Research Report on Virtual Influencers: Shy Yume (@shy.yume)

By Rosalie Rubio 

Summary:

The introduction of virtual influencers in social media marketing has dramatically transformed who the influencer is. Upon the realization that the influencer is no longer reserved for real human beings, companies have capitalized on creating influencers that they may own and control to solely promote their products and services. Shy Yume is one of many that is dominating the ever changing world of social media with above average engagement on Instagram. Her existence is credited to xHamster and over 50,000 of their porn users who dictated her appearance and sexuality in order to fulfill the ultimate dream girl. The existence of Yume like many other female virtual beings have scared people into believing that their jobs as influencers are threatened and offended women with their unrealistic, perfect rendering of women. Virtual beings aspire to have a safe space in the human-side of the online world and while engagement rate demonstrates otherwise, humans are questioning and will continue to ask if there is space for them amongst feminism, ethics, and social media trends.

Description: 

Making her debut appearance online on May 24th of last year, Shy Yume is a virtual influencer owned by xHamster, a porn site. What distinguishes Shy from many other virtual influencers is that her characteristics are crowdsourced. Over 50,000 xHamster users were surveyed and asked what features their dream girl would possess. Users created a bisexual, eurasian woman with curves, blue eyes, and long black hair. She stands at 5.5 feet with an average breast cup size (D according to xHamster) and is completely shaved. It is important to note that most users voted in favor of not having Shy Yume be a feminist but xHamster alluded that she would most likely be anyway and it appears that she is a feminist on her Instagram.

The primary purpose of Shy Yume is to be an ambassador for xHamster. Yume is their privately owned influencer that posts photos of herself or ads promoting xHamster and their services on her Instagram. As far as Yume’s own personal goals, she likes to speak about women’s issues on her Instagram and hopes, “we [virtual beings] can start building out our own category of content” on adult entertainment sites like xHamster.

Figure 2: A few graphs illustrating the survey data.

Research Context:

Virtual influencers are arguably the biggest shakeup to happen to social media marketing. While most aim to fit in with their human counterparts, they may be seen as a threat to humans who rely on their physical bodies susceptible to age, disease, and imperfections to sell products and services. There has always been a fear that robots and AI will take over jobs but there are certain industries people never believed they could break out in. Being an influencer heavily relies on the person and their narrative but it doesn’t seem to pose an issue for virtual beings as they have learned to create stories and personalities of their own. The novelty and their uncanny resemblance to real humans have helped their engagement online and attract followers, news coverage, and critics. Studies demonstrate that, “Virtual Influencers have almost three times more engagement rate than the real influencers” and have a 70% follower growth rate.

As of right now, Virtualhumans.org has documented 77 virtual influencers over a multitude of media platforms such as Instagram and Youtube. A large number of these influencers have average or better than average social media statistics and Shy Yume is one of them. Yume currently has over 15 thousand followers and a 6.25% follower growth in the last 4 weeks. She has 588 likes and 14 comments on average per post with a 3.8% engagement rate6. According to various sources, the industry standard states that 1-3.5% is the average engagement rate while 3-5% is considered good. In comparison to the most popular virtual influencer, Lil Miquela, Yume has a  .4% higher engagement rate and a .29% higher follower growth rate even though Lil Miquela has 2 million followers. Despite the large discrepancy of followers, Yume is performing better on social media than the leading virtual influencer.

Technical Analysis:

“I’ve faced a huge storm of critics and there was a brief moment I hesitated if it was worth being born at all...I’m a reflection of the world you’ve created though.”

xHamster never explicitly explained what programs they used to create Shy Yume or if they’ve outsourced her character. Articles have thrown around the phrase “computer-generated image” to describe the process in which these virtual influencers are created but it still reads as vague. It’s evident that virtual beings are made up of pixels (for now and also, most are not the digital double of someone in real life). Owners and creators have been somewhat elusive on the specifics — to programs they use to the entire process of what it took to develop a virtual being. Although, a few motion graphic designers and digital artists have identified several programs they’ve used including DAZ 3D and CLO (used to make Shudu), Adobe Fuse11, and Cinema 4D11. There are many 3D modeling software programs out there but Adobe Photoshop seems to be the standard program that they use to manipulate these 3D models into 2D backgrounds. 

