Young female Japanese biker is 50-year-old man using FaceApp

https://mothership.sg/2021/03/japanese-biker-actually-man/

by amrrs • 5 years ago

774 489 5 years ago

mothership.sg

jeffnv• 5 years ago

He’s got great hair.

goldcd2• 5 years ago

Not very hackery - but that was my prominent thought at the end of the article.

I mean maybe there is a tech point, that hair has historically been a pretty hard thing to model, so I'd presume hard to correct with a filter - so maybe its his luscious locks that helped sell the ruse (and I'll need to wait another few years to have my hairline pseudo-restored)

Karawebnetwork4• 5 years ago

FaceApp also has a hair filter. You can change the color, make it curly, longer, etc.

In fact, it's popular in the transgender community. People can experiment with their new gender identity with a few clicks. You can transform a bald masculine figure into a soft model with long hair that retains some of your bone structure (and vice versa). Here is a tweet of one such transformation done on an actor using a stack of FaceApp filters: https://twitter.com/KaiqueBanks/status/1276185681660968961

Here's the ad for the hairs feature: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=600497397462983 (Apologies for linking to Facebook, it seems that they only advertise features there.)

aspaviento• 5 years ago

I've seen also very realistic wigs in a Japanese video so it could be fake too.

tpmx• 5 years ago

Perhaps he's been using Christopher Walken's technique of pulling on your own hair for five minutes every morning to encourage blood circulation in your scalp? :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czK6ReYbaTk (Conan, 1m43s)

eplanit• 5 years ago

There should be a Catfishing award created and given to this guy. His motives were really very innocent, which adds to the beauty of the ruse.

Karawebnetwork4• 5 years ago

It is catfishing if it's not done to get something out of a specific victim?

ed25519FUUU• 5 years ago

In this case it’s attention.

analog31• 5 years ago

Great idea for an A/B test.

goldcd2• 5 years ago

Why just A/B?

Could generate trees of filters applied to your content, with a separate channel output on each leaf.

Breed the filters that work, kill off the ones that don't get the clicks. SEO for your appearance.

Karawebnetwork4• 5 years ago

At that point you'd be better served using generated humans https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/digital-humans

IncRnd• 5 years ago

I approach the Internet as - you are all digital humans. You've passed, but not all digital humans have passed the Turing Test.

SamBam3• 5 years ago

What really worries me about the DeepFakes stuff is not so much the fakes -- I'm worried about that, but that's been written about to death -- but that now it adds plausible deniability to anyone caught on camera doing anything.

If we had video footage of, say, a politician doing something clearly illegal on camera, then it's simply the word of the politician against the word of the source -- the latter of whom may need to remain anonymous.

That said... the other way around is still the more dangerous, I guess. If, say, a US adversary creates a great-looking video of the US president doing/saying something really heinous, that has the potential to inflame the world long before the truth can get its boots on.

keiferski• 5 years ago

Personally I think this might be a good thing. The alternative is a squeaky clean politician that has no character, mistakes, or experiences.

I guess. If, say, a US adversary creates a great-looking video of the US president doing/saying something really heinous, that has the potential to inflame the world long before the truth can get its boots on.

By the time this becomes possible, it will be widespread knowledge that deepfakes exist.

SamBam3• 5 years ago

It's already possible. Look at the Tom Cruise deepfakes. It just requires the power to get a great actor of similar build, and lots of processing power, both of which are within the reach of a state, easily.

And I don't think knowing the deepfakes exists will convince everyone. Plenty of fake photos already get passed around on Facebook and what-not, even though Photoshop has existed for decades.

Majestic121• 5 years ago

Even with widespread knowledge that deepfakes exists, you can still make credible videos of people that damages them.

For example, picture a video of Trump saying in private committee 'I want to fuck that nigress'. That would be extremely heinous, and probably be a fake, but can you be 100% sure from a president that also said 'grab them by the pussy' ?

The line between real and fake news is becoming more and more tenuous.

colechristensen3• 5 years ago

Would better cameras circumvent the issue?

Sure a deepfake is convincing on a low resolution compressed video, but what about a 4k or 8k video where lens distortion and fine details are everywhere? I don't have a lot of confidence that facial pores could be convincingly simulated.

SamBam3• 5 years ago

But are most secret camera recordings using high-res cameras?

Let's say there was video recording of a politician in a hotel in Russia, to pick a random example. We would already expect it to be low-quality video even if it was real.

ma2rten• 5 years ago

Generating those low level feature is actually a much easier problem. Here is an example I found using a google image search for "upscaling":

https://copyrightimage.com/2018/05/09/better-image-upscaling...

This is from 2018, which is an eternity for machine learning research.

not2b• 5 years ago

How will the adversary get the deep fake into circulation? If it suddenly appears on social media from some sketchy account, and in the meantime the White House press pool points out that they were with the President in a completely different place, it will blow up. And it would have to be technically perfect or it would fall apart on analysis.

simion3142• 5 years ago

There are old examples with photos including newspapers/TV that used faked images, so it not something new. If there is a big punishment for intentionally faking videos and presenting them as true similar like for official documents or impersonating officials then this technology would be used a lot less in the countries where this laws apply.

pdpi• 5 years ago

Convincingly faking photos was, until recently, pretty damn hard.

This is currently possible by just using a screenshot from a game and an app from the AppStore: https://twitter.com/nillxzero/status/1369452664979943427

noxer2• 5 years ago

But its not about evidence. Its about shifting public opinion. There is and most probably never will be a law that prevents people from sharing/liking/commenting or otherwise trigger the algorithms to spread something based on the fact that it is fake. Media also fakes stuff by simply not providing context. It need no "active" image manipulation. cutting and embedding it into other content works fine since years and apparently there is very very little that can legally be done against this. The fact that the original is out there is also rather meaningless. take for example the very popular "very fine people on both sides" quote, nothing stops you or me to listen to the full conversation. But even today from random people on the street who recognizes the quote probably 50% do not know the real context. Most probably because they simply dont care enough. They involuntary heard the quote but they will not involuntary hear the context, because one goes viral the other does not.

brippalcharrid• 5 years ago

It also has the potential to devalue real evidence in the form of existing compromising material unless people have done things like adding cryptographic hashes to immutable public records with attestations.

ballenf• 5 years ago

So we'll return to how guilt or provenance were determined for thousands of years. We've only had "reliable" non-human witnesses for a few decades.

And even with deep fakes, we'll still have fingerprints, DNA, phone and car tracking, facial ID systems in public places, etc.

jillesvangurp3• 5 years ago

It just pressures us to come up with ways to prove authenticity. Those ways definitely exist but are not common yet and we have courts and governments full of people with a poor grasp on technology. But basically it calls for chains of evidence that are cryptographically tamper proof. That's not a thing right now. But it's going to become a hard requirement when evidence can be fabricated, falsified, etc. It's also the key to countering fake news and a few other things.

People accepting everything at face value is not going to stay a thing when world+dog is going to abuse their new powers. Only fools would believe what they see after they've been fooled a few times and suffered the consequences.

Short term it's going to be a mess, but long term it's a good thing for us to figure this out and move on.

osmarks8• 5 years ago

I don't see how you can cryptographically validate much more than "this was validated by this source before this time", which doesn't seem to solve the problem stated by the parent at all.

bogwog• 5 years ago

But basically it calls for chains of evidence that are cryptographically tamper proof

JusticeCoin ICO when??

simias2• 5 years ago

This is not a technical problem IMO. You can't cryptographically sign reality. There's always the analog hole[1].

It's a problem of trust within society. Look at many very mainstream conspiracy theories these days: there's ample proof that it's not true, but people want to believe so they'll believe.

You can't fix the lack of trust in society with cryptography.

I just went on a constructionist website I sometimes lurk when I'm bored, literally the first story I find is titled `The Age of "Credentialism" and "Experts" is over. Every Single Institution works against your interests'. You can't fix this mindset with maths.

Video is cryptographically signed? But what about the secret computers in the Pentagon's basement that run on Quantum CPUs using ancient alien technology found in the pyramids? They can certainly break ECC. Here, watch this Youtube video...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole

boomboomsubban4• 5 years ago

People accepting everything at face value is not going to stay a thing when world+dog is going to abuse their new powers. Only fools would believe what they see after they've been fooled a few times and suffered the consequences

This seems overly optimistic, and requires people to themselves suffer unambiguously from the doctored evidence.

On an individual level, regular discovery of police and prosecutorial has not led widespread reform in those areas. And on a larger scale, even after things like the Gulf of Tonkin people largely accepted claims of WMD's in Iraq.

pjc503• 5 years ago

There are people who still claim in public to believe that the US election was stolen.

