Why TikTok Sensation PinkyDoll Is Freaking Everyone Out

The woman in the video has bleach-blonde hair, vacant eyes, and poreless skin that glows with the help of multiple filters. When she speaks, it is in an endless stream of animal sounds, nonsensical phrases like “Ice cream, so good!” and an eerily realistic imitation of the sound of a balloon being popped. At first glance, it is hard to tell if she is actually human.

This is the point. The woman in the video, who goes by the screen name Pinky Doll, is an NPC streamer, a real person who makes money imitating a video game character imitating a real person. (The acronym NPC stands for “non-playable character”—the background actors in video games not controlled by the players themselves.)

The world of NPC streamers was thrust into the limelight recently when videos of Pinky Doll went viral on Twitter. Removed from her devoted fan base on TikTok, the creator’s strange mannerisms and bizarre utterings spurred mass confusion and more than a few diatribes about the state of the modern world. The fact that she was also objectively attractive made the discourse irresistible, and soon, videos of other creators were making the rounds, too.

Read more at The Daily Beast.