Not long ago, former AKB48 member Mayu Watanabe announced his retirement from the entertainment industry.
This represents the official end of her 14-year idol career.
Mayu Watanabe as an orthodox idol is almost flawless and has never had a black history.
But as they grow older, the appearance and physical and mental state of aid beans will inevitably change.
At a certain tipping point, they will eventually feel tired.
If we can be eternally young and never tired, is it not the ultimate form of "idol"?
"Virtual idols" are such a kind of existence.
It will not age naturally, and more importantly, it will not engage in "idol disqualification" behavior that hurts the feelings of fans.
At present, the elders and top streams of the virtual idol industry are undoubtedly " Hatsune Mirai " .
This double ponytail girl, who is 1 meter 58 meters tall and weighs more than 80 pounds, has hundreds of millions of fans around the world.
There have been concert tours in dozens of cities around the world, and the venues are full, and it is difficult to find a ticket.
He has also been a concert guest at Lady Gaga.
The phenomenal popularity of Hatsune is difficult to replicate.
However, with the rapid upgrading of science and technology, more and more Internet companies and traditional brokerage companies have begun to enter the virtual idol industry.
There is Instagram red Lil Miquela abroad, and the first-line big names are looking for her to cooperate with blockbusters.
In China, there are Luo Tianyi of the benchmark hatsune, Douyin red silent sauce, iQiyi's band "RiCH BOOM", "Infinite King Group" derived from the game "Glory of kings" and so on.
The four "paper man male gods" of the once-popular love (Krypton gold) mobile game "Love and Producer" are actually the ideas of virtual idols.
Will the virtual love beans living in the program code be a better star-chasing choice?
The movie that Uncle Fish wants to talk about today predicted the popularity of virtual idols as early as 2002, and it is—
Simone
S1m0ne
The film's writer and director, Andrew Nicole, is not small.
His debut film, Starring Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, is a science fiction film that explores genetic modification.
After that, "Truman's World", "Happy Terminal" and "King of War" can be called a ministry classic.
Simone is his second directorial work, and the cast is quite strong.
Al Pacino plays the protagonist Victor, a frustrated art film director.
Winona Red, the goddess of literature and art, made a cameo appearance as a female star on the set who "played a big card".
Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld) who plays Victor's daughter was only 15 years old at the time.
The virtual idol "Simone" is played by supermodel Rachel Roberts.
After filming this film, she became the director's real wife.
At the beginning of the film, the female star played by Winona Red makes trouble on the set and unilaterally breaks the contract and does not shoot.
And that's just because the crew failed to meet her conditions: providing the biggest trailer, jacuzzi, 7 packs of cigarettes a day...
Even the candy on the set must be according to her taste, not cherry flavor.
The director of the film, Victor, can't stand this kind of unreasonable teasing.
I thought I could finish the film by post-editing, but the female star side demanded that it completely disappear from the film and leave no shot.
Coupled with a previous box office hit, Victor was eventually fired from the production company.
That night, the frustrated Victor is stopped by a strange man who suddenly appears.
One-Eyed Man is a scientist and Fan of Victor who once intersected at a conference on "Futurology."
Victor didn't take him to heart.
However, one day not long after, the one-eyed man's lawyer suddenly came to the door.
The one-eyed man committed suicide and left Victor a "legacy".
It looks like a CD-ROM.
Victor plugged the disc into the computer and a blonde beauty appeared on the screen.
Through a program designed by the one-eyed man, she can be controlled to imitate human language, movements and expressions.
This image was named "SIMULATION ONE" by the one-eyed man, and the middle letter was removed to become "SIMONE".
Nine months later, Victor programmed Simone to complete the previous half-baked film on the basis of live-action shooting.
In the film, Simone has a large number of close-ups and monologues, and her acting skills are not bad.
At the test screening, people who were not optimistic about this project before were also moved to a handful of snot and tears.
Everyone is amazed that Victor has unearthed a "treasure girl".
Film rookie Simone became famous overnight, with countless fans and a hard ticket in the theater.
But Victor didn't tell anyone about Simone's secret.
It just means that she is low-key and private.