Acceptance of evidence is socially constructed. If it's politically convenient to go along with the beliefs of your faction, and you're rewarded for saying increasingly ludicrous things in public, then people are going to do it.

guerrilla• 5 years ago

Isn't this what Adobe is trying to do? [1] It was posted on HN a few times but never started a discussion that I saw. Personally, I'm scared of it although I can't put my finger on why.

1. https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2019/11/04/content-authent...

RhodoGSA• 5 years ago

Deid solves this. Couple of projects are building this on various blockchains.

gonehome2• 5 years ago

I used to be more worried about this, but one of the things Trump proved is you can have unquestionably authentic video evidence of lies and many people won’t care.

The people that care about figuring out the truth and critical thinking will probably still figure it out.

Others will believe crazy things for stupid tribal reasons despite contrary evidence.

kukx• 5 years ago

"If, say, a US adversary creates a great-looking video of the US president doing/saying something really heinous (...)" Did we not see enough fake stories about US presidents already? The DeepFakes are not really needed to falsely accuse a politician, or to wash away the compromising material. The media can use anonymous sources to claim anything bad about any public figure without consequences. Also, they can ignore and diminish any compromising material, effectively shielding the subject. It is all about who controls the media and subsequently the narrative. DeepFake may or may not be used in court though.

dheera2• 5 years ago

The plausible deniability of camera footage always existed, even in the film days. There are lots of tricks to fake things on camera. Neural networks do make it much easier, but it's not new.

That said though, make forging evidence a crime of the utmost seriousness. Also, /more/ cameras always makes deepfaking harder.

imhoguy• 5 years ago

Wait till we have real-time deep fake video and audio. That will twist the world, especially the remote work/schooling/presence one.

brightball• 5 years ago

This isn't much different than the problem we've had with internet for many years, from inflammatory headlines with no substance in the story on down.

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." - Mark Twain

11thEarlOfMar• 5 years ago

pedant alert<

"...there exists a family of expressions contrasting the dissemination of lies and truths, and these adages have been evolving for more than 300 years. Jonathan Swift can properly be credited with the statement he wrote in 1710. Charles Haddon Spurgeon popularized the version he employed in a sermon in 1855, but he did not craft it. At this time, there is no substantive support for assigning the saying to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill." [0]

[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

GrumpyNl• 5 years ago

The problem is much bigger, i can now use deep fake to present myself in a very relaxed way with a lot of confidedence and great facial expressions. Now i can deliver video presentations like a champ, just improve myself. Its me and not me.

shpx• 5 years ago

Lying is not a new phenomenon. Whether or not it's useful or good is a philosophical question with many answers which don't matter because if it becomes possible we will (have to) adjust and there will always be some upside if you want to see it.

Today, lying with video is really expensive, but if in the future everyone is able to do it and everyone knows that it's possible then we're back to he-said-she-said, which is how society has worked since the beginning, except the last 200-ish years. I can easily lie and say I saw Bill Clinton murder someone in 1990. Maybe in the future I'll be able to generate fake video evidence of it just as easily as I typed out that sentence. If everyone has a feel for how easy it is, then so what?

The danger is in the transition, when lying using video is affordable by a select few, and not everyone knows about it. Then it's powerful. If you're worried about that then we need to develop and teach this technology as quickly as possible. We can also do something fun like collect a time capsule of important videos before this becomes easy and timestamp it in a verifiable way (by posting the hash to a blockchain or some authority for example).

anigbrowl6• 5 years ago

Very good post. Another factor to consider is that a technology can be powerful when everyone does know a bit about it, but the perceptions of around it can be manipulated.

To stick with your 'Bill Clinton murdered someone in 1990' example, if you are Alex Jones and you say that then I will be skeptical gien Alex Jones' serial unreliability. But if you deepfake yourself to resemble a (hypothetical) real person called Albert Johannsen who died in 1995, and manipulate the video to look like old VHS, then the authentic-seeming testimonial can be 'discovered' by someone clearing out an attic or storage unit, and then merely publicized by you-as-Alex Jones, who merely reports the claim of the discover (actually a collaborator of course).

There is an endless variety of of applications, eg you have really committed a crime and video exists, but you produce a deepfake of yourself committing the same crime multiple different ways or the like, such that everyone thinks You Did It but nobody can agree about exactly how or to what extent and you escape justice due to the ambiguity (albeit with diminished future prospects).

cyborgx7• 5 years ago

it adds plausible deniability to anyone caught on camera doing anything.

I see this concern brought up frequently but I don't really think this is a big deal. In the grand scheme of things, ubiquous availability of video cameras is a fairly new development. Video cameras themself are a fairly new development.

We had a functional society before video evidence and we will have a functional society after video evidence.

There was a very short window of time in which we had somewhat reliable video evidence but it is now coming to an end and we will manage.

Blikkentrekker6• 5 years ago

Functional? perhaps, but I would say that if one peer into history, what one finds is suspects convicted on evidence that would seem flimsy by today's standard, and so will the future look at us.

I would think that the number of false positive convictions declines with the advancement of new technology, and that this is perhaps a temporary setback.

There was a time before fingerprints and d.n.a. evidence as well, both of which have been very helpful not only in convicting the guilty, but in exonerating the innocent, and if ever come the time that it be feasible and affordable for a layman to plant fake d.n.a. evidence and fingerprints, that would be quite a setback for criminal forensics.

koboll• 5 years ago

I think it's even simpler -- liars attracting any degree of press attention won't be able to get away with it.

"That picture was Photoshopped" doesn't work as a defense because it's not too difficult for experts to tell a Photoshop from a genuine image, nor to interview someone at the scene of an alleged event and learn the truth.

The same will be true with deepfakes, only much more so, because there are so many more ways to give away that it's a deepfake. Video adds new dimensions of scrutiny like how well the fake face tracks the head, matches lighting and expression, etc. Deepfake detection is in its infancy but you can bet it'll be even more accurate than Photoshop detection.

aeternum• 5 years ago

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Having so much on video in the first place is a pretty recent phenomenon. 30 years ago, politicians had a very low chance of being caught on camera at all.

Blikkentrekker6• 5 years ago

It comes to min that I know of few politica scandals that were revealed by anyone caught on camera.

127• 5 years ago

Machines that write believable stories can fabricate entire realities. The deepfake stuff is just a very small part of it. How much of the information we use to make our daily decisions on come from unverified sources on the internet? How many of the "trusted" sources are just paid PR for the rich and powerful?

The deepfake stuff can be solved with public/private key crypto anyways.

osmarks8• 5 years ago

How do you solve deepfakes with asymmetric cryptography, without just trusting the person the videos purport to be of to say (cryptographically) whether something is real or not (which is not a good solution)?

cwkoss4• 5 years ago

"News" organizations already edit video to maximize emotional impact to viewers, often in misleading ways.

I don't see this as a paradigm shift as much as a continued slide down the slippery slope of normalized propaganda.

heavyset_go2• 5 years ago

Any evidence relied on in court needs a chain of custody, and pictures and videos are no different. It's why screenshots are generally inadmissible in court: anyone could have edited them.

joe_the_user2• 5 years ago

-- How often are politicians caught on camera doing illegal things now? I don't recall this happening very often. The bad behavior on camera I remember from way bad when ("Abscam") was an FBI entrapment scheme so you have more than just the video as testament.

-- The most common "guilty by camera" situation in recent years have been cops and when a scene from an event where other facts are known gets filmed, you need far more than face manipulation to make a fake that's going to be plausible.

kawera• 5 years ago

Chinese deepfakes are going viral, and Beijing is freaking out

https://www.protocol.com/china/chinese-deepfakes-regulators-...

011000112• 5 years ago

There's plenty to worry about with deepfakes. They enable what amounts to a man-in-the-middle attack in real life. Imagine an AI able to break into the conversation and maintain two different communication threads with each party.

Imagine what happens when you present someone with the voice and/or image of their loved one and pitch a product, plant an idea, or execute fraud? What happens when an emotionally unstable person is harassed by the voice of their lover or even a deceased relative.

Now imagine that you could rent some computing power and perform a million of those frauds in parallel. Psychological warfare will never be the same.

When people tell me the robots are going to kill us someday, I always reply that they won't have to, they'll just need to convince us to kill ourselves.

PhilosAccnting• 5 years ago

I'm comforted by history. Shopped photos don't mean we distrust photos entirely, but we're now generally "herd immune" to silly things in a photo because we all know that it came from somebody's edits.

This will hold true for deepfakes. It means that we might start judging the character of a person, their surrounding information (e.g., who they know who vouches for them) instead of the core information itself. It'll be a bit like how cybersecurity involves trusting the trust of trustworthy sources: not perfect, but doable.

TheDudeMan• 5 years ago

More megapixels!

balls187• 5 years ago

A single video itself would not meet a preponderance of evidence required to secure a conviction.

