"No one will read what a normal middle-aged man posts on his account"
April 19, 2021 11:12 AM   Subscribe

Japanese biker uses FaceApp to trick internet into thinking he is a young woman A TV show revealed the star of popular 19,000-follower motorbike enthusiast Twitter user @azusagakuyuki was actually a 50-year-old man named Soya. Fans seem more supportive than betrayed. Biker fans educated on the fluidity of sexual attraction. A new acronym describing this phenomenon: UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG. This also illustrates how patriarchy picks winners and losers. TV program Getsuyou Kara Yofukashi unmasking segment. Originally reported on the BBC.
posted by Apocryphon (21 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
A new acronym describing this phenomenon: UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG.

the tweet:
Reddit's term for this is UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG: "Upvoted Not Because Girl, But Because It Is Very Cool; However, I Do Concede That I Initially Clicked Because Girl" https://reddit.com/r/UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG/
Created Feb 22, 2015.

(that said, i'm quite amused at how this has taken off, about the biker. also a little bit weirded out because i'm sure some of it was also the fact that the images appeared to be of an asian woman, so the whole fetishization angle probably had some effect)
posted by i used to be someone else at 12:45 PM on April 19, 2021 [3 favorites]


You go, Uncle.
posted by hoodrich at 12:53 PM on April 19, 2021


"No one will read what a normal middle-aged man posts on his account"

One man's bug is another man's feature.
posted by box at 1:08 PM on April 19, 2021 [9 favorites]


Biker fans educated on the fluidity of sexual attraction.

They were attracted to a photo where the shape of the buttocks is good. I don't know what kind of lesson (at least about "the fluidity of sexual attraction") can be extracted from the fact that the photo was not of the person who posted it; it's not like they were really attracted to a 50-year-old man when they thought that the photo was a photo of the motorbike account's person.
posted by thelonius at 1:17 PM on April 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


Reminds me of the recent phenomenon of male Twitch streamers (e.g. F1NN5TER and Sneaky) gaining large followings while playing video games in elaborate cross-gender cosplay.
posted by theodolite at 1:53 PM on April 19, 2021


Maybe I'm just peevish but my only reaction is: it must be nice to get all the attention with none of the downsides, knowing you have the ultimate upper hand over all the creeps sending messages that might have been threatening to actual young women, knowing that when you confess the truth people will never turn on you but rather cheer you on and consider you wise for pretending to be a girl.
posted by MiraK at 2:14 PM on April 19, 2021 [31 favorites]


MetaFilter: a photo where the shape of the buttocks is good
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:34 PM on April 19, 2021 [8 favorites]


Maybe I'm just peevish but my only reaction is: it must be nice to get all the attention with none of the downsides, knowing you have the ultimate upper hand over all the creeps sending messages that might have been threatening to actual young women, knowing that when you confess the truth people will never turn on you but rather cheer you on and consider you wise for pretending to be a girl.

drewharwell (linked in post) highlights this very idea from another asian woman:
I feel upset as an Asian woman, although this has less to do with technology and more to do with the privilege of being a male in a patriarchal society. It would be nice to feel the benefit of being a woman without any of the consequences.
the replies and qts from men prove her point.
posted by i used to be someone else at 2:46 PM on April 19, 2021 [24 favorites]


the back-patting always happens, though, especially if the dude says it was a "social experiment" because heaven knows women (and other minorities) can't be trusted with our experiences.
posted by i used to be someone else at 2:57 PM on April 19, 2021 [10 favorites]


See also; Chinese vlogger who used filter to look younger caught in live-stream glitch (BBC), (or Bored Panda version)
When the image covering her face dropped, her co-host Qingzi was confused about what’s going on, to say the least, but hesitated to say anything, so the conversation continued awkwardly. Her fans were the ones to take action, though. Many of them, especially men, unfollowed her immediately and withdrew their donations.
posted by krisjohn at 3:44 PM on April 19, 2021 [8 favorites]


krisjohn UGH THAT RIGHT THERE is the difference between middle-aged men pretending to be young girls and middle-aged women pretending to be young girls.
posted by MiraK at 5:10 PM on April 19, 2021 [20 favorites]


Meh, I'd prefer man playing woman (appearance-wise) or vice-versa. It takes something to pull off well enough what you are not. Versus someone just bumping their age up or down just to look nicer. The former is divorcing your exterior / interior distinction, the latter is just vanity.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:37 PM on April 19, 2021 [1 favorite]


It's not just vanity. For some people, it's a living.
There are ways of making money that hinge on having conventional good looks, which includes looking young. I'm not surprised that people use the currently available methods to fake those looks. As far as I know, people have always done that.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:44 AM on April 20, 2021 [5 favorites]


MiraK, surely that right there is the difference between a middle aged woman faking her appearance and asking people to part with money and a middle aged man doing so to attract attention.
posted by epo at 3:19 AM on April 20, 2021 [1 favorite]


epo, I was speaking of this difference:

> Her fans were the ones to take action, though. Many of them, especially men, unfollowed her immediately and withdrew their donations.

vs.

