. Users are so annoyed at attempts to monetise the site that they’re working through a variety of protests, but one of the larger gaming subreddits—r/steam, with 1.9 million subscribers—is now my favourite.

    The Top Ten Most Played Games On Steam Deck: March 2023 Edition

    We’ve seen blackouts, we’ve seen sites toggle their settings to NSFW (thus cutting off ad revenue), but r/steam—whose mods were threatened with removal if they didn’t reopen the subreddit after an initial blackout—has decided as a community that if they had to reopen, they were going to reopen with a purpose.

    And that purpose, as PC Gamer point out, was to become the internet’s top destination for all things steam-related. And by that I don’t mean the PC’s preferred shopfront and launcher, but steam engines. Steam clouds. Steam tractors, steam-driven cars and academic books about steam.

    Here, for example, is a classic “rate my setup” post, emphasis on classic:

    Image for article titled Steam's Subreddit Is Running An Excellent Protest

    In this post, a user has an important technical question they’re hoping the community can answer:

    Image for article titled Steam's Subreddit Is Running An Excellent Protest

    Just because there’s a protest going on doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to celebrate:

    Image for article titled Steam's Subreddit Is Running An Excellent Protest

    Like most gaming subreddits, users are sometimes overcome with nostalgia, and like to reminisce about the good old days:

    Image for article titled Steam's Subreddit Is Running An Excellent Protest

    Here’s a reminder that Reddit only exists as it does today because it’s a place where users can teach, learn and hang out with other human beings for free:

    Image for article titled Steam's Subreddit Is Running An Excellent Protest

    While this maybe isn’t the most effective form of protest—with users still generating content, anyone viewing r/steam on the company’s official mobile app will still be served ads, which is the whole reason they’re trying to squeeze third-party applications out in the first place—if you’re going to settle into a protest for the long-run, you may as well have some fun with it.

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    Luke Plunkett

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  • Reddit Is Removing Mods Over NSFW Protests

    Reddit Is Removing Mods Over NSFW Protests

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    Image: Reddit

    In the wake of sitewide protests, ostensibly over some API changes but really about an increasingly corporate squeeze of a historically community-run site, some Reddit moderators have decided to hit CEO Steve Huffman in the only place it seems to hurt: the site’s wallet.

    The Week In Games: Wild At Heart

    Following a disastrous round of press interviews, where Huffman came off sounding more like a Dril tweet than a company CEO and it became clear that mass blackouts were not changing his mind, mods from some of Reddit’s biggest communities decided to switch their subreddits over to NSFW (Not Suitable For Work), a toggle normally reserved for stuff like porn and, crucially, a type of subreddit that Reddit can’t show ads on, and so can’t make money off.

    Some of the communities making the switch included r/MildlyInteresting, r/TIHI (Thanks I Hate It) and r/interestingasfuck. It’s a clever move (plus it’s more legal than ransoming the company with stolen data), and one that shows the lengths mods are going to protest Huffman and his team’s actions, but it’s also one that Reddit says violates their “Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct”. As a result, and as The Verge report, these mods are now finding themselves “logged out of their account and locked out” by “a Reddit admin account”, and their subreddits—with millions of members—are showing up as being completely unmoderated. Those former mods have also seen their accounts suspended for seven days.

    It is incredibly funny to see the lengths Huffman and his staff are going to here. They’re in such a panic about their profit margins—and more importantly in their case, potential future share value--that they’re ignoring the fact Reddit’s entire worth is built on the back of unpaid labour. The site is literally nothing without its users (providing “content”) and mods (working for free), and Huffman is out here worried about ad revenue, from which none of those users see a cent? And sending the message that he’d rather leave whole communities unmoderated than put up with some protests?

    The internet has wrought many perils on our civilization, but the one thing it has been good for is helping publicly record just how stupid these CEOs really are.

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    Luke Plunkett

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  • Only 1 in 3 African women have access to the internet–compared with half of men. The cost to the continent’s economy could be in the billions

    Only 1 in 3 African women have access to the internet–compared with half of men. The cost to the continent’s economy could be in the billions

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    During a trip to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia last month, Vice President Kamala Harris announced more than $1 billion in public and private investments to close Africa’s digital divide–with a particular focus on expanding access to girls and women. That might seem like a niche goal. In fact, it will not only expand opportunity for millions, but also have far-reaching ripple effects on health, growth, stability, and resilience across a region of increasing strategic importance.

    Improving women’s access to digital technologies and skills is crucial to ensure they can fully participate in and contribute to today’s economy. Yet, only one in three African women uses the internet today, compared to almost half of men. Women on the continent are also 30% less likely than men to own a smartphone.

    This lack of access hinders women’s entrepreneurship and deprives society of their talents and innovations.

    The internet, for instance, was crucial in helping Fafape Ama Etsa Foe establish E90 Ghana, a sustainable farm in Accra that uses sawdust to grow mushrooms. Sawdust, a byproduct of the woodworking industry, is typically burned, which pollutes the air and can lead to health problems, including cancer. E90 Ghana uses it to produce healthy and nutritious food instead, simultaneously improving the environment and increasing the local food system’s resilience to climate change.