Also,as most states are 2-party consent for video recording the scenario you described would have a huge evidentiary rules hurdle regardless of the deepfake capability.

optimalsolver• 5 years ago

Reminds me of Gay Girl In Damascus:

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

Fun fact, the lesbian girl who outed him also turned out to be a middle-aged dude.

slibhb• 5 years ago

jodrellblank• 5 years ago

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-are-no-girls-on-the-int... - "there are no girls on the internet" meme/trope dates back to Usenet 1992

[then again, why believe that 50 year old man photo is the person's real face or hair? Surely media photos have been Photoshopped since long before face-swapping apps?]

dr-smooth• 5 years ago

it is damn nice hair for a 50 year old...

wayanon• 5 years ago

I hope there's a young female Japanese biker using a 50-year-old man's face on their instagram posts.

bitwize• 5 years ago

Ah, Japan, where even middle-aged men want to be cute girls. I'm reminded of a few years ago when a popular "female" Vtuber let his motion capture software slip and accidentally revealed his face as that of a middle-aged otaku. Since then I guess there's been an acceptance of kayfabe among Vtuber stans.

Tade0• 5 years ago

Hololive seemed to have completely bypassed the problem by creating completely fictional characters voiced by... someone.

swayvil• 5 years ago

This guy is a Prometheus. He deserves to star in many future cartoons and memes.

wccrawford• 5 years ago

I'm not buying it. Notice that the girl's hair covers her ear in different ways each time, so it can't be her hair and ear, it has to be his.

But her hair doesn't actually match his hair. So that's not it, either.

These shows are all about shock, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were fooled as well.

Cthulhu_2• 5 years ago

The faceapp thing does hair as well though. It's probably less jarring if it has 'close' hair to work with to begin with.

feintruled• 5 years ago

I wonder too - last time I tried faceapp it did a very convincing gender swap on me, but the face changed significantly with every photo I took - depending on angle, lighting, who knows? I began to suspect to wasn't making 'me' into a woman at all, just superimposing a female face that fit. (One of the best transforms actually looked like my wife, which was a moment for Freudian reflection).

Anyway, unless faceapp has improved a lot, I'm sceptical this guy was always able to show as the same 'person'.

JacobSuperslav4• 5 years ago

faceapp has improved A LOT. also there is a paid version with more functions

dorkwood2• 5 years ago

Maybe the "reflection" they used to catch him was the fake, and all the others are real.

fudged71• 5 years ago

Wow leave the guy alone. Is this any different from ‘exposing’ a cross dresser etc?

NikolaeVarius5• 5 years ago

The rise of normies on the internet has shown that they have forgotten the cardinal rule of the internet. No one is who they say they are.

pbhjpbhj• 5 years ago

I'm hoping it ends up the 50yo is also a fake ...

I'm not saying I wouldn't be fooled, but the female face looks too smooth to me, not in a make-up way but in a post-processed separately to the rest of the image way (doesn't appear to have the noise that the rest of the image does?).

lotsofpulp• 5 years ago

That’s how most of Snapchat/Instagram and other selfies look to me. I assume whatever app people are using are all creating “fake” pictures smoothing their skin and whatnot.

dorkwood2• 5 years ago

A lot of phones now come with this feature in the default camera app. I had a family member uploading group photos that all had smoothing applied to our skin. They said it made us look better. I found it offensive.

Cthulhu_2• 5 years ago

Nobody's surprised by that anymore though; skin care and makeup hides a lot of sin, and photo filters are commonplace. /r/instagramreality has a LOT of that.

LudwigNagasena• 5 years ago

Lots of people post-process their photos, especially female influencers who use their beauty to attract subscribers.

JoeAltmaier2• 5 years ago

Maybe it's the power of suggestion, but the photos looked instantly fake to me.

In any case, it seems fair that a person represent their online image any way they like. Who's to say how this man 'identifies'? He does.

mkl953• 5 years ago

This goes to show how dangerous deep fakes can be when people are willing to believe. Several people had called him out already, and they had provided evidence, but thousands of people still believed he was a young woman.

NikolaeVarius5• 5 years ago

Why does anyone care

JoeAltmaier2• 5 years ago

So? That's the point. He is what he represents himself to be. Not what we want him to be.

danShumway3• 5 years ago

It's only "dangerous" if being a young woman is somehow an intrinsically important transactional part of following the account -- if the followers feel like they're being defrauded or something.

But honestly, the people who have that association or who view following an account as some kind of relationship should be taking a look inward about why the physical characteristics of a biker are so important to them in the first place. I don't feel a huge need to make it easier for people to do something that I feel like they shouldn't be doing in the first place.

Down that road lies the segment of the Internet that gets mad when they find out a woman streamer is married because "she should have been upfront about it." And I just don't want to touch that part of the Internet with a 10 foot pole. I'm not worried about their ability to form unhealthy, one-sided relationships with people they've never met.

gowld• 5 years ago

Everyone big on instagram is fake. But people assume it's large asymmetric women faking, not men.

rchaud4• 5 years ago

If you're on IG and TikTok regularly, it might be harder to tell. Pretty much everybody is using filters. Even heavy filters that basically change how you look aren't a breach of etiquette, since it's all 'just for fun'.

ktm5j2• 5 years ago

Agreed. And honestly as a trans woman I hate seeing this kind of thing. The only reason people are paying attention to this is that society has turned the idea of men (ie assigned male at birth) identifying or representing themselves as women into a joke. The amount of random strangers who laugh at me on a daily basis is absolutely disheartening, it's really an awful thing to have to deal with (same with being threatened, assaulted, denied service which I have no legal protection against, not being able to use public restrooms)...

If you're interested Netflix has a wonderful documentary called Disclosure [0] about the media's portrayal of trans people, women in particular. I highly recommend!

0 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8637504/

marknutter2• 5 years ago

Wouldn't stuff like this make it less likely for people to be shocked by gender nonconforming folks?

InitialLastName• 5 years ago

There are some face-adjusting filters that make people "prettier" on both instagram and snapchat that immediately make them look like recognizable-looking aliens to me, but they're common enough that I could see people missing that it's actually a more extreme change in this case.

danShumway3• 5 years ago

Agreed, I just don't see the problem here.

Even from the perspective of, "he's just doing this to get more clicks," who cares? I just don't see how it's a problem for him to present himself however he wants to present himself.

At some point for some people "digital avatar" became a dirty word, and I don't understand it. I don't think he owes anyone online his real-world face. He doesn't owe them some kind of disclaimer either. If people online are following him because they think they have some kind of parasocial relationship to a girl, that's a personal issue they should think about on their end. And in any case, everyone online already has a persona they project; I have a persona and a set of characteristics and attitudes I project when I post on HN even though I don't hide my real name or identity. Knowing me on HN is not the same thing as knowing me in real life; if I'm allowed to do that, why can't he?

So he extends that to his face. Maybe he(she) is a woman but hasn't chosen to let people know yet. Maybe he's genderfluid in different places. Or maybe he just wants to have a woman avatar on social accounts for whatever reason. None of that is a problem.

This is fine even though he seems to identify as a man outside of the Internet; he doesn't have to identify as a woman to do this. Unless he's running around doing something genuinely harmful or trying to troll women, then let him choose how he presents himself online regardless of whether or not it matches his normal day-to-day gender identity.

"Getting more clicks on Instagram" isn't a horrible crime or deception that we should be concerned about.

keenreed4• 5 years ago

Nobody cares about the fact pictures are fake. 90% of instagram pictures are fake.

The only problem is he/she is not "real" woman. This person is clearly presenting themselves under different gender, and here is large number of people harassing them/her/him.

parliament32• 5 years ago

It's worth noting that crypto-signed images have been around for a long time, just in specific professional cameras: https://www.dpreview.com/articles/3146736527/canondvke2

I imagine, as this sort of thing becomes more common, we'll see image "verification"/signing being a feature on all cameras, and eventually extend to mobile phone cameras for photos/videos as well.

CharlesW• 5 years ago

That's cool, but it seems like building a trusted chain of custody from source/capture, to editing (where lots of assets will be combined/composited together), to distribution will be tricky.

Plus, how does one guarantee that light hitting the camera sensor hasn't already been manipulated?

de6u99er• 5 years ago

IMO this would just help someone prove that a certain original image was made with a specific camera in regards of IP and to protect themselves at court against claims of having tampered with an image.

