Fans were hit with quite a shock when a popular Chinese streamer, believed to be a young woman, turned out to be 58 years old.
Qiaobiluo, a popular personality on the Chinese ‘Douyu’ streaming platform, had amassed 130,000 followers without ever revealing her full face. Well… until July 25th when a computer glitch revealed her true identity.
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During a stream with fellow Internet personality Qingzi, the woman’s filter malfunctioned, allowing her 100,000+ fans to see her real appearance.
To make matters worse, Qiaobiluo didn’t even realise her mask was removed until fans started rapidly leaving the stream, with some even cancelling their donations.
According to AsiaOne, many fans felt betrayed and left comments expressing their anger on the popular Chinese social media platform, Weibo.
“Isn’t this fraud? It’s just indirectly cheating, and she did it so nonchalantly,” a comment on Weibo read (translated by AsiaOne).
Basically, the 58-year-old harnessed the power of fancy 2019 technology like that FaceApp filter to hide her true identity from hundreds of thousands of fans.
“I can’t show my face until I receive gifts worth 100,000 yuan ($11,950). After all, I’m a good-looking host,” she said after fans demanded her to reveal her face in a previous stream.
Despite turning out to be a completely different person, Qiabiluo hasn’t really been hurt by the saga at all. The 58-year-old, who is now being called “Granny”, has surpassed 650,000 followers since the ordeal back on July 25. She has also become the platform’s most searched streamer following the controversy.
You know what they say, any publicity is good publicity.
Honestly, it’s kind of terrifying that a random woman has the power and knowledge to mask her identity like this on a live stream. I wonder how many other Youtubers and video stars are out there doing the same thing.
After a short hiatus from the platform, Qiabiluo is back to regularly scheduled streaming for her evergrowing fanbase.
