By David Futrelle
Several years ago, I wrote about a holographic “virtual companion” that seemed designed to fulfill the romantic fetishes of every anime-obsessed incel. “Azuma,” as she was known, was basically a tiny, chatty waifu encased in a jar she could never escape from — seemingly a Black Mirror episode waiting to happen.
Unfortunately, at least for Western weebs, the tiny kidnapped princess only spoke Japanese.
Now, the company behind Azuma has announced an English language version of the device is on the way. But it’s not going to look much like the original. The holographic image has been replaced by a 2D version on a tablet. And the tiny waifu herself has been swapped out for more “realistic”-looking characters, including a gym bro and a stern-looking adult woman. The makers hope to sell the device not to lonely men with anime fetishes but to companies looking for “virtual concierges” and greeters to help customers check in on cruise ships and at gyms.
The world’s creepiest dudes are, not surprisingly, outraged by this development. Billy D., the histrionic cultural critic who runs the One Angry Gamer site, shouts his disappointment to the heavens, lamenting that the new version of the device has replaced a perfectly good “anime waifu” with
a bossy looking feminist in a purple pantsuit, and a douche bag personal training assistant who looks like he injected steroids into his jowls. …
[T]here’s zero sex appeal or attractive qualities to the Westernized models they are using … Instead of being comforting and welcoming, they have a cold, stand-offish design for the female, making her appear like a typical Left-wing feminist that no one wants to talk to; follows Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on social media; and spends all of her free time with her cats while complaining about President Donald Trump on Twitter. She’s also probably a lesbian.
In short, the design for the female assistant in the Western version of Gatebox is nothing short of a cancer-inducing wench.
I don’t know; she sounds kind of cool to me.
On the Incels.co forums, meanwhile, the regulars are if anything even angrier.
“Why can’t they realize we want to escape reality with cute anime grills and not std-ridden sjw banshees?” asked one commenter. “Why do companies bend the knees to shrill, shrieking feminists on Twitter?”
Another replied:
Whoever made this decision should commit sewerside in roblox
JFL THE BITCH LOOKS LIKE ANITA SARKEESEAN
Well, vaguely, I guess.
“Women shouldn’t wear pants,” still another commenter added.
But one incel shared his idea for a possible workaround: Just learn Japanese!
“Jesus fucking christ,” he wrote.
I’m learning Japanese and Kanji right now just to play porn games and because I dont have a life, but I guess another good reason for it is so I can import Japanese [jailbait] holo girls instead of getting ugly feminist western bitch versions.
Lovely.
If you want to see what non-Japanese-speaking incels will be missing, here’s the creepy, cringey promo for the Japanese model.
And if you want to see what the Westernized version of the device will look like, check out this report from Endgadget.
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How much do these cost again? This sounds like something I need in my home much more than a random anime lady.
Well, not really, but when you’re that obsessed with people you hated five years ago and never really got over and you hate all women, I guess every woman looks like her to you.
Like this?
I’d almost forgotten about that waifu in a jar.
Sadly, I think the incels won’t be happy until they can customize the waifu’s skin, eye, and hair color. Plus breast size. Plus voice timbre. Plus any number of things, because they’re more invested in the chase than in the goal.
Completely OT, but I noticed it in another thread and have some good info that might help some people out.
There was a legitimate complaint about hospitals refusing to release someone unless they are being picked up at the hospital by a friend or relative. (It’s for insurance purposes, so the hospital can say it wasn’t their fault when you collapse on the way home.)
There’s a couple of workarounds for those of us orphans with friends who have jobs and things like that:
1) comparatively more expensive – there are nursing services where you can hire a nurse for a minimum time period (e.g. four hours) and the nurse will meet you at the hospital and accompany you home
2) comparatively cheaper – some hospitals will accept a taxi in lieu of a friend/relative if the taxi is actually ordered online or via phone and not hailed in the street. (Lyft and Uber work well here.) Not all hospitals will do this, but if the cost of a Lyft home isn’t too bad, quite often that will work for the hospital’s rules.
The question is, can you get one with those two Mothra ladies? I might actually buy that.
I have rarely felt sorrier for anyone than I have this poor, probably well-adjusted actor who had to pretend that making dinner for his hologram was totally normal and healthy.
I thought creating lesbian head canons for fictional characters was something only us progressives and LGBT people did? Oneangrygamer’s actually come up with a detailed backstory for the virtual female concierge, maybe his next article will be posted on AO3 as slashfiction!
Maybe it’s because I’m, indeed, a lesbian, but if anything, the western female avatar looks *more* attractive than the anime girl.
I fail to see what’s comforting and welcoming about an unreal person-in-a-jar, but that’s just li’l ol’ flesh-and-blood me who doesn’t masturbate to cartoons, and who doesn’t assume a guy is gay just because he doesn’t reciprocate my interest.
And, for the thousandth time: THIS IS WHY YOU’RE AN INCEL, DUDE.
With all of the free porn online, available resources to learn how to write/create art/3D model, what have you, this is the hill they die on? I mean, there are a lot of people who are simply fans of media whatever it may be, anime, film, literature, video games. This obsession is synonymous with entitlement and it kind of sucks having to constantly edge away from people who share hobbies with you who act like this to any degree.
The whining for this particular bottled woman is just a collective “But, mooom! I want this one!”