What we see on the web are mostly resized and heavily compressed images. Not sure how such a cryptographic signature could work in such cases.

poundofshrimp2• 5 years ago

Perhaps the publisher can provide a collection of signed versions of the image with a variety of file sizes / resolutions.

bennyp101• 5 years ago

And once it has been shared, screen-shotted, re-shared, compressed, phone taking a picture of it on a monitor etc

Sure, if you want to use it to try and prove you did take/create an image of something, but it doesn't help prove you /didn't/

yosito2• 5 years ago

I think there would be some potential for an photo-based journalism platform that only publishes crypto-signed geo-tagged photos. It seems that stock photos, and even fake photos are the norm on mainstream news sites these days. It's very hard to get verified photographic evidence of news stories.

Sunspark2• 5 years ago

The real singularity will be when one can have realtime deepfake video of themselves making trap porn.

Pfhreak3• 5 years ago

FYI, you've used a slur -- Tr*p is a slur for transgender folks often used in association with porn. You may want to either clarify your meaning (in case you are using the word in a different meaning) or choose a different word.

Sunspark2• 5 years ago

I am specifically referencing it in the porn fetish context which is accurate, especially when identifying the logical evolution of faceapp.

I would not use this word in any other context, and in fact, cannot use another word in the porn fetish context because there are no non-offensive words to describe the fetish which I am aware of at the current time. Apologies to anyone who may have felt offended, this was not my wish and there is a very clear difference between a person and a fetish.

the-dude2• 5 years ago

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog [ 1993 ]

[ 1993 ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

balozi• 5 years ago

[2021] On the internet, it doesn't matter that you are a dog

devoutsalsa• 5 years ago

Thanks goodness. I was getting nervous. Have a good Friday everyone, I'm feeling a little shaggy, so I'm off to the groomer, er, barber.

johncessna• 5 years ago

[2021] On the internet, it doesn't matter that you are a dog

Wishful thinking. A cursory glance at twitter or facebook will show you that it very much matters what tribe you're from.

cwkoss4• 5 years ago

Reminds me of a mousepad my dad received as am early customer of Amazon.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

kuu• 5 years ago

Likes are more important than the fact of sharing your experience, therefore tricks are used

yCombLinks• 5 years ago

You're not sharing your experience if there's no-one to share it with.

mrweasel3• 5 years ago

Perhaps the main issue is that the guy has a point, nobody want’s to see an uncle.

The majority of “influencers” are young women, and only a minority would want to follow a 50 year old uncle. I don’t think there’s much we can do about it, it’s human nature. It does however limit the diversity and world views people are exposed to and sometimes it’s nice to see the world through the eyes of a 50 year Japanese biker.

war1025• 5 years ago

The majority of “influencers” are young women, and only a minority would want to follow a 50 year old uncle.

One interesting side effect of this is that some of the most popular male YouTube channels I follow never show the host's face. Everything is carefully staged to only show their hands / body.

NikolaeVarius5• 5 years ago

Its strange because random old people channels produce great content. Its just that, most of them don't try to be annoying influencers. I follow some old dude who repairs his motorcycle and writes music. He doesnt talk, and its great.

lsllc• 5 years ago

This Old Tony? (highly recommended btw!)

https://www.youtube.com/user/featony

Although there was one where you did get to see his face.

yumraj• 5 years ago

And the ones where I've seen men are related to DIY fixing things at home, where an old plumber is more trusted then a young one.

neom• 5 years ago

i've spent more time that I would care to admit trying to find a slip up reflection form Lock Picking Lawyer. So far no dice.

watwut4• 5 years ago

Arent youtube channels generally male dominated? At least most of what I watch is by males and they are not ashamed to show their faces.

I watch art, some crafts occasionally tech and pop commentary. Some sport.

I dont see people being interested in 50 years old women either in general.

Hitton• 5 years ago

Youtubers are mostly content creators, while most instagram "influencers" only try to look pretty.

_jal2• 5 years ago

It is such a bizarre market. I sometimes browse it for sociological amusement, but it creeps me out quickly.

For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off. I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.

porcc• 5 years ago

Let me recommend a solution: https://sponsor.ajay.app/

capableweb• 5 years ago

For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off. I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.

Same here. There are some YouTube channels I really want to watch and follow as I can learn new skills from them, but the constant begging and over-dramatization is a real turnoff so I cannot watch it without feeling bad about it.

I have a similar feeling about people who takes photos of themselves all the time and their social feed is filled with the photos they take of themselves. I can't take a photo of myself without feeling vain, and I'm getting passive-vain feelings when I see friends of mine posting selfie after selfie of themselves...

Others• 5 years ago

The issue here is that YouTube (and other platforms) encourage this. It works, in that if you ask people to like comment and subscribe, they like comment and subscribe more. (And that boosts your standing within the system getting you more impressions.)

Plenty of good creators do this (as it works), just to keep up with their peers. It really has nothing to do with the quality of the rest of their content. Don’t blame the player, blame the game IMO

rchaud4• 5 years ago

Without a subscription, the visibility of their content is at the mercy of the algorithm. What choice do they have? It's no different from subscribing to someone's email list. It's annoying, but nobody bookmarks anything these days.

justapassenger• 5 years ago

It’s just how economic of YouTube works. If you don’t have likes, subscribes and views, you don’t make money. And if you want high quality content, it costs money.

Lots of educational channels I watch do it, and I fully understand why they do it.

wnevets• 5 years ago

For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off.

I used to as well but realized platforms like YouTube effectively force the creators to do it.

robenkleene• 5 years ago

If you're curious why asking for subscribers is so prevalent, I recommend taking a look at this Twitter thread (https://twitter.com/stalman/status/1369082704138883073) that describes the before and after effects of asking for subscribers, here's a quote: "Just the subs that came directly from the video page were 5x what they are on similar size videos".

I also recommend this blog post about the best way to ask for subscribers: https://reneritchie.net/how-to-get-subscribers-on-youtube-ev...

I've never done any of these things, and I'm not sure I have the stomach for it, but I consider it required knowledge for anyone with any interest in leveraging online attention.

watwut4• 5 years ago

I have no idea why people like watching other people begging impersonally for attention.

I am aware two things:

1.) If they earn money from youtube, they need likes and subscriptions so that youtube algoritm shows them to more people.

2.) I as a programmer earn more money with less effort then them. I also very likely have to deal with less bs (like harassments and jerks trying to insult you or take you down for lolz).

A combination makes me accept that these people are doing entertainment as work, I consume that entertainment for free and thus am absolutely fine with them trying to succeed.

There is also absolutely nothing wrong with entertainers wanting attention. That is what pays their bills, without attention they cant be successful. Attention is not dirty word to me.

thraway1234123• 5 years ago

For actual enjoyment, if a video starts begging for "like subscribe share" I just turn it off.

I do too, but not without first hitting the dislike button. I only wish others would do the same.

creamynebula• 5 years ago

Marketing teaches us that this works, they call it a CTA - Call To Action, asking people to do what you want them to works...

JSavageOne3• 5 years ago

I don't understand it either. If there are 2 channels with otherwise comparable quality and 1 begs me for likes/subs, I'll watch the other one

fl0wenol• 5 years ago

For me it's when they do that faux: "hey guys, I was looking at my metrics and <insert percentage here>% of you who viewed the last X videos aren't subscribed, so it would be really great if you hit that bell"

I mean really? Do creators realize that viewers could be interested in several dozen channels and don't want to swamp out their own notifications since Youtube's prioritization gets shittier the more you subscribe to? Sorry you aren't in my top 10? Maybe a video got popular on an algorithmic whim...

I'd much rather they ask me to join a Patreon, which I am very keen to do if the content is good and continues to do so. But pulling that "peek behind the creator curtain" crap puts me very off because it's like trying to shame you into behaving differently as if you're part of the problem.

No... you decided to make Youtube your source of income. I don't owe you crap.

dgellow2• 5 years ago

It’s human nature to follow only young influencers? That’s a weird claim. Sounds like we take the current situation and justify it afterwards by saying “that’s human nature”.

alienthrowaway• 5 years ago

It’s human nature to follow only young influencers?

Marketers have known this for years before the appearance of "influencers" - youth sells, and a young women have better cross-gender appeal than young men. Go ahead an open any pre-WWW paper magazine, count the number of women vs. men who appear in the adverts for non-gendered products

coliveira• 5 years ago

Not a weird claim at all, you have to be very self conscious not to click and watch young people doing whatever. It is a natural tendency humans have. It has worked in any entertainment industry (from Hollywood to Youtube) because it exploits how our brains are wired.

mrweasel3• 5 years ago

I didn’t write “only”.

shaftway• 5 years ago

If a majority of people do something because that's what they want to do, doesn't that by definition make it human nature?

pcbro141• 5 years ago

Sex sells. Young attractive women attract the most sexual attention of any demographic (see any online dating/hookup site's stats, porn stats, etc).

