The Problematic Fakery Of Lil Miquela Explained — An Exploration Of Virtual Influencers and Realness

Lil Miquela and her CGI crew will expose the “inauthenticity” of our corporations and public figures, which will of course challenge our notion of authenticity altogether.

On the flip side with regard to Miquela, some may argue, is that she’s more real than many ’real’ influencers. For starters, she acknowledges that she is a robot. And she speaks the truth. She was brought to life around the same time the world realized how detrimental social media could be. She makes us question what is real and our parameters of r... See more

Lil Miquela got me thinking about the difference between her account and a politician’s. I’d go so far as to say that most politicians' social media accounts feel more fake than Lil Miquela’s. Politicians pose as “people” on social media even though there’s usually a team managing their online presence. There are some exceptions, of course. Trump a... See more

Miquela Sousa, aka Lil Miquela, is the first AI social media influencer. She’s a multi-hyphenate 19-year-old, half-Brazilian, half-Spanish model, influencer and singer created by creative agency Brud in 2016. Since her debut, she has accumulated 2.9 million followers on Instagram, and in 2018 she was named Time’s ’Most Influential People on the Int... See more

In digital spaces, brands can have personalities and influencers with whom one has never met can feel like close friends. These are consequences of the same thing. The parasocializing force that humanizes corporations also serves to abstract the individual, collapsing individual identity into something more synthetic and structured

Miko embodies the rise of “VTubers” (Virtual YouTubers), a catchall term for online creators who digitally obscure their faces and bodies. But more broadly, Miko embodies a nascent, but fascinating space: synthetic media.