This incident isn’t the first time China’s streaming scene has had a “filter glitch” scandal. Back in 2019, a streamer who used the online name “Your Highness Qiao Biluo” became infamous after a mid-stream malfunction revealed she wasn’t the youthful, anime-like persona viewers thought they were watching. The reveal lasted only seconds, but that was enough for the clip to explode across social media.
The glitch only lasted for a brief moment, but, according to social media chatter, that split-second “reveal” supposedly cost her a huge chunk of her audience—around 140,000 followers. That huge number and even the full context of the clip are still iffy, as no official verification has been issued. Currently, it’s hard to know whether any of it is real, including the numbers, or if it’s just Internet chatters overreacting. But regardless, the reaction is very real: people instantly started arguing about honesty, beauty standards, and whether filters have gone from “fun” to “fraud.” Looks like some of those fans were heavily invested and quite parasocial.