And the commenter didn't say "only". Yes, people follow non-sexual influencers all the time, but it's much easier to get followers if you're sexually attractive.

austhrow743• 5 years ago

It's human nature to want to look at young pretty women.

slightwinder• 5 years ago

The majority of “influencers” are young women

Is this actually true, or just bias from your own interessts? If we look at technical stuff and gaming, we see far more successful male influencers. Similar with entertainment-industry.

and only a minority would want to follow a 50 year old

This more or less is true, because not many like to see unattractive people doing boring things. But the point here is, this in not because of gender or sex, it's about the quality of content and chemistry with the consumers. An old ugly guy without any real skill, would be usually as unsuccesful as an old ugly woman without any real skill. Though, for both there always is chance to find niche to sellout your content over something, the chance is pretty low.

With younger and more attractive people, the chances are significant higher, because they have more selling points besides the content itself, thus they sell better. But it also depends on the target-group and content.

it’s human nature

No, it's human culture. People sell according to the crowds reception on what the gender is suposed to do. So woman sell better in female-stuff, men better with manly stuff. Woman do have a slight advantage, in that they are the gender which in most cultures is educated from early days to sellout. They dress up, use fancy cloths, catter to the people, etc. This works better for laymen when becoming influencers, because woman have more likely the skills to sell themself on a broader are, while most men need to learn it first.

watwut4• 5 years ago

Though, for both there always is chance to find niche to sellout your content over something, the chance is pretty low.

In both cases, I think it would be fair to call that niche real skill.

tsdlts• 5 years ago

Women sell better in female stuff

Cute women doing traditionally "male things" sells like hot cakes. Not so much the other way around.

the_arun2• 5 years ago

I wish people use this trick to create dent in the universe. For eg. use face of pretty young girls to bring positive changes in the planet - assuming everyone wants to follow young girls & believe in what they say.

krapht2• 5 years ago

They do it in Japan. Everything has a cute anime mascot.

jdminhbg• 5 years ago

Here's one example: https://grist.org/energy/this-radiant-model-wants-you-to-sto...

wruza6• 5 years ago

Sounds like a great idea for politicians at the next election cycle everywhere. Don’t believe in what they say though. I mean... both.

ASalazarMX2• 5 years ago

nobody want’s to see an uncle

I think it depends of your style. Of course I wouldn't want to see an uncle if I were looking for sexy girls being rad, but I would love to see a 50yo uncle tell biking stories, motorcycle repair, or his brand of manly zen.

Definitely no one wants to see an uncle posing as a young girl, and I am also intrigued by why did an uncle wanted that badly to feel admired on Twitter in the first place. Someone younger I would understand.

godelski• 5 years ago

Rather think about "What portion of the population wants to follow a sexy girl on a bike?" vs "What portion of the population wants to follow an uncle?" rather than "does a population that wants to follow an uncle exist?" I think it is pretty clear that the size of the group that wants to follow the sexy girl is larger than the group that wants to follow the uncle. Larger audience to be able to pull from.

danso• 5 years ago

Of the adults on this top 26 list of Youtube accounts, only 1 is a woman, and she has less than a third of Pewdiepie’s subscriber base:

https://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-youtubers-with-...

maerF0x0• 5 years ago

It's worth noting that platforms tend to have a gender(sex? sorry I'm bad with the terminology), bias that skews male/female. I seem to recall hearing that Youtube skews male (in viewership) and IG female. (if someone has links to stats, thanks in advance)

I wonder if this is at play with these two cases?

wutbrodo2• 5 years ago

I think most top YouTubers are considered "creators" more than "influencers". It takes a substantially different set of skills to create videos people want to watch than photos people want to view, and intuitively you'd expect the latter to tilt more towards first-impression attractiveness. Instagram fits more closely with the way this guy used his Twitter account (pictures and text), I can't seem to find an authoritative list of independently-famous Instagram influencers, but the lists I've seen consist primarily of models.

ryanmarsh• 5 years ago

Now do Instagram and Tiktok

goldenchrome• 5 years ago

When people say “influencer” they’re usually referring to the long-tail of people with 10k+++ followers who don’t really create anything other than a curated snapshot of their life. They’re usually on platforms like Instagram and Twitter where the bar to post content is very low. They make their money by posting sponsored content, because they have no other way of monetizing their audience (they have no skills except for building audiences).

The top 26 list of YouTubers is filled with influential people, and many people would say that they’re influencers, but they’re not typical examples.

Fricken• 5 years ago

I follow a lot of rock climbing on insta, and the top men definitely have more followers than the top women, but if it's a pic of an average climber on an average climb, it'll get way more likes if the climber is a woman.

In the old world of professional climbing, when the magazines decided who was worthy of attention and accolades, sponsorships were generally handed out according to merit.

Now days, sponsorship is shifting more and more to climbers who are media friendly and good at drawing attention to themselves. Top tier climbers are now refashioning themselves into mediocre youtube celebrities, with mixed results.

undefined1• 5 years ago

to dominate the top of leaderboards, whether it's Youtube or Starcraft, takes a single-minded obsession that is more common with men.

Pewdiepie was obsessed with having the most subscribers. Mr. Beast did little else than obsess over the Youtube algorithm for many years on end.

arkh2• 5 years ago

50 year old uncle

Also, 50 year old people tend to have ideas which are frowned upon in the Valley. Especially if they're not from the US.

So when enough people start following them, they get removed.

vecinu2• 5 years ago

Can you give some examples of what you're referring to? I'm drawing a blank.

baq• 5 years ago

He has a point and has found a solution.

Want to influence people? Use faceapp to change yourself into a face people feel good seeing (pretty girl strikes the correct neurons in majority of viewers). In the best case limit everybody does this and hopefully it stops being effective. Worst case every influencing person does this anyway?

andresp2• 5 years ago

That might contribute to a diversity of perspectives but I wonder what would be the consequences for society when everyone needs to reconcile their online appearance with their real world appearance.

Blikkentrekker6• 5 years ago

Many do so openly but with animated avatars that duplicate their facial expressions by way of facial motion capture.

They effectively play an animated character live and voice it as they perform it's facial expressions.

On the subject of Japanese gender changes, a most interesting one is played by a Japanese female artist who plays a male character that looks like a female once again. — this artist has a particular habit of creating male characters that look as though they be female.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRkO-V29fFw&ab_channel=Spiri...

technofiend• 5 years ago

He's rediscovered the second meaning of MMORPG: Millions of Men Role Playing Girls. People have been representing themselves online as female to gain some advantage for a very long time.

datavirtue3• 5 years ago

Every day I give thanks that I live under a system of government that protects the individual from the wishes of the majority. It's not perfect of course, but it does work.

No doubt people felt good about following "her" because of her authenticity.

AdrianB1• 5 years ago

Just curious, where do you live and how hard is to immigrate there?

DoreenMichele7• 5 years ago

It was probably so successful precisely because it was seeing the world through the eyes of a 50 year old Japanese biker with the face people expect in influencers.

Most young people aren't that interesting. Older people tend to be more interesting, but no one wants to look at them.

It's like when movies show Charlie's Angels or James Bond fluently speaking multiple languages and efficiently wielding various weapons and skiing like Olympic skiers. You know that's not real. Any one of those things takes all your time to master. But it makes for a cool movie to bundle them all together.

And maybe people fell for it in part because we watch nonsense like James Bond. So it hit that note and didn't immediately set off alarm bells.

Alex39173• 5 years ago

You know that's not real.

You can definitely do the James Bond semester at college if you're so inclined, which iirc is: wine tasting, handgun safety, cross country skiing, swedish massage, and ballroom dancing.

katmannthree• 5 years ago

To be fair, a very large chunk of old people are likewise uninteresting. Aside from the general dulling of the mind that comes with age, you have to actually do things with those years for them to mean something.

superfrank4• 5 years ago

It was probably so successful precisely because it was seeing the world through the eyes of a 50 year old Japanese biker with the face people expect in influencers.

I can't read Japanese and I used Google translate for the post text (so maybe there's more depth that's lost in translation), but the pictures look to be pretty "generic influencer". None of those pictures look any different than what you would expect from a random 20 something influencer. Additionally, the text on the tweet is pretty much "I like motorcycles" along with "her" age and height. Everything here seems to be pretty much the same "here's a pretty girl in front of something" post that instagram is full of.

Again, I'm only going off the pictures and Google translate, so if someone who understands the culture better wants to correct me, feel free, but until that happens, I'm going to believe there's nothing more to this than a bunch of people wanting to look at a pretty girl.

Edit: Ran the tweet in the article through DeepL at the suggestion of some replies. Here's the translation so you all can come to your own conclusions:

٩ Everyone!

Do you have a bike?

