Seraphine:
The Complications of Virtual Stardom by: Ethan Lam
On June 26th, two accounts under the handle “seradot-
wav” were registered on Twitter and Instagram by a user named Seraphine. The first post to both accounts was a trio of selfies captioned “hello world ” from Seraphine herself - a young woman with flowing pink and purple hair that covered parts of her face as she smiled at the camera. An accompanying tweet explained that she had started her accounts “to share music and hopefully connect with people :)” In the following days and months, Seraphine would continue to post, revealing more and more about herself. Of the pictures she posted, some were of herself as a child, of her with her cat, of her journal entries and doodles, of candid polaroids, of her playing instruments, etc. She would tweet out her most random and sporadic thoughts - “today i learned some people cook rice on the stove????what,” “baddie of the week is Dr. Doofenshmirtz he knew what was up” - and retweet art and music that caught her eye. From time to time she would also release some covers of her own, including her take on Russian pop duo t.A.T.u’s 2002 hit “All the Things She Said.” Based on this information alone, you could come to the conclusion that Seraphine is a typical young internet-savvy musician - she certainly tweeted and posted with all the casual, relatable, self-aware mannerisms of one. But Seraphine doesn’t actually exist - she is a virtual influencer, a digital avatar who posts to social media as if they were a real person. Fans began to speculate that Seraphine was actually an upcoming character in League of Legends - one of the most popular video games in the world - a theory that soon proved to be correct. While the idea of a virtual pop star or virtual influencer is still a bit novel, it certainly isn’t unheard of. In fact, Seraphine wasn’t even Riot Games’ – the company behind League of Legends – first foray into the world of music and virtual influencers. Using the game’s characters as band members, Riot has produced 3 different groups, the most successful of which is 2018’s K/DA, a virtual K-pop group whose 4 members are voiced by Soyeon and Miyeon of (G) I-DLE, Madison Beer, and Jaira Burns. The group’s return this year was tied in with the release of Seraphine, who helped “produce” their new EP and featured on lead single MORE. Some virtual pop stars have become normalized
and present within the popular music canon. Blur’s Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett teamed up to form Gorillaz in 1998, a virtual band that has achieved massive success over the course of two decades. And Hatsune Miku - a holographic “Vocaloid” who sings with a fully synthesized voice - is a pop culture icon in Japan who has played on Letterman, opened for Lady Gaga, and toured globally (she was even supposed to play Coachella this year.) Virtual pop stars aren’t all that common, but listeners are generally open-minded enough to accept them. At the very least, they won’t immediately roll their eyes at the concept. This is all to say that it wasn’t the inherent “weirdness” of the virtual star concept that, in October, suddenly thrust Seraphine under the scrutiny of the internet. She isn’t even the first virtual star to use social media like a real person might – that honour goes to influencer Lil Miquela, who started posting in 2016. Instead, Seraphine began to draw the ire of an audience beyond the League of Legends player base after she began to tweet about her “struggles” with imposter syndrome, anxiety, and self-doubt. On October 10th, Seraphine tweeted: “we’re going to shanghai [The location of this year’s League world championship] in 2 days and it’s finally setting in, all at once. i’ve been working so hard, and i’ve been trying my best to love myself, but i still can’t find the confidence i need… i’m realizing that i can’t do this alone. and maybe i need to be the one to ask for help... so could you give me some encouraging words? i need something to believe in right now.” It wasn’t the first time that she tweeted about struggling with her mental health, but this particular tweet drew widespread attention to her. Replies varied between words of encouragement and affirmation, critiques of Riot over the ethics of this marketing technique, and expressions of disbelief at the users who replied to Seraphine as if she were a real person. “you really just typed a whole essay out for a fictional ad campaign for a video game,” one user wrote in response to another. Perhaps Seraphine is reflective of something more pertinent than an extension of “woke” and “relatable brand” capitalism. The Seraphine project illustrates how