Hmm,
Is there potential for a conversational language learning practice tool here, especially for languages such as Japanese, German, or others I don’t know about, which I understand have/may have very complicated grammar?
@ Kevin: Maybe? A very expensive one though. And if it´s programmed to be endlessly obliging, which I will blindly assume this girl is, you´ll be missing out on all the cultural subtext you´d get if you posted a notice offering your skills in (native language) in exchange for practicing (desired language). But I guess that only works in larger cities.
Could we sponsor someone to develop an English version of this thing with behavioral correction cues built-in? Positive reinforcement for positive behavior (like… washing your backside, to name something at random) and quasi-neglect for cruel or anti-social stuff? Coupled with things that´d help incels realize their exteriors aren´t as hopeless as they think? I may be a hopeless optimist but I want to believe almost everyone is redeemable.
To me, the concept of a lonely adult spending time with a make-believe friend has an offbeat charm.
What lacks charm is the concept of this lonely adult insisting on total control over this make-believe friend.
Anyone else sort of reminded of the film, “Her”?
@Rahu
Thanks for that valuable info.
I can’t help wondering how vulnerable that waifu is to hacking. I mean, chances are that box needs an Internet connection, for updates, cloud-based analysis of speech commands etc. If someone finds a way to load hacked firmware which changes the character’s behaviour or appearance… well, it could be a whole new frontier for ransomware.
@Tessa
Agreed. Maybe it’s just because I don’t watch anime, but I find the more realistic human model to be better looking.
@Tyko
I hadn’t thought of that, but now that you mention it I totally see the connection. Though IIRC in the movie the AI didn’t have a hologram body, just a voice.
Not worth the money. Sure there’s a little bit of troll value to it. She calls you “master” which raised the hairs on some feminist backs, but meh. I wouldn’t part with $1500 over it.
I’ll wait until hololens is reduced down to a set of contact lenses & I can install an app that makes the whole world into a Gatebox. I’ll customize her to look like whoever the current feminist du jour is, minus the aposematism. And make her personality something like Joi from Blade Runner.
Trolling is a art.
@LaMaria
Lots of potential in that. Not just as a therapeutic tool but also as an avenue for content creation, which would make it self-sustaining.
Some people make ASMR videos designed for therapeutic purposes. If they’ll pour hours & hours of creative effort into that, they’d do the same for creating conversational content for an AI. The Rent-a-sisters in Japan might do something like this as a way of helping out hikikomori men.
Algorithms could further customize user generated content to specific situations. They would use the content creators’ personality as a general guide but also be able to improvise new dialog by inferring what the content creator would probably say. That approach would be way more efficient than constructing an artificial personality from the top down.
Naglfar says:
The anime girl has an excessively insipid and simpering design even for an anime character. It’s a very particular aesthetic meant to appeal to women-hating otaku men.
This seems an appropriate thread to bring up a disturbing computer game that my nephew brought to my attention the other day: Haydee.
It’s a third-person puzzle platformer, where the player controls a robot that is a super-creepy “gynoid” with exaggerated breasts and buttocks, wearing five-inch heels (for platforming!) and a “butt floss” outfit. That’s not the creepiest aspect of the character design: it is literally faceless. The character is essentially just tits and ass for the player to ogle.
And the camera damn well wants you to ogle. You are frequently required to crawl through vents, where the robot’s ass fills a third of the screen. The “pulling itself up onto a ledge” animation is basically “ass ass ass.”
And OF COURSE the developer has opened it up for all the character mods you could want, which are exactly a creepy as you expect.
My nephew pointed out a major design flaw, given the developer’s obvious intentions: The controls are set up to require two hands.
And this is somehow more sneer-worthy than spending all of your free time with a hologram in a jar because….?
At least cat love is earned, not pre-programmed.
@A. Noyd
It’s an over-the-top exaggerated femininity, like refined sugar. Addictive because it doesn’t exist in nature. I’m sure there’s an equivilant for women.
@NautaliaC
“With all of the free porn online, available resources to learn how to write/create art/3D model, what have you, this is the hill they die on?”
I have degrees in this, and my first thought on this tech is “will I be able to create my own and upload them into the system, cuz that would be so awesome!”. I’m not sure if that makes me terrible or not, but the idea of being able to create a motion maquette of my characters (yes, including some of my cuter guys, I make the shame face now ?, but I could also make super cute fun characters for my little nieces so redemption?) sounds amazing. One of my favorite things in Rock band and Guitar Hero was character customization and seeing how many of my characters I could re-create.
@IronCthulhu
Omg, that is hilarious! That is, the idea that there are dudes sneering at how this is the beginning of the end for women and how women can be replaced so easy, as if the opposite could never happen, there could *never* be a viable market for women to have a cute anime (or otherwise) boyfriend in a jar…while the opposite has already been happening, between this kind of app and the myriad of power tools for her pleasure. Hoo boy, are they in for a surprise! I totally predict an anime David Bowie as Jareth would be a top seller!
@IronCthulu:
That’s your objection, that it’s too expensive?
Out of curiosity, how much money would you pay to stick it to the feminists?
@LaMaria:
It’d be nice if the makers of Siri and Alexa could program them to shut down verbal abuse instead of saying “I’d blush if I could” or “I don’t know how to respond to that.” Better yet, make digital assistants gender neutral.