> [His] fans seem more supportive than betrayed.

Instagram influencers convert attention directly into money, so there was a financial incentive in both cases. Her money grab was more direct than his but hers was also a smaller lie.
posted by MiraK at 5:28 AM on April 20, 2021 [5 favorites]


surely that right there is the difference between a middle aged woman faking her appearance and asking people to part with money and a middle aged man doing so to attract attention.

the latter is just vanity.

They're both vanity!

Attention in the internet economy is money, or can quickly be converted into it with a little effort.

No celebrity is the same as the fantasia of their celebrity that makes its appearance in their cultural products (and exists only in those products!).

Is the Tom Cruise of the movies a Fake? No - there are two Tom Cruises, both real, except one is a real person and the other is a real appearance, a real set of images sounds and cultural artifacts. Why do we forgive the movie star where we rebuke the streamer girl.

I'm fascinated by the libidinal attachment to fleeting apparitions, now a form of mass culture, created by the new internet culture. It's something more pernicious, more insidious than the obsession with celebrity because of the paradoxical intimacy of streaming.

We should recognize that these are just appearances on our screens, performances, and not real people, but the draw of these platforms is the way they cultivate so-called "parasocial" relationships. The steamer girl / onlyfans is your friend and even responds to your messages, just like my fellow mefites are a kind of friend group as well. Realizing that they are just a simulacrum is felt as a betrayal, a betrayal of a relationship that only exists between ourselves and a set of apparitions. The veil is pierced and it all falls apart.

Anyway I'm just thinking out loud - but I think it's absurd to judge one kind of 'fake' more harshly than another in this context. Nobody is being tricked, they're getting exactly what they want. The face-apped is the real! There is nothing beyond the filter.
posted by dis_integration at 6:16 AM on April 20, 2021 [3 favorites]


the latter is just vanity.

They're both vanity!


ALL IS VANITY 💀
posted by zamboni at 6:22 AM on April 20, 2021 [5 favorites]


Meh, I'd prefer man playing woman (appearance-wise) or vice-versa. It takes something to pull off well enough what you are not. Versus someone just bumping their age up or down just to look nicer. The former is divorcing your exterior / interior distinction, the latter is just vanity.

wild

in this thread references to how dudes are applauded for pretending to be women was mentioned twice

twice!

and we see an example just a few comments down!
posted by i used to be someone else at 10:19 AM on April 20, 2021 [8 favorites]


It’s not clear, but is the jeans-butt picture (the illustration of the ‘fluidity of sexual attraction’ one) also a fake or is that actually a middle aged man’s waist? Is there a butt picture deepfake faceapp? I’m almost scared to know
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:07 PM on April 20, 2021 [2 favorites]


When I first heard of this, I was pro - you go!, but the disparities got me cynical again. There are stories that his real hair is amazing/ helped the software transform, but all of the software transforms that I've gotten my hands on are horrible with hair.

I've explored photo manipulation as a closetted mtf trans woman - and the best of it makes me look incredibly like a very tired version of my younger cis sister even if I feed it my closeted cist-het appearance!

It can be uncanny.

So I'm terribly conflicted about this.

If I could be in public looking like a software transform, I might "pass" enough to be public. Even with (professional) makeup and my really expensive (!) prosthetic non-permanent boobs, I am far far far from passing irl. Not much I can do about my shoulders, I can do my waist/ hips with prosthetics but its expensive and not very effective. But my face screams "ugly ass-ymetric potato head definitely a guy." =( Which I am, even if I'm a guy.

So if real, good on the dude. If fake, fuck everyone.
posted by porpoise at 7:49 PM on April 20, 2021


It’s not clear, but is the jeans-butt picture (the illustration of the ‘fluidity of sexual attraction’ one) also a fake or is that actually a middle aged man’s waist? Is there a butt picture deepfake faceapp? I’m almost scared to know

Great question. I was just assuming it was from one of the stock ass photo services. If he got them creeping on his own glutes, that is different than I was thinking.
posted by thelonius at 6:57 AM on April 21, 2021


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