How Pinkydoll's eccentric livestreams went mainstream

11:36How Pinkydoll's eccentric livestreams went mainstream

If "ice cream so good" doesn't mean anything to you, you probably haven't come across Pinkydoll.

The Montreal-based TikTok livestreamer became famous overnight for her videos where she pretends to be an NPC, or a non-playable background character you might encounter in a video game.

Internet culture experts Rebecca Jennings and Samantha Cole tell Commotion guest host Amil Niazi about how Pinkydoll's niche content unexpectedly went mainstream, why people are willing to pay money to watch her perform online — and what it signals about internet culture today.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Amil: Sam, can you tell us what's happening in a Pinkydoll live?

Sam: It's a lot. It's very colourful. It's very active. It's kind of frenetic. I would compare it to Candy Crush. There are lots of things scrolling around on the screen, there are emojis coming up and she's doing motions that correspond with the little icons…. It's so much, and you're also getting the view counter — which is another mesmerizing thing in itself. We're talking 20,000 viewers and up every live. I think part of why it's so mesmerizing is it's so much to take in.

Amil: Yeah, it's like visual chaos. I love that sometimes she's popping popcorn kernels with her hair straightener.

Sam: Yes, that's also happening. She's holding a hair straightener with a kernel in it, and you're kind of watching that to see when it pops.

Amil: For a while, I did not realize what was going on — and that's what is so great about these videos. There's so much happening. Rebecca, you don't know this, but you're my unofficial guide to the dark corners of the internet. What was your reaction when you first saw Pinkydoll?

Rebecca: When I first saw Pinkydoll, I was like, "Yes, absolutely. Let's introduce the world to how weird TikTok lives are." For those who don't know, there's TikTok, and then there's TikTok Live. TikTok Live is infinitely weirder than TikTok itself. [On] TikTok Live, you scroll and you're like, "Why am I watching this person sleep? Why am I watching this person sell a bunch of crappy clothes they have like a carnival barker, in this weird studio space?" TikTok Live is sort of like this exercise in grabbing people's attention in the weirdest possible way — and I think Pinkydoll is an expert on this.

Amil: Samantha, Pinkydoll has thousands and thousands of followers on TikTok Live and OnlyFans. At this point, I'm sure it's just skyrocketing. Why are they so captivated by her?

Sam: The biggest draw is the interactivity of it. When you're interacting with a live, you're talking to the creator and hoping that they respond to you. And the way to get them to respond to you in this case is to pay them in these little gifts…. We don't really understand why we like it, but we definitely do. I think even if you are disgusted or disturbed by it, you like it a little bit. That's why you keep watching it. That's how she keeps people hooked.

Amil: Rebecca, everything to me makes sense on the internet when you just say the f-word — and that word is "fetish."... This has been described as "fetish-adjacent." What does that mean?

Rebecca: Pretty much everything on the internet can be a fetish, and that's why the lines get so blurry and why they're so hard to understand if you're not always on the internet. An example of fetish content on TikTok that is not explicitly sexual, but it's fetish content if you're watching it for that purpose — a lot of them are food-related. And so you'll see maybe a hot girl making this kind of gross food, like a mac and cheese casserole with random other stuff in it. And you're like, "Why would anyone make that? That sounds disgusting." And then it's like, "Oh, it's fetish content." Because maybe they like the final shot of the woman tasting it — that's what they're after. But obviously, plenty of people watch that and they're just like, "Oh, my God, I can't believe people cook like this. How weird." And that's why they watch it. People watch things for different reasons.

I think someone who doesn't regularly watch this kind of stuff can look at someone like Pinkydoll and be like, "Oh, that's kind of ASMR-adjacent. We get the same pleasure out of watching her as watching hydraulic press videos."... She fulfills that role as someone who is just satisfying to watch. But also, there are a bajillion people who have fetishes for video game-adjacent characters or culture, and she's sort of using that as part of her look as well.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.