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What is NPC streaming? | The week
If you have been on social media recently, chances are you have encountered the phrase “mmm, ice cream so good” after Tiktok Creator Pinkydoll’s Bizarre NPC live streams reached viral fever. Her strange robotic movements and repetitive sounds have increased her to meme status, and Pinkydoll Pay in on the attention. Her content nets her thousands of dollars every week, leaving many puzzled over what makes the niche -NPC video streams so popular.
What is NPC streaming?
IN video game PARLANCE, NPCS or non -playable characters are side characters that a player cannot control. They are pre -programmed, usually with looping script dialogue and robotic movements. NPC Streamers mimics these background signs with preserved answers and repetitive measures in response to the gift -tokens on Tiktok Live streams. They stay in character for hours when viewers check their answers by tipping with digital tokens, each image translates into a catch or cartoon. Feel your meme tracking the trend to early 2022 and Japanese tictoc personality @natucocowhich currently has 1.5 million followers.
During her show, Pinkydoll, whose real name is Fedha Sinon, Pop’s popcorn kernels with a flat iron and quick hose phrases like “gang group” that tokens roll in. Her NPC streams have become a lucrative genre as the symbols have real life of monetary value. Told Sinon New York Times That she earns between $ 2,000 and $ 3,000 per stream, with tens of thousands looking at her. She has about 800,000 followers on Tiktok, where she has quickly become the face of the viral trend.
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Why are viewers drawn to it?
Some cultural scientists and streamers see the trend as “another example of the convergence between erotic work and games in the online culture,” The custodian wrote. NPC streamers are part of a legacy of “self-sexualized creators who built their follow-ups by combining aesthetics in Gamer Culture with Cam Girl who affects,” told Christine Tran, a doctoral student for the University of Toronto for Internet culture and digital work, to the outlet. The streams offer the fans a “feeling of being able to control a creator, and we see control becoming a word to feel intimate,” she added.
Tran also believes that the currents can be a secret way for adult artists to find an audience. Although the currents are not openly sexual, the feeling of control makes it a subtle type of fetish content. After 2018 Fostasesta laws led to many websites being suspended for sex work, NSFW (“not safe for work”) creators has had to find more discreet ways to advertise. “By repacking intimacy through the filter from the gamer language – something we associate with young people – there is likely to be denial for these creators who seem to participate in a form of erotic work,” Tran said.
Other people think the assumption is a range and harmful. Accusing a woman who “makes money on the absurd” to make fetish content is a “symptom of anti-queue moral panic that sweeps pop culture”, opinionated in Technical. “Sex workers in the meantime are unfairly drawn into dehumanizing conversations about the genre.” The trend’s viral upswing has “opened the door for discourse with poor faith about sex work online, although these ticto -creators do not make this content for sexual satisfaction.”