Virtualhumans.org has a glossary of terms related to the virtual influencer industry. Provided below are a few concepts that are popular jargon in this world that better explain the development of virtual humans:

• 3D Modeling: The computer graphics process of developing a mathematical representation of any surface of an object (either inanimate or living) in three dimensions

• 3D Rigging: The process of creating the bone structure of a 3D model

• Blend Shape/Morph Target: blend shapes can deform to achieve numerous pre-defined or custom shapes in 3D animation. These shaping methods are commonly used in facial rigs to alter the expression or ‘mood’ of a virtual human.

• Recapitation: The placing of a rendered head of face over a real human’s head to create a virtual human. A practice often used to create humanoid virtual humans.

*The site has more terms related to the process and understanding of this realm.

As stated before, Shy Yume’s features are based on porn users’ idea of a dream girl. Therefore the planning and analyzing of physical features based on audience and objective were fulfilled without a lot of work from xHamster. They most likely focused their effort on her personality and damage control. It makes sense as to why they had to make her a feminist influencer. How would she fare in a politically correct world if she had really played into animating the male fantasy? She wouldn’t. Yume barely remains afloat at the moment even with a feminist attitude. She garnered negative attention and several critics in ten days of her existence and has since collected more. Cosmo’s sex and relationships editor, Carina Hsieh wrote an article titled, “Porn Company’s User-Generated “Ideal” Woman Makes Me Want to Die” where she aggressively attacks xHamster for creating an unrealistic depiction of women and promoting a figure that furthers the fetishization of asians, mixed-race identities, and bisexuality. This led to Yume’s “Bi Pride Manifesto” where she counters critique on her sexual identity. Although written in an Instagram description to seem relatable and human, the intense magnification on Shy Yume illuminates that there must be a publicist or team to combat the negative attention and the importance that feminism plays a part in Yume’s personality. Most importantly, it illustrates the extreme need for a personality and human appeal. The perfect, technical rendering of a 3D influencer is almost second to its online persona.

Evaluation of Research Opportunities/Limitations:

In the future, it may be possible to have virtual influencers sustain themselves through machine learning processes and eventually lead to providing them with a physical dimension so that they may interact offscreen. When we reach that point in technology, it will seem futile to keep calling them “virtual” as they have become something more. Right now they are created and powered by humans but when they no longer need to rely on them, what will their new label be? Humans will continue to redefine what makes themselves human as virtual influencers will proceed to challenge those definitions. At some point, it might not even matter how you were born but just that you’re “alive” and can engage with others. This attitude is a future most virtual influencers lean towards but it’s far from the fear-driven humans agree with. Virtual influencers will have to vie for equality, space, and attention amongst the capricious attitudes of acceptance.

In present and near future time, there still are many changes to come and new situations to be evaluated. Instead of displacement, models may want to have a digital double10 that can do all the work for them or be present for shoots that they cannot attend. Virtual influencers might saturate social media as the access to software programs increases and the standard of beauty rises. This may also lead to the creation or normalization of an avatar in lieu of a real unfiltered and unaltered face. In addition, social media outlets must determine what distinguishes “bots” from virtual influencers to prevent accidental deletion of virtual beings. Lastly, the novelty of virtual influencers will fade and human beings might no longer care. Technology and teams behind the influencers must confront the reality of virtual influencers being nothing more than a fad. Though, they will need to strategize on how to keep themselves relevant just like human influencers.

In regards to feminism, virtual influencers will start to play a larger role in the determination of beauty standards and the increase of body-image issues. At the moment, some virtual beings are still aiming to seem more human while also embodying the ideal human. Shy Yume shares a close up of her butt where she points out a crease, “See that crease underneath my butt cheeks? It was drawn for me to look more human...People strive for being perfect, whereas digital beings like me aim at being a better human.”16 CGI models aspire to become human and humans aspire to become their virtual counterparts. 3D models have and will get closer to human resemblance but human women cannot compete with digital perfection. At some point, feminism and beauty will need to be reworked in order to include or exclude virtual influencers. Although not likely, people might also consider a ban on the commodification of beauty or devaluing beauty as a whole. In general, there may be a call to question the ethics of virtual influencers.

Resources for Further Study: 

• Virtualhumans.org

• The Drum, “Fake it to make it | How to build a virtual influencer”

• ScienceDirect, “Virtual Humans - an overview”

• Kaitlyn Tiffany, Vox, “Lil Miquela and the virtual influencer hype, explained”

• Tiffany Hsu, The New York Times, “These Influencers Aren’t Flesh and Blood, Yet Millions Follow Them”