Here’s How To Make Those Deranged Dopplegängers That Are Everywhere
Enter the uncanny valley and embrace your creepy alter-ego.
If extremely creepy cyber dopplegängers of the people you once considered friends have been clogging up your feeds all morning, My Idol is to blame. The Chinese-language app ("English version is coming soon" its iTunes page promises) spread like wildfire late last night amongst the highest echelon of internet tastemakers: teens. Since then it's grown up and out, even getting an extremely in-depth explainer on Buzzfeed.
What differentiates My Idol from cartoon-yourself programs like Bitmoji is its customizability. After you upload a photo of yourself you can age yourself, change your hair, shave your head, swap between binary genders, and dress yourself in any matter of costume—from a 4/20 sweatshirt to a full-size panda suit. Oh, and then you can make Vines and GIFs of your brand new, extremely lifelike avatar dancing. My Idol combines The Sims, those dancing web greeting cards you paste your face into, and crappy "Virtual Makeover" sites—but this mishmash of early '00s imagination and contemporary graphics technology is actually really fun. Give it a go—the results are equal parts amusing and terrifying.
me irl https://t.co/9oEpOZma8u
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) April 22, 2015