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 The holographic image has been replaced by a 2D version on a tablet.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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@IronCthulhu
At least the anime men for the most part look like real world men in terms of proportions. It wouldn’t be that hard for me to find men in the real world that look like it. The women, on the other hand, are sexually exaggerated to the point that few real women look like that. There are likely few women who have giant anime eyes and those impossible proportions.
@Demonhype
That actually sounds better than either of the holograms shown so long as it talks like David.
@BQS
Idk how much these men will pay, but I know conservative politicians will pay the entire planet and their own liberties to own the libs.
I’d be happy if I could have a holographic Henry Cavill in a jar like that. 😉
Jim Sterling played that Haydee game back in September 2016; that is one ugly game in all senses of the word.
@Demonhype
I already said there’s an equivalent for women. The consensus among redpillers is that women have raised their standards to ridiculous levels due to their access to endless amounts of male validation & attention for very little effort. That genie isn’t going back in the bottle, but one can move forward. That’s why we see technologies such as this as a pendulum swing in our favor. A re-balancing.
Maybe it won’t cause the “existential shock” that Paul Elam predicted but I still like it when I see feminists make a big deal out of it. Meghan Murphy & Kathleen Richardson have been biting their nails over it & that makes me laugh sometimes.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Trolling is like the Tao; infinite and free.
Why? Non-digital assistants aren’t gender neutral.
@Naglfar
So? Make your virtual boyfriend look like Super Saiyan for all I care.
That Gatebox girl has realistic body proportions IMO. Not that I’m against unrealistic proportions. Do you think they need to promote fat acceptance or something? As for the eyes, it’s anime!
For the record, Gatebox does encourage users to create and share their own characters and videos. However, making the character look genuinely 3D and interact with the user properly requires resources that most users don’t have, so the higher quality ones so far look to be official tie-ins.
@IronCthulhu
Well, since Meghan Murphy is best known for being a TERF/SWERF, I don’t think she represents what most feminists think.
Hint: just because a few people get angry about sex robots does not mean they will cause much change in the long run. And I’m pretty sure most men and women will still prefer flesh and blood company. At least I, as a woman, could never imagine having a relationship with a robot. And before you go on about men preferring robots to me, I prefer dating women anyway, and the kinds of men who see women as replaceable by robots aren’t the ones I would date anyway.
Weebs were a mistake.
@IronCthulu
I’m not certain if it’s the proportions of the female characters that’s an issue but the prescriptive nature insisted. People come in all shapes and sizes, obviously, but when there’s an expectation that women be sized a certain way for the desires of men that’s when the situation gets notably squicky, at least for me.
Anime is a media form with all sorts of genres, sub genres, and styles of varying quality. A character’s design should be informed by factors such as the setting and its history, the character’s personality, themes, etc. Characters specifically made to make the reader/viewer salivate and nothing else, this usually does, and should, catch a leery eye.
Ehhh… the moe character is modelled and rendered better, I think. But it’s more inherently annoying that it’s no longer holographic. I think that’s half the appeal of the device gone.
(Can we get mooooore cartoon animal/object digital assistants again, please.)
@NautaliaC
I agree. It seems like the ideal cultivated in a lot of media is one that’s extremely difficult to achieve and even harmful, and it’s pretty much always for the male gaze.
Right! Though, as a woman who loves other women I feel I need to add on a disclaimer that I don’t mind cute characters either. I just prefer that there’s some depth to them. And are reasonably designed. And are a part of a story I can sink my teeth into.
Me: *reads thread, decides to check out a possibility*
Me: Alexa, you remind me of the babe.
Alexa: What babe? The babe with the power.
(I’m pretty sure internet law requires somebody to start that call-and-response every time the Goblin King is invoked.)
Ah yes, Super Saiyans, famously known as the best example of men being drawn to be attractive to women.
9___9
@Cindy:
Nani?!
What power? The power of voodoo.
(Yes. It does.)
@NautaliaC
Certainly. I feel the same way.
These guys must hate the ending to “Lars and the Real Girl”.
@IronCthulu:
Most trolling isn’t even worth that. Being asinine should cost money.
Because women are tired of being the default gender for servility, and because the temptation to abuse and belittle realistically female-sounding digital assistants is too strong for some men, and because that then spills over into their real-life attitudes towards women (or vice versa – chicken, egg). Why replicate that dynamic if you don’t have to? Why uncritically transfer our human assumptions and prejudices into AI?
What are these “ridiculous levels”, and how are Red Pill demands for submissive HB10 virgins who fuck like porn stars and don’t require food, shelter, and clothing any less ridiculous?
I assume you’re talking about ogling, pedestaling, and catcalling here. Women would be perfectly fine if men stopped doing that. It’s not flattering, it’s annoying and terrifying. You wouldn’t want to be subjected to it either.
@Buttercup Q Skullpants
In addition, I’m curious why we have to transfer a binary view of gender to AIs at all. It’s unnecessary and just adds to all the dynamics you mentioned.
Because of course those things are totally reasonable to want, unlike how most women want men who aren’t misogynistic shitstains and who treat them like human beings. Such an unreasonable wish. /s
Pro tip: whenever a sentence starts with “the consensus among [insert extremist group here]” you can safely assume it is going to be completely and utterly false and ridiculous.
The Black Mirror episode would involve one of these ‘virtual companions’ gaining sentience and turning on her owner, right? Bonus points if she also functions as a PA, like a more advanced version of Alexa or whatever, so she has the power to really fuck the person’s life up.
Your version of trolling consists of doing something that only you can see but would presumably really piss off feminists if they knew about it?
I mean, the idea that your fantasy is subjugating whomever you think of as the face of feminism is gross, don’t get me wrong. But this is about as sophisticated a form of trolling as holding your fingers up close to your eye and squishing the heads of people you dislike.
@Catalpa
I get the feeling he wouldn’t even need to buy the lens thing and he would just walk around telling people he had it and that he was doing what he said.
Okay, I’m not sure if this is really the best place to put this, but since people are mentioning gender neutrality in relation to the waifu characters, I think I should drop this here.
Gender neutral is probably not the best term here. I explain why on my blog.
A separate post is coming later, but to start with think about the fact that androgynous is different from agender. Gender flexibility better represents the ideas of androgyny while gender neutrality better represents the ideas of agender, though we actually should consider whether gender neutral actually has dehumanizing connotations that make it generally inapplicable to people (and when discussing aspects of agender people and lives, we should simply stick to agender rather than describing them as gender neutral).
I am not the cop of language, and I will not be handcuffing anyone and dragging them back to the station for using a formulation that I consider to communicate poorly and that I consider to have bad side effects. I do hope, though, that people will read that piece and think about what they’re saying.
To keep length down, I actually split off a separate discussion of why it’s not merely possible to distinguish gender flexibility from gender neutrality, but why it’s actually important, with some of the political and social effects detailed in that separate discussion.
That post isn’t up yet, but at least some of why it might be important can be seen, I hope, from what I’ve already articulated.
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 l
You’re really overestimating how much feminists care about your wanking habits. We really, really don’t. We only know about your theoretical future wank habits because you decided to come in here and tell us. I promise you, we weren’t losing sleep wondering about it.
That’s like saying “The consensus among young earth creationists” or “The consensus among Holocaust deniers.” There’s no basis in reality there.
@Demonhype
Manosphere dudes are the only ones living in the “women will be sorry when we all have robot girlfriends” fantasy. Japan has long since betrayed them. Absolute Boyfriend (Zettai Kareshi) was a popular manga and TV show starting back in 2005, and it’s about a woman dating a cute robot rather than her cute human boss.