Spring will be here soon

Age: Showa era

Height:166

Lives in Ibaraki Kumamoto

I love to tinker with motorcycles

Comment: Life is once, play this world

bshimmin• 5 years ago

I like to think James Bond is terrible at DIY and cooking, at least.

bredren2• 5 years ago

Most young people aren't that interesting.

They are not, but I think people will get better at realizing this the way many now know what it means for something to be "photoshopped" whether they can identify it and subsequently dismiss it or not.

I believe that physical "good" looks, analytical and social intelligence, trade and athletic skill, and artistic talent will eventually converge as our future "stars."

justicezyx• 5 years ago

...

Maybe this Maybe that

This type of argument is toxic. Adds little to the conversation. If you can back any of these maybes that would be great...

ce4• 5 years ago

Exactly. The one thing I immediately noticed was the ~30 year old vintage Yamaha TZR 2-stroke model complete with pics of open engine etc (check the small diameter exhaust pipes). Which youngster would ride such a bike, let alone touch its internals? This stuff is very niche, maybe not so much in Japan but over here in Europe you would have to search for it or pay some decent money to get it in that condition. The owner probably has bought it in his 20s :)

Edit: the power output curve is also not for the faint of heart and there's no electronic helpers, overall very different to ride compared to a current 600cc model with all the bells and whistles :-)

cbozeman• 5 years ago

In the Ian Fleming novels, James Bond is clearly intended to be in his late 30s / early 40s. The same seems to hold true for all the movies. Bond is not a young man by any stretch of the imagination. He is a world-weary traveler well-versed in high culture, espionage, elite military tactics. His cultural knowledge is explained by virtue of his upper class birth and upbringing; its likely he served in the military before being recruited by MI:6, and of course the espionage is the hallmark of the latter agency.

That said... when Jonathan Goldsmith was auditioning for part of The Most Interesting Man in the World, the ad agency called his agent and said, "We really like him, but we think he might be too old," and she replied (quite masterfully), "How could the Most Interesting Man in the World be young?", implying it would take a lifetime to acquire the achievements.

So I guess the answer is, be old and good-looking, like Goldsmith, or Sean Connery.

MisterBastahrd• 5 years ago

This is why Batman and Superman are perpetually 35ish in the comics. Young enough to be in their physical prime, old enough to have a clue about the world.

nanoscopic• 5 years ago

Efficiently wielding weapons is not terribly difficult. It just takes practice. My parents bought a number of guns and became quite proficient at firing them accurately within 2 years.

I have many relatives and friends who are amazing at skiing. My cousin posts pictures every winter of the sick lines he skis down.

I'm neither an excellent marksman nor skier, but I don't think it would be difficult to become excellent at both given an excessive amount of free time within a few years.

I can though drive a manual very well, own a sports car, and have no fear of drifting it.

A coworker of mine was a pro skydiver, and recommended it to everyone. I've met other skydivers as well; it's supposedly easy and affordable.

Another coworker owned his own plane. Planes are costly but he wasn't James Bond rich...

My brother-in-law owns a few hundred guns including fully automatic weapons.

Being James Bond is a bit idiotic in real life as he engages in a lot of high risk stuff, but it is certainly doable.

chiefalchemist• 5 years ago

I think you're right, sans the bit about human nature. Traditionally influence is a function of understanding and wisdom, and that is a function of time and years.

The internet changed that.

Now it's a function of perceived popularity and perceived influence. That has become a (cheap?) proxy. It's not the person per se, but the "social proof" attached to that person.

We've been trained to use quantity instead of quality. Is that human nature?

Attacted to a pretty face? Yes. That is human nature.

Blikkentrekker6• 5 years ago

Beauty is a skill like any other that has both a factor of talent and training to hone it, that, as with many skills, declines with age.

It happens to be a skill that influences require for their work.

Here, I see no problem; where I see a problem is that often those who hire judge those on their beauty where their beauty would play no factor in their performance, not only hurting those whom they would hire, but their own finances in the processes.

Of course, the scariest part of all is how much more easily the ugly are found guilty on the same level of evidence than the beautiful.

freeflight3• 5 years ago

A skill is something that can be learned, your looks are something that you are born with.

And while there is a skill to "beautifying up" people, that only works to a certain degree and can't change the looks you were born with, it can only enhance/hide them in parts.

But you can't learn to uncrook your nose just like you can't remove your acne scars trough learning or straighten out your ears. These things don't require learning a skill, they require surgical procedures you most likely can't perform on yourself even if you had the skills to do so.

everdrive• 5 years ago

Part of it's just the medium. Uncles write lots of good books, I imagine they teach lots of great classes. I've seen plenty who have great youtube channels or podcasts. But, instagram (and services like it) is all about aesthetics and nothing else.

NietTim• 5 years ago

However nobody can deny that his hair is amazing

polote• 5 years ago

The majority of “influencers” are young women,

Just to add on that.

"Though women make up 77% of the influencer market, male influencers are paid almost 100% more. " [1]

And 88% of female influencers are less than 34 years old. [2]

So 67 % of influencers are young women (if 34 years old is considered young)

Also women get 10 times more like than men [3]

[1] https://klear.com/blog/influencer-pricing-2019/

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/893733/share-influencers...

[3] https://www.influencerbay.com/blog/the-future-of-influence-i...

greiskul2• 5 years ago

I would like more data for [1], with a breakdown per gender of each category and size. The data they show could be under the effect of a Simpsons paradox from the way they present it.

jedberg• 5 years ago

male influencers are paid almost 100% more

This isn't entirely surprising. They're much more rare so there is lot more competition for their services, piled on top of the usual biases in our society against paying women equally.

diydsp• 5 years ago

Women charge an average of $351 while Men charge $459.[1]

That's 31% more, not almost 100% more.

mattigames• 5 years ago

"Though women make up 77% of the influencer market, male influencers are paid almost 100% more. " [1]

But thats how suply-and-demand workforce always work doesn't it? Too much people doing the same job tends to lower the wage for that job; and because a lot of companies compite for different markets when sponsoring a male influencers vs female influencers (e.g. "this is the shaving cream I use" vs "this is the bra's brand I use") they are income-wise 2 different jobs.

RupertEisenhart• 5 years ago

It's also the incongruence which people like I think.

It would be great to see Adolfo Mateo[0] as a 20 year old Japanese girl, not that he needs any improvement as he is.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/SMOKERSOFCIGARSPIPES

dfxm12• 5 years ago

I don't know if they're literally uncles, but men in that age-range like Elon Musk, Louis Cole, Joe Rogan, brooklyn dad defiant, Donald Trump, etc. are huge influencers (orders of magnitude more so than @azusagakuyuki). It's a bit handwave-y to say "nobody wants to see an uncle".

gonehome2• 5 years ago

Yeah, that's my take. You see it often in other areas too - it's a lot easier to get thousands of followers as an attractive person (especially an attractive young woman, but it works for men too). The ability to more easily build a large audience and then leverage that is huge (and can make a ton of money).

My general heuristic is online personas from attractive people are often over valued (specifically considering the value of things they say/do - not their ability to make money which is huge) and when you compare pretty people with high follower numbers to unattractive people (or just people that don't lead with their prettiness) with high follower numbers, the latter are often better quality/say more interesting things. Someone leading with their prettiness has a big advantage in getting attention, even if what they say is dumb.

There's a lot of pseudo-intellectualized bullshit on twitter that gets a lot more attention than it would otherwise because the person is young and pretty, but would not get nearly the same attention if they looked different.

It reminds me a lot of Liking What You See: A Documentary, which is the last Ted Chiang story in his first short story collection - I think it's worth reading.

Obviously attractiveness is only one factor among many, but I suspect it's a much bigger factor than people currently think.

ArnoVW• 5 years ago

Showed this to my wife. Her reply? "makes sense. Women do the inverse if they want to be taken seriously in business".

I remember reading an article in the French press, about two women founders that mailed the off-site dev team under the moniker of Mike and Bob.

They were fed up with being second guessed on business decisions and had found out that 'Bob' was getting less pushback than 'Marissa'.

bawolff• 5 years ago

Not to put to fine a point on it, but aren't influencers essentially a type of very soft-core porn? I don't think they really expose people to world views, superficial or otherwise.

astrange5• 5 years ago

They're more like clothes models. The women are doing Instagram to sell things, not for male attention.

