I don't think the point is to objectify. I think it's the opposite. It's turning objects into something that satisfies yearnings for human company, sometimes replacing it and sometimes in addition to it. It's like listening to music often because you want to hear human voices. And one big name, Hatsune Miku, is a virtual pop star with a synthesized voice, which is based on female human voices, even though it isn't based on a single human voice.

As globalization moves on there are more and more people without romantic partners and/or close friends nearby and they'll use their imagination to fulfill desires they're missing.

It really is just fun. I don't know why people insist in assuming malice.

Doesn't have to have been made with any malice to still be creepy.

Because yea, it's creepy.

Or, to think of that another way, something doesn't have to be inherently creepy for someone to be creeped out by that thing. Sometimes disgust is a fact about the person who's disgusted, rather than a fact about the world.

Would it still have been creepy if it was called "Generative Portraits of Anime Girls" instead of "Waifu"? I bet people react just to the name.

Stop discrimination against creepy people!

Why don't you be more specific? If you get down to the guts of everything... It's all "creepy".

Many things appear "creepy" but that isn't any reason to think they're bad. In fact, creepiness can be good. Would you say a horror movie has done a good job if it failed to creep you out?

Are you sure that you aren't just using "creepy" to shut down non-traditional forms of private sexuality?

Miku is absolutely based on one and only one person: Fujita Saki. Though the two don't sound like each other.

Also, just cause you find it creepy doesn't mean it's reciprocated by everyone else in the world. Besides, the usage in that booth was very tongue in cheek.

The creepy thing is funny because nerds fawning over stylized drawings is just about the most innocuous thing there is

Until things like this happen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Miyazaki

Ah, yes, surely this man killed and raped little girls because he was influenced by cartoons, and not because he was born with a deformity into one of the most collectivist societies on earth and then ostracized for his entire life. We're so lucky that sexually normative people never rape or kill anyone.

Sarcasm aside, this is one of the many, many examples of choosing a scapegoat to frame an entire sexuality, race, or any group of people with a common interest as evil while completely ignoring any and all context. People are not animals and possess some degree of responsibility and the ability to tell reality from fiction. Unless someone presents some hard evidence that stylized drawings lead to actual attacks against real children (and to my knowledge, this simply is not true; in fact, it's easy to argue the opposite) we need to stop with this puritan outrage like we stopped blaming computer games for any and all violent crime back in the late 90s.

Yes, it's a textbook example of moral panic and the WP article says so. I was primarily pointing out that to most people, especially in Japan, the image of "nerds fawning over stylized drawings" sounds about as innocuous as "Catholic priests fawning over little choir boys".

I've confirmed that what you say is accurate on Wikipedia, though I'd take your word from it because your username starts with "hatsune". I think this might be the first time I've been beetlejuiced on HN...

Hehe, I know quite a bit about her.

It should be in a similar way, but in reality people lose their minds when the topic is sexual.

Unless it is middle aged ladies drooling over male characters from Jane Austen dramatisations.

Yup, and people like Bianca Devins get killed in the fallout.

What happened?