Acting is a combination of experience and technology, and in a performance, the most impressive thing for the audience is often the emotional expression of the actor.
Simone was just a cold routine, no self-awareness, let alone feelings.
Her acting skills actually come from a huge database of actors - Grace Kelly, Sophia Rowland, Meryl Streep and other acting actresses.
Victor was able to "mix" the proportions of different actors' styles at will, and even allowed Simone to "replicate" Hepburn's smile.
Simone has no interactive function, and her intelligence is inferior to Siri's, which is at best a system of imitation.
Therefore, the performance in the movie is actually Victor himself playing the double reed behind Simone.
Even when he wasn't filming, he would talk to simone and pretend to be in a conversation.
This mysterious female star, who has released the doves of the media again and again, inevitably arouses suspicion.
To reassure, Victor announced that Simone would star in his new film.
There was also a way to get her and the cast and crew to talk on the phone.
Of course, the so-called shooting is all post-production.
The opponent scene of the male and female protagonists is either no physical performance, or they find a stand-in pile, and then synthesize Simone later.
A few lines of tears can be precisely controlled.
If you can hide it for a while, you can't hide it for a lifetime.
Victor began to shift his strategy, letting Simone appear in public.
But you must not play close and head-on.
The shadow that the reporter saw was actually Victor playing a shadow puppet with a Barbie doll.
The effect is quite realistic.
In order to complete the process, he also found a stand-in, but his face must not be seen.
Simone's presidential suite is also full of traces of Victor's forged life.
Victor rounds one lie to another, and the snowball gets bigger and bigger, and he gradually becomes blinded by vanity.
Simone not only won two Oscars, but also developed into a singer.
Whitney Houston and Madonna, a powerful database of singers, made her a superstar.
The concert was open, and Simone really stood in the center of the stage by holographic projection.
Magazines, newspapers, television, cinemas are filled with Simone's images, and she has completely captured people's hearts.
There was no doubt about her authenticity, even if no one had actually seen her in person.
"Simone" was made 18 years ago, when "virtual idol" was still a very new concept.
Now it seems that some plots can be called God prophecies, such as holographic projections.
It is not only the core technology of Hatsune Mirai concerts, in recent years, holographic projection has also allowed Teresa Teng, Zhang Guorong and other deceased stars to be revived on the stage.
Many people watched the movie at that time and thought that all this could not happen.
Spit movie bugs – why do people believe Simone really exists?
But history has proven that virtual idols are now just red.
People who question virtual idols often pull "real" out to say things.
Uncle Yu felt that the word truth was worth savoring.
When you come into contact with the world full of Simone's images, film and television works, TV shows, media reports have her presence, at this time, will you still doubt her authenticity?
Especially for ordinary people, the stars and idols we learn about every day are not far away from the sky and cannot see the true face once.
In the world of mass entertainment, "reality" itself is shaped, and what is shown in the film is the reality created by the medium.
The so-called star design is also the truth.
Agencies, idols themselves, and fans are desperately defending the "human design", because it represents the personal charm of the star and is the key to the circle of fans.
But how far this "human setting" is from the true character of the idol, fans never know.
Moreover, even if there is a "black material" burst, sometimes fans will actively choose not to believe it.
The more important thing that distinguishes virtual idols from real idols is autonomous consciousness.
At present, even high-tech-based virtual idols are nothing more than a set of cold 0s and 1s.
Every move of the virtual idol is set up, the automatic reaction of the program.
So they can't make mistakes unless the program requires them to deliberately "make mistakes," just as Victor deliberately made Simone smoke in front of the camera and run the train with his mouth full.
Although real idols are also subject to the company, they are as human as we are, have feelings, and will make mistakes.
This is what distinguishes man from machines.
But in the strict idol industry, making mistakes means that idols are disqualified, lose fans, and even be expelled from idol qualifications.
In the end, the star-chasing thing becomes the Pygmalion effect, and we are like sculptors, falling in love with the ideal idols we have carved out.
While we question virtual idols, we are also pushing real idols in the direction of machines.
Whether it is "real" or not, it seems that not many people care anymore.