Although sometimes amateur models don't realize what the job of a model is, or they get groomed by fake photographers and end up making bad softcore porn by accident.

punkbit• 5 years ago

True! Unless you are a 50 year old uncle who looks Lenny Kravitz.

aksss5• 5 years ago

I'm still sorting out what we really mean when we keep referring to the guy as "an uncle". Is he also a father? Is he married? What's the description of "uncle" adding or informing us of? My immediate reaction makes me think he's a 50yo with no kids, maybe a girlfriend, but his sister had kids. I don't know that this is an accurate perception or if it even aligns with how other people read it. Just seems kind of weird that he's summarized as this title.

viraptor• 5 years ago

"An uncle" is just a way to refer to someone mature, unrelated to family connections. Kind of like the popular "Uncle Roger" https://www.youtube.com/c/mrnigelng (usually I'd expect a "generic uncle" to have no family of his own)

seph-reed2• 5 years ago

It would be quite funny to make a "facebook" that automatically transforms everyones photos in a similar way. Such that everybody becomes attractive.

vmception• 5 years ago

lol, and yeah it worked.

I also don't think there is an issue here.

Udo• 5 years ago

As a transhumanist, I'm fine with this. It's clear that a lot of people would physically transform themselves into whatever illusion FaceApp provides today.

I certainly would.

I know this is being perceived as "fraud" right now, but the same people who were attracted to that person and now feel betrayed are overdue for some well-deserved self reflection.

It's hard to make an argument that the world would be worse off if everyone could just have the body they want. Regrettably, I was born too late to live to see it become reality.

buisi• 5 years ago

It would make for a far better world:

Older men chasing younger woman and replacing their previous wives? Completely unnecessary.

Child sex crimes? Someone can just morph into a child and hook up with someone with the same interest.

Unattractive but a good personality / similar interests? Not a problem.

Trans? Just morph into a woman / man.

berniemadoff69• 5 years ago

loud auto-playing audio as soon as you open the site

mosselman• 5 years ago

The discussion here is a lot about 'deep fakes' and where will we be if we can't distinguish fake from real, but this is so obviously fake that I fear we might not care at all.

Even if it were a real young woman, why would anyone look at those obviously fake images? It is like someone from the 90s used paint to paste a random image on some random biker's head.

Also, why go through the trouble of having that hair and a real bike to begin with if the audience's sense for what is real is so low? You might as well take random images of empty parking lots and copy paste random bikes with random bodies and a young Japanese woman's face on them and it would look the same or better.

soared• 5 years ago

They look convincing enough to me. And if I saw one while scrolling Instagram, where I see ~3 images a second I definitely wouldn’t notice.

tibbydudeza• 5 years ago

Well there goes celebrity news sites like TMZ.

Maybe it is good thing , remember that song from a few years bacl "it wasn't me" is now a rather a plausible excuse.

nabla9• 5 years ago

Maybe the first casualty of AI is Instagram influencers and nude models.

anotheryou• 5 years ago

A great freedom :). Reminds me of harroway's cyborg manifesto. It's not an exact match, but interesting to read along this phenomenon:

Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the supersavers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.

He of course chose the goddess, but still breaks the gender dualism and got rid of his age.

yosito2• 5 years ago

The only Instagram influencers I follow are people I know in real life. So I know that the people are real. But even then, the content they post is often framed in an unrealistic way and sometimes outright fake or edited. I know this because I've traveled with them, and seen the real side of all of the same things that they post about.

I can understand why people find Instagram influencers entertaining, especially the ones that appear to be attractive women. It's obviously entertaining enough that it's a realistic career option for many attractive women. But to me, believing that what you see on Instagram is real life is like someone in the 90s believing that tabloid newspapers at grocery store checkout aisles were real life. We should all know better.

gcheong• 5 years ago

My cynical take on this is that eventually ageism in tech won't be a thing with the combination of wfh and everyone being a young 20 something tech person online.

puchatek• 5 years ago

This meaning of "uncle" should make it into mainstream english.

keenreed4• 5 years ago

This is just plain transphobia.

Person used filters and makeup to make themselfs look better and younger. This never ever happened before! OMG, call the police!!!!!

blitz_skull2• 5 years ago

How is this transphobia?

Pfhreak3• 5 years ago

Genuine attempt to answer: It's seen as humorous or weird that a man would want to appear to be a young woman. It's unclear in this case whether the person being photographed is trans.

This article is not a tech demo or deep dive, it's gawking at a man "pretending" to be a woman. It reinforces the idea that trans women are just men "pretending" to be women.

It's not too many steps removed from something like Ace Ventura, which went out of its way to explicitly frame trans women as "gross". Yes, over time media has gotten a little less explicit about this, but there's definitely a long tail of media that's like, "Look at this weird trans/trans-adjacent person over here..."

jessa02• 5 years ago

Exactly. How is this any different than any Instagram filter that many influencers of any gender use to make themselves look younger?

I think this was only a news story in Japan because feminism / LGBTQ rights in Japan have a long way to go before people feel comfortable being themselves in public.

tziki• 5 years ago

Honestly, good for him. I don't see any reason why the whole influencer culture should be dominated by specific people just because they're lucky to have the prerequisite looks.

augustocallejas• 5 years ago

With this clear example of separation between individual and identity, it calls into question the need for real celebrities. What difference does it make if you're watching/following someone real/digital?

https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/lil-miquela-digital-avatar-in...

scollet2• 5 years ago

Iirc Gorillaz and Vocaloids were massively successful experiments in this domain.

I think some of the critique in the former was lost (i.e. Weezer), but it definitely opened the gates for popular digital avatars.

dharmab• 5 years ago

"Hololive" is another example. They're all real people, but using digital appearances and personas.

mhh__• 5 years ago

There is a streamer who has a very expensive live tracking setup who actually streams entirely from inside (what is basically) a game emulating a stream room. The content itself isn't really my cup of tea, but the visuals are already beyond the uncanny valley.

https://www.ginx.tv/en/twitch/who-is-code-miko-the-virtual-s...

henearkr• 5 years ago

Did he want to make the promotion of bikes and biking at any cost?

I have to testify that in Japan there is a wave of fashion and TV celebrities affecting a public discourse of "oh no the Japanese industry will be soon dying because of the push for electrification of all vehicles!".

Also, most of the loud (and very suffocating, when they zoom past you) bikers near my home are either old men (like this man) or in some cases their children.

Was this Youtuber trying to do his best to save the youth's interest in motorbikes?

I would really like to see these kind of bikes fade into oblivion, instead of being promoted to youngsters through "deep fake young idols" Youtube channels.

davesque• 5 years ago

There's an interesting train of thought that could follow from this. I've been trying to figure out what could eventually enable people to realize that most of what they see on the internet is entirely made up (or could be). Perhaps nothing would make this more clear than considering that literally any face or persona you see on social media could be entirely fictional. For example, in light of this Japanese biker uncle story, how could you ever really feel confident about dating online? And if you didn't, what's the alternative? Well, if you still trust your own eyes, there's always the physical world.

poundofshrimp2• 5 years ago

I feel like dating online is a blind shot in so many ways. Good news is that if the person lied about their looks, then you know it’s not a match!

rantwasp• 5 years ago

i am not even mad. this is amazing. now i’m gonna follow the dude. deal with it :))

anticristi• 5 years ago

I'm starting the .true TLD. Everything else on the Internet should be considered fantasy.

renewiltord• 5 years ago

Makes sense. It's a performance. I don't get upset that Sir Patrick Stewart can't actually telepathically communicate with all of Earth.

wly_cdgr• 5 years ago

:shrug:...would still hit

draugadrotten• 5 years ago

Counting 215 comments and nobody quoted Neil Stephenson yet. The books are worth reading, dear young ones.

"The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse. ...

Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you're ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful. If you've just gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these."

decafninja• 5 years ago

Male or female, if you're very good looking, you probably could achieve some degree of success as a social media "influencer" these days. As people have said, thus is human nature since forever.

With the rise of digital avatars that are testing the limits of photorealism, I'm wondering if your actual physical appearance starts to become less of a limiting factor for things like this though.

Heck, there is now an entire K-pop idol girl group launching composed entirely of digital characters. While not 100% perfect, I'm shocked at how realistic they look and act:

https://www.koreaboo.com/news/ai-kpop-girl-group-deep-real-a...

cwkoss4• 5 years ago

It seems like his motivation was primarily increased online engagement.

As human socialization occurs increasingly in digital spaces, will be interesting to see if there is a rise in trans people who only wish to transition using technology without wanting to change their own analog physical appearance.

Similarly, I wonder if there are remote workers who use filters like these to consistently present an idealized version of themselves professionally.

I predict within the next 20 years, having an avatar that is more attractive than your true physical form will become normalized. Perhaps some middle aged people will only present as their 20 year old selves online. I'm sure transracial avatars will be a controversial issue.

Maybe I should short cosmetics and go long on GPU manufacturing.

tommoor• 5 years ago

Perhaps some middle aged people will only present as their 20 year old selves online.

Oh, this for sure is already happening. A lot of people's profile pictures (for example on twitter) are frozen in time some 10 years ago.

freeflight3• 5 years ago

I predict within the next 20 years, having an avatar that is more attractive than your true physical form will become normalized.