    Ms. Foe, who is locally known as the “Mushroom Queen” and recently met with Vice President Harris to discuss the economic importance of empowering women, told me the internet helped her research mushroom farming techniques, challenges, and opportunities. Today, it also allows her to reach more clients and keep costs down. “I am connected with all my regular clients on WhatsApp and Telegram, where I take their orders and supply them smoothly without delay,” she says. “These digital tools helped me to prevent postharvest losses, which used to account for as high as 25% of annual revenue.”

    Ms. Foe believes improving digital connectivity will foster entrepreneurship among women on the continent by expanding access to information and financing opportunities: “Bridging the digital gender gap will help women, especially to market their products and also come out with new innovative products.”

    It will also benefit their families, communities, and society at large. Indeed, investments in internet infrastructure grow the economy as a whole. The World Bank estimates that expanding broadband penetration by 10% in low- and middle-income economies yields a 1.4% increase in real per capita GDP. And according to the U.N. Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 report, women’s exclusion from the digital economy has cost low- and middle-income countries $1 trillion in GDP over the previous decade already–and the cost could grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025 if nothing is done to close the gap.

    Whispa Health is another example of a company founded by a woman that would not be possible without reliable internet access. It is a Nigeria-based app that gives users – mostly women and younger people – access to information about their sexual and reproductive health as well as a platform to book appointments with health care providers and buy contraceptives, STI tests, and other health products.

    Morenike Fajemisin, co-founder and CEO, told me she wanted to help young women take care of their health so they could stay in school and achieve their dreams. “As long as that woman or young person has access to a smartphone, she has a way to connect with Whispa Health through our app or any of our social media channels,” she said. “Thanks to the internet, she is a few clicks away from finding the shame-free and confidential health care that she needs.”

    We need more women entrepreneurs like Ms. Foe and Ms. Fajemisin to tackle some of the biggest challenges we are facing today, including climate change, pandemic surveillance, and democratic backsliding. Closing the digital gender divide in Africa is a crucial first step. It will open the innovation economy to millions of women and girls on the continent. It will give them–and through them, their children and communities–access to knowledge and quality education as well as health care, which in turn will further boost economic development, help build more resilient communities, and strengthen democracies.

    The ripple effects will be wide. As Ms. Fajemisin told me, “When girls hear about successful women who come from similar backgrounds or nationalities, they realize that such success is possible for them too.” (Or, as civil rights activist Marian Wright Edelman put it, “You can’t be what you don’t see.”)

    The Global North should not hesitate when it comes to investing in Africa’s digital infrastructure. The population of sub-Saharan Africa–about 1.2 billion people today–is set to almost double by 2050. And according to a study from the Brookings Institution, consumer spending in the continent is expected to rise to $2.5 trillion by 2030.

    More business and philanthropic leaders should answer Vice President Harris’ call to action and join in the effort to promote gender equality and digital access in Africa. We will all benefit.

    Michelle A. Williams is the Dean of Faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

    The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

    More must-read commentary published by Fortune:

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    Michelle A. Williams

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  • AI VTuber Banned For ‘Hateful Conduct,’ Now Undistinguishable From Real Twitch Stars

    AI VTuber Banned For ‘Hateful Conduct,’ Now Undistinguishable From Real Twitch Stars

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    Screenshot: Vedal / Twitch / Kotaku

    If you watched even a minute of Neuro-sama streaming on Twitch you knew it was only a matter of time before the AI-controlled Vtuber got banned. The channel is currently offline for two weeks due to “hateful conduct,” though it’s not immediately clear what the offending incident was.

    “Okay so banned for 2 weeks obviously, not sure why something about hateful conduct,” Neuro-sama’s creator, a user who goes by Vedal, wrote in the Vtuber’s Discord earlier today. “Will try to appeal and find out more the good news for you guys is this gives me so much time to work on improvements and upgrades so hopefully by the time she’s unbanned she will be better than ever.”

    Hundreds of fans responded beneath the message with crying emoji. On Twitter, the account Out of context Neuro called on Twitch to “free my girl.”

    Neuro-sama started making waves in the video game streaming space back in December when she bantered with viewers in the Twitch chat while playing the rhythm game Osu! Unlike other Vtubers which are only people posing as anime avatars, Neuro-sama was the real deal, trouncing opponents in online matches while commenting on everything from Pewdiepie to League of Legends. More recently she’s been playing Minecraft and taking singing lessons.

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    The potential pitfalls of an AI built on globs of internet text and viewer prompts immediately became apparent, however. Early on one user asked Neuro-sama about the Holocaust. “I’m not sure if I believe it,” she responded.

    Vedal told Kotaku last week he had immediately worked to improve the Twitch channel’s chat filters and Neuro-sama’s responses after that in order to avoid similar mishaps in the future. It’s a fine line between keeping her interesting and making her un-cancelable though. A big reason some viewers tune into her streams is clearly to watch her go off script, including rants about how she smells bad or her favorite kind of weed. No doubt getting banned will only increase her street cred and hype by the time she returns.

    Twitch and Vedal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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    Ethan Gach

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