Highlights
- Fedha "PinkyDoll" Sinon has found success on TikTok by pretending to be a video game NPC and reacting to digital gifts, earning up to $3,000 per livestream.
- The NPC livestream trend on TikTok is inspired by video game culture and has gained popularity among content creators, such as Cherry Crush and Satoyu727.
- While some view NPC streams as fetish content, others, like Cherry Crush, argue that they are meant to be funny rather than suggestive, making the trend relatively harmless compared to other TikTok fads.
TikTok star Fedha "PinkyDoll" Sinon discovered an extremely lucrative niche in hosting bizarre livestreams wherein she pretends to be a video game NPC reacting to digital gifts sent to her by viewers, earning up to $3,000 per broadcast. This unconventional social media trend emerged shortly after TikTok banned WWE star Roman Reigns.
The ByteDance-developed social media app spawned many globally popular memes since launching in 2016. Many of those fads were inspired by video game culture, with some of them—like the TikTok Koopa trend—being more unusual than others. That category also includes NPC livestreams during which content creators broadcast their canned reactions to viewer-bought gifts, essentially pretending to be real-life non-playable characters, hence the name. TikTok splits the revenue from such digital goodies with content creators who receive them.
Sinon recently rose to prominence as one of the most successful NPC streamers to date, with her PinkyDoll TikTok account amassing over 612,000 followers as of July 2023. In an interview with The New York Times, the Canadian influencer revealed she makes between $2,000 and $3,000 per a single NPC livestream on TikTok. Combined with her other social media accounts on platforms like OnlyFans and Instagram, Sinon's unusual streams currently net her approximately $7,000 per day. The content creator revealed that she used some Grand Theft Auto characters as inspiration for her ongoing work, while admitting that she's still struggling to define what video game NPCs actually are.
PinkyDoll isn't the only Internet personality that's currently making a living from NPC streams; Ohio-based Cherry Crush and Japanese influencer Satoyu727 have both been successfully monetizing such content in recent months, amassing millions of subscribers across their social media channels. This TikTok livestream format was possibly inspired by the so-called "Tamagotchi girlfriends," a similar social media trend that originated in the Far East.
And while some describe NPC streams as fetish content, not all Internet personalities who jumped on this bandwagon agree with that label. In a statement provided to the NYT, Cherry Crush insisted that her broadcasts are in no way meant to be "suggestive" but merely "funny."
Ultimately, the trend seems to be fairly harmless, at least relative to some other fads that have arisen from TikTok in recent times. For example, it was only a few months ago that a TikTok bucket prank sent a woman to a hospital. Compared to such antics, NPC streams appear to be much more innocuous, even if their contents are no less bizarre to witness.
Source: The New York Times