[A recent social media trend suggests an intriguing variant of inverse presence (where instead of overlooking the role of technology in a mediated experience, people perceive technology where there is none). A story in JING Daily (“The Business of Luxury in China”) introduces the phenomenon this way:

“In 2023, the idea of virtual humans is nothing new. Lil Miquela, a virtual model created by a Los Angeles-based startup, has 3 million followers on Instagram and kissed Bella Hadid for a Calvin Klein campaign. Imma, the first virtual human in Japan, has partnered with brands like SK-II, Tommy Jeans and Fenty.

The virtual human market is predicted to reach $440.3 billion by 2031, as reported by Allied Market Research.

They’re so influential, in fact, that in the West the trend has gone full-circle. Now, real human creators are emulating their virtual counterparts and ushering in the rise of the human “Non-Playable Character” (NPC).

On Western-facing platforms like TikTok, NPC livestreams are gaining traction.

NPCs are pre-programmed side characters in video games that aren’t controlled by the player. The term is commonly used by Gen Z to describe someone who is seen as generic, or who lacks independent thought. In NPC livestreams, creators pretend to be NPCs and react with specific catchphrases when given virtual gifts. For example, Pinkydoll, one of the most popular NPC livestreamers on TikTok, says “ice cream so good” when given an ice cream gift. She has over 950,000 followers, and regularly broadcasts to an audience of over 30,000 simultaneous watchers.

The rise in these polarizing yet neoteric trends have inundated smartphone screens across the globe over the past weeks. In China, hyper-realistic, AI-generated humanoids have grown on e-commerce platforms, while the West found itself mesmerized by a surge in NPC-like creators sharing catchphrases for cash.

In the West, human emulates machine. In China, machine emulates human.”

For more coverage of NPC livestreaming, see stories from Business Insider, BBC, Forbes and Vice; the follow-up story from Business Insider below provides some insights into the phenomenon’s origins (see the original story for several images and videos). –Matthew]

[Image: Japanese TikToker Natuecoco in her signature cat ears and wig. Credit: Courtesy of Natuecoco]

Natuecoco, TikTok’s original queen of NPC livestreams, says she started the trend as a ‘thought experiment’

By Yoonji Han
July 22, 2023

At midnight in Japan, dressed in her signature cat ears and matching wig, the content creator known as Natuecoco set up her camera and began livestreaming.

For the next an hour and a half, she repeated Japanese and Korean catchphrases and movements as users flooded the livestream with corresponding tokens. A finger heart token elicited the Korean phrase for “I like you,” while a rose token prompted a slick v sign under her chin.

More than 9,700 users from all around the world tuned in, entranced. In the comments, they marveled at her eerily precise movements, down to the rhythmic, exaggerated breathing of a character in a video game.

“The queen herself,” one user said, while another hailed her as the “original AI queen.”

“These girls wouldn’t have started if it wasn’t for this queen,” someone wrote in all caps.

Natuecoco is widely credited with starting the viral NPC livestreaming trend, where creators repeat random catchphrases and robotic movements, just like a pre-programmed non-player character, or NPC, in a video game might do. The Japanese creator started livestreaming in October 2021.

TikTokers like Pinkydoll — of “ice cream so good” fame — and Cherry Crush, who describes herself as “your very own AI Tamagotchi,” have also joined in on the trend, amassing hundreds and thousands of followers and views.

For Natuecoco, NPC livestreaming is an ongoing experiment of figuring out what makes people tick.

“I wanted to stimulate the audience and see what reactions they would have to the different motions I performed,” Natuecoco told Insider via a translator. “So I created different motions and built a bridge of communication through the audience’s reactions.”

Inspired by art and cosplay

Natuecoco began livestreaming on TikTok in October 2021. She chooses to keep her real name and age a secret, immersing herself into the character she’s created: doll-like in her blushed cheeks and colored-contact eyes, and rarely without her trademark cat ears and matching wig.

Even the background of her videos — gauzy curtain, glimmering fairy lights, and feathery plants illuminated in purple and blue lighting — is constructed to create an otherworldly setting that draws users’ curiosity.

Natuecoco said she draws inspiration for her feylike persona from art, video games, and cosplay, which has been a hobby long before she started her TikTok. Her cat ears are a direct nod to cosplay culture in Japan, where it’s common to see the human morphed with the surreal.

The creator also leaned into viewer comments that she looked like an AI character or NPC from a video game, imbuing her movements with robotic yet larger-than-life animation.

“I consider each NPC in a video game as their own piece of art, like statues,” she said. “If you think about a statue at a museum, people have varying responses to it. When I perform, I can see those different reactions and experiences in real time and learn about them.”

A ‘thought experiment’

While some TikTokers have jumped onto the trend largely to follow the money — Pinkydoll said she started streaming this year as a way to make cash — Natuecoco said she began NPC streaming as a “thought experiment” of human connection. (The money content creators can make from livestreaming is “positive” because it enables them to make a living from it, she added.)

“In one of my earlier streams, I noticed a lot of people in the audience started coming up with really weird ideas about what I could be. One person said I was a bot sent by a foreign government to spy on them,” Natuecoco told Insider. “I became so intrigued by how people could come up with such ridiculous ideas.”

She began experimenting with different movements and phrases to see how her audience responded to them. What struck Natuecoco was how people had completely different interpretations of the same action.

“To return to the example of statues, it’s like I’m a piece of art in the museum,” she said. “You don’t need to know information about the art to enjoy it. You just stop and look at it, and start to maybe look at it from different angles and learn what you like about it yourself.”

Watching Natuecoco’s videos requires the viewer’s suspension of disbelief, and the understanding that they’re part of an experiment — something the creator said is a “clear term” of the performance.

The future of NPC streaming

The TikToker is aware that her videos make some people baffled or uneasy — and that’s the point.

“It’s important to always leave some curiosity, because the audience can figure it out for themselves,” she said. “They become more invested when they try to figure out what this all means. It’s a way to build that connection.”

Natuecoco said it’s difficult to say how the NPC trend will evolve because of the vast spectrum of viewer responses, which ranges from enthrallment to apprehension. But the fact that NPC livestreaming has become a viral phenomenon is proof to her that her experiment was successful.

“It’s become a part of the culture in a way, and has established a certain genre of communicating with people,” the content creator told Insider.