A Whole New Level of Parasocial

October 20, 2020 1:38 AM

Virtual influencers have always courted controversy (NYT), but League of Legend’s fictional Seraphine went a step further this month by talking about her mental health struggles – and in doing so, exploited people’s sense of empathy to market a product to them, argues Natalie Flores (Fanbyte). Previously.
posted by adrianhon (9 comments total)

There's already a term of art for the purposeful creation of adorable but helpless fictional characters that need your love, support and protection, and it's moé (academic paper, bonus TVTropes link).
posted by sukeban at 2:47 AM on October 20, 2020 [8 favorites]

am i old or is there any reason why no one is making the connection between virtual influencers and roleplay accounts (or wants to do so)? is there any reason why twitter is presumed to be populated by real ppl, or is this a consequence of fandom behaviours not accompanied by fandom framing ie non-fans dominate a space where fannish performance is being carried out therefore not having the language for it?
posted by cendawanita at 3:11 AM on October 20, 2020 [4 favorites]

If you like characters for whom mental health, existential dread, and struggle with executive function is key, you’ll love Hamlet
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:18 AM on October 20, 2020 [6 favorites]

Anybody seen my copy of Idoru around here? I could've sworn I just put it down...
posted by mmcg at 5:01 AM on October 20, 2020 [11 favorites]

Anybody seen my copy of Idoru around here? I could've sworn I just put it down...

Came here to point out that Life is imitating Art again.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:16 AM on October 20, 2020

There's also the additional layer that one of the big things Seraphine is sad about in-universe is literally cheerleading genocide, like "We're doing an Omelas thing but instead of a sad child it's using an entire species as soul-batteries, complete with trying to pacify the natives, and by-the-way we're the good guys" level.
It's... really a galaxy-brain approach from Riot to brand her with this synthfluencer take.
posted by CrystalDave at 8:08 AM on October 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

This kind of thing was dubious enough when it was flesh and blood “influencers.”
posted by atoxyl at 9:35 AM on October 20, 2020

TIL about virtual influencers and the term parasocial. I feel so weird about all of it.
posted by cooker girl at 10:26 AM on October 20, 2020

a tamagotchi that feeds on kindness
posted by nutate at 10:33 AM on October 20, 2020 [1 favorite]