That's already pretty normalized looking at how even a lot of older generations are carefully curating their social media presences to make them look as perfect and impressive as possible.

yabadubakta• 5 years ago

I think this is pretty awesome. He was able to create a real avatar and go out there doing something he loved and share it with the world pseudonymously! Identity in our increasingly virtual reality can take on many turns.

megous• 5 years ago

Any guesses if FitGirl is also a 50-year old guy (or two) that's just very much into compression/repacking? :)

RocketOne• 5 years ago

So, essentially he catfished 16,000 followers.

bahmboo• 5 years ago

50? Sure bro :) another level of fun.

Abishek_Muthian• 5 years ago

I wonder what happens when an update changes the filter and the person couldn't generate the same face again.

smadge• 5 years ago

NEO: Right now, we're inside a computer program?

MORPHEUS: Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different, the plugs in your arms and head are gone, your hair has changed. Your appearance now is what we call 'residual self-image'. It is the mental projection of your digital self.

NEO: This... this isn't real?

MORPHEUS: What is 'real'? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. This is the world that you know.

runawaybottle• 5 years ago

Ignorance is bliss.

ape4• 5 years ago

He actually has pretty good cheek bones

colordrops2• 5 years ago

Have you all been following the green screened Biden interview? Watch the light grey mic - Biden's hand can't decide if it wants to be in front or behind the mic. Something weird is going on:

https://twitter.com/i/events/1372500525346820099

An army of "fact checkers" has been dispatched for damage control.

rfreiberger• 5 years ago

I'm just here for the two stroke that we never got in the states. :(

ChuckMcM2• 5 years ago

That is a fun take on "projection." :-) I expect to see a lot more of this with the wide availability of GAN driven image networks that can change faces/voices etc. Its like autotune for looks. Given how he was found I expect a software update that removes an person image in a mirror making them effectively vampires :-).

For the youngsters in the crowd, we used to have these phone numbers you could call where you could be connected with a "sexy woman who would talk to you and fantasize with you." Guess what, the only requirement for the job was "sexy voice" not actually being all that sexy. Poor chaps paying $1/minute to have phone sex with 45 - 50 year old women who not only have sexy voices but know a thing or two about sex.

"Influencers" are, as a money making entity, in the same genus as phone sex, product salespeople, and actors. They are there to create an attractive illusion that increases sales/market activity around an attached product.

the-dude2• 5 years ago

Is there an English equivalent to the Dutch saying you need to learn on an old bike ?

ChuckMcM2• 5 years ago

A) that is hilarious, and B) not that I have heard.

swimfar• 5 years ago

In German there's "Auf alten Pferden lernt man reiten" which means "You learn to ride on old horses".

freeflight3• 5 years ago

Guess what, the only requirement for the job was "sexy voice" not actually being all that sexy.

As I remember it, not even that was a requirement. In Germany a lot of these services ran the ads in a dual way: The big number advertised was for men to call and cost money, and then somewhere in the corner was a number that was free to call for women.

They didn't really screen that women number, teenage boy me had no problems at all getting connected to poor guys paying per minute, anybody could just call there as long as their voice sounded high-pitched/female enough.

dukeofdoom2• 5 years ago

Isn't there already controversy if this is being currently used in the Biden administration. The guy hasn't been seen with reporters. The last time he answered questions the microphone seemingly passed through his hand. And there's also a video of his election victory in front of a parking lot of staged cars. With a screen playing his address, while the podium is empty. He's getting the nickname C.G.I Joe.

JacobSuperslav4• 5 years ago

get help

dukeofdoom2• 5 years ago

Look into it. The guy was just steps away from being a ghost today. Is he really senile enough to be at these events without a little CGI magic help between naps. The last few months have been more than bizarre.

colordrops2• 5 years ago

You are implying someone is mentally ill which I believe is against HN's rules, and in any case is a failure on your part. Watch the video before making immature comments, then decide:

https://twitter.com/i/events/1372500525346820099

Watch the light grey mic - Biden's hands can't decide if they want to be behind or in front of the mics. There is clearly editing going on.

We aren't talking about reptilian aliens running the government - video editing is not some supernatural phenomenon.

njharman• 5 years ago

Almost to the point were this is not newsworthy. As in its so common, expected, and not novel. Like it’s not a major story when someone is found driving without insurance.

rodolphoarruda2• 5 years ago

My wife owns a wedding dress shop. She uses up to 25% of her time to produce content for social media.

One day she decided to mix/merge her face with Jennifer Aniston's and that was a game changer for the business in terms of audience engagement.

JacobSuperslav4• 5 years ago

what app did you use to change it?

rodolphoarruda2• 5 years ago

FaceApp

Here is a sample. https://www.instagram.com/p/CMKWQ6QFH6a/

cjohansson• 5 years ago

Interesting phenomena. I don't see any issues with it really. Many influencers do plastic surgery and other modifications to themselves to be more popular, this is a healthier alternative

cm2187• 5 years ago

You will soon need a computer science degree with a major in deep fake detection to use online dating safely

nomdep• 5 years ago

At some point soon(ish), deep fakes like this are going to end the porn industry, including Only Fans, in its current form.

Is going to be replaced at by computer-rendered photos/videos, some voice actors and a group of interns answering the chat.

wruza6• 5 years ago

Can’t say that thread is missing the point, but he doesn’t look like a young girl, because what you see is not a young girl either. It is a simulation of what a young girl would look like if she applied a ton of made up makeup (hence the word) to look attractive.

If you’re asking yourself why females tend to have more followers than males, and males get more followers when disguised as a female, remember that the “attractive” part is neither female nor male, not even human. It is our notion of perfect attractiveness that is completely made up and females exploited that since forever because sexual behavior asymmetry (women attract, men approach).

In a world without makeup, uv filters, clothes and odor deception, almost everyone is a red uncle biker.

pgsimp• 5 years ago

No, women who are pretty without makeup do exist.

wruza6• 5 years ago

And so do men. It’s all about ratio.

011000112• 5 years ago

This is awesome. Just imagine how many radio stars wouldn't have been killed by video if this were around in the 80s.

Seriously, the world is full of talented performers, but they lack the look or image that the entertainment industry demands. I look forward to seeing how this progresses.

cambalache2• 5 years ago

There is a closing window of opportunity to make bank creating machine-learning generated girls and a farm of onlyfans accounts. Plenty of young (and not-so-young) men are paying to simulate even the slightest semblance of a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. In 10 years or so when distinguishing fake from real will be almost impossible expect the value of those accounts to plummet and a return to more ancient forms of transacting beauty and sex for money.

nano-erud• 5 years ago

The only thing that worries me about all this is that so many people have thought that those photos were real when they are clearly false, they have many symmetrical and light imperfections. It worries me how people are losing perception and can't tell the real from the unreal. Those filters aren't that perfect yet.

aaron695• 5 years ago

This is probably tied to his sexuality.

Not sure if the Woke crowd have organised an outrage yet.

But it's something to think about. Woke people are evil which unfortunately means we've stopped a lot of forward or intelligent thinking, which we shouldn't do.

I think when you publish publicly you lose certain rights. And that's what Twitter users are, mini newspapers. So I don't mind him/her, him and her, being outed. But it's also interesting to think about. Avatar rights and our relationship to our avatars.

It's hard to understand yet what all this means. Or what's going on here. Maybe it was for money.

If you like reading fiction, Claire Norths 'Touch' really makes you think what is life without a body. Her stuff is quite novel.

totetsu• 5 years ago

How is this different from the entire Japanese mediascape? 50 year old men paying young women to say their words.

xyst• 5 years ago

catfishing to a whole new level

bromuro• 5 years ago

this story is very cute as are cute both of the ladies. interesting she has been depicting such a character and sure many followers where intrigued by it. i hope she did not run into problems for such innocent play.

anonytrary• 5 years ago

If this man was creating 3D anime girls and had a 3D anime girl account, would it be really any different? An old man creating a fantasy for young men, either way.

Honestly, this man is brilliant. He's old, leaving this world soon, and is capitalizing on what people want to see. I commend this man. That said, I think cat-fishing is not cool if you're actually playing with people's hearts. If he's DM-ing people wanting to meet up, then it starts getting weird.

a0-prw2• 5 years ago

He's definitely prettier as a girl.

o_p• 5 years ago

Brilliant, I dont see nothing wrong with this, he just gives the people what the people wants to see, its like getting mad that some tv shows are fake, its all entertainment folks. The steak is virtual and its tasty :)

iamleppert• 5 years ago

The latest state of the art convolution networks can fully handle occlusions as well as reflections. FaceApp needs to upgrade their tech.

Young female Japanese biker is 50-year-old man using FaceApp

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