Virtual Avatar for Social Media Marketing
juvesatriani
Posts: 556
in The Commons
https://www.virtualhumans.org/category/research
Have any of the daz users been involved in this trend? Yes, I know about Shudu, she was made by a modeling agency, right? I want to know your experience if you have or plan to use virtual avatars for marketing purposes on social media
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The guy who made Shudu was a regular Daz user first. I remember when the NFT thing happened he popped into the comments to respond, and he had a forum handle like "Xhandahar" with an alien dude for an avatar and like 70 posts already, before he totally overhauled it with his current branding "TheDiigitals".
I guess it works pretty well for him.
are plenty on Facebook and some on Instagram apparently too (I don't do instagram)
I follow some on facebook
mostly sexy women doing photoshoots but the creators are men
My one big issue with them is that they (virtual avatars) can and quite often do convey an unrealistic standard of beauty to women and girls in the real world, leading to things like eating disorders, depression, and worse. Oh, but the virtual avatars aren't real people, is the general reply. They are if it's not made known that they aren't real people, as was the initial case with Shudu (and I'm sure many others). And even if they are known to be fake people, it still presents an image that women should look a certain way to be considered attractive. Unrealistic standards of beauty have been around for a long time, even from the birth of the supermodel. But now, there are unrealistic standards for even the supermodels to follow. I have a young teen niece who nearly died earlier this year due to an eating disorder, to the point where doctors had to force feed her to keep her alive because they couldn't get her to voluntarily eat even though they told her she would die if she didn't do so. With intensive medical and psychological treatment, she is doing better, and is no longer in immediate danger, but she still struggles with her self-image on a daily basis. She will for the rest of her life. This is what influencers hiding behind app filters and virtual avatars have gotten us. All I had to contend with in the 90's when I was a teen was heroin chic and the overly air-brushed models of Maxim..and even then it was a struggle (and still is given how low of an opinion I have on my own looks). But these days, young people have it so much worse, at so much of a higher degree, than I ever did (holy crap, I just made myself feel old).
It's all right.
People don't need space for internal organs, it's perfectly normal to have a built-in corset as a part of the internal anatomy.
For serious, I avoid anything with the world "influencer" in it. Instant black mark for me as the very word is a monument to the modern media arrogance (it implies that someone is automatically given to be inluential and not just a yet another manufactured celebrity). This article is a self-promotion for a company working in this business, anyway.
Good insight guys ! Thanks for stop by and take your time to make comments . The actual reason I`m asking is to find fresh or new ways to promote my own ( new) Services and Products in social media space . And since I have knowledge about DAZ and passion about fiction stories , maybe its not bad thing if I utlize those fun idea .
My VA will be like Grumpy or Macho man or Skinny Dude with Old Les Paul guitar instead sexy girls / nice boys since those are kind ofd emography for my new service and products customer ( Custom Motorbike Shop + Rock Music Produder)
BTW thanks again for insight
@MelissaGT I'm so sorry to hear of your niece's struggle with ED and I'm glad she was able to get help. It's so insidious; I remember we got a scary presentation and everything on anorexia and bulimia in middle school back in the 90s; by the time I got to high school the overall message I many other kids absorbed was "you're not supposed to have an eating disorder because you shouldn't have to work to meet impossible expectations" which just fuels a cycle of self-punishment and denial. Even knowing the ideal is fake doesn't help if you're still getting the message that you're supposed to reach it.
It's one of the main reasons I can't get past tech-utopian ideas of virtual models replacing real ones. The other part happens in the regular 3D modeling sphere, too; if everyone can be perfect, suddenly interesting imperfections are at a premium. Which can be pretty cool! Except that 3D avatars can deliberately leverage physical traits that would likely exclude a real person with those traits from making a living as a model. And several of the more prominent examples started out letting fans think they were real people of color, only for white creators to sheepishly poke their heads out from behind the models after being found out.
On the other hand there are definitely benefits. My partner is way into the Hololive VTuber stuff, and even though it has a reputation for lonely guys throwing money at fake anime girls a large part of the fandom is female. The performers get to be streaming personalities without having to reveal themselves on camera or build a personality brand connected to their real lives; they can be a shark, or a Lovecraftian horror, or a personified concept. It's about as exploitative as any talent broker is likely to be, but if you're going to do it, at least this makes it harder for it to follow you if you need to break away.
There's a weird tension for me there as a transgender person and a 90s kid who remembers when we were all our handles online and giving out your real name was a weird thing to do. Virtual avatars feel like something that could bring the internet closer to what I wanted the future to be back then, but it all depends on how accessible it can ultimately be for anyone far enough down the corporate production chain. I think it being accessible at all is a good sign; I see young artists selling VTuber models to other people their age and 3D gets easier to pick up every day.
Thank you - my niece had to stay in a facility for a couple months to make sure her body was getting the nutrients it needed. Imagine how difficult that was on its own, let alone during the pandemic where it made it that much harder for her parents to have access to her. Thankfully, she was already vaccinated, as my sister got her vaccinated as soon as it was rolled out to +12yo. I don't even want to think what could have happened if she'd caught COVID in her weakened state. She's home now, but it's a real struggle every day. And it will be forever for her. I know there is a huge chance for relapse.
I think there is definitely a place for virtual avatars where they can be a good thing and certainly an outlet for arts, etc. as you indicated. Anime. Toons. Any of that stuff. My issue comes from the ones that are painted as representatives of some form of feminine ideal that no human can hope to achieve. (And don't get me wrong for not mentioning the presence an impossible masculine ideal while I'm at it.) I also absolutely love your example of 3D avatars that could potentially leverage physical traits that would likely limit or exclude a person on the real world.