I’m Katherine Dee. I read in an industry newsletter that I should re-introduce myself in every post. 😓 I’m an Internet ethnographer, sometimes podcaster, and reporter. I spend maybe 20 hours a week talking to people about how they use the Internet. It’s hard work. Consider sending me a few bucks for my efforts:
I’m really enjoying these streams, even though I know I need to practice getting to the point! I’m attaching today’s stream here but there are tons of tangents, so I’m also providing a write-up of what I talked about below.
BTW, if any Substack engineers are reading this, please, please, please provide better analytics! It’s unclear if I’m talking to anybody at all during the stream because the ticker only counts up—it never ticks down! It’s like the stream-equivalent of “heaven-banning.”
Today, I talked about Lisa Yo and what I suspect is behind transracialism (which is now more commonly referred to as “diaracialism” in its very small community).
Lisa Yo is a fascinating character who first showed up on my TikTok about a month ago. At first glance, she seemed like a Korea-based woman—possibly of Central Asian descent and maybe suffering from anorexia—who posts influencer-style sponsored videos about skincare and makeup. Her videos have this really unusual uncanny valley feel. Part of it is her visible discomfort in her own skin. As my ex-father-in-law once said of me, “She walks like she doesn’t own her legs.” Adding to the surreality, her TikToks are all narrated with an AI voiceover.
It turns out Lisa Yo is actually a 23-year-old Austrian who’s had extensive plastic surgery to look more Asian, possibly Korean. Previously, she described herself as a “koreaboo,” which is basically the Korean equivalent of “weeaboo,” itself, a contemporary word for “orientalist.” She had an older online alias—”lisartesandcookies”—that was apparently a failed influencer project on YouTube. It’s mostly wiped, but the archivists of our discontent (including myself now) have kept the receipts.
Older pictures show Lisa has clearly had a lot of work done: forehead filler, multiple rhinoplasties, under-eye filler for an aegyo-sal effect, lip filler, jaw surgery—the works. She’s been accused of “Asian-fishing,” like she was in this video:
I asked this creator, “What do you expect her to do?” because, really, what is she supposed to say at this point? Her face permanently looks like this now. Is she supposed to apologize? I mean, in Yo’s defense, she’s in this impossible position. This isn’t make-up or angles. Her face is permanently changed. It’s unclear to me what people who are this deep into the performance are supposed to do.
At any rate, Lisa has seen all the chatter. In response, she’s claimed to be half Mongolian (sometimes half Russian, depending on the day), and also that she was viciously bullied as a child for her “Asian appearance,” which is why she pursued plastic surgery in the first place. However, acquaintances—including somebody claiming to be a former friend who’s actually Mongolian—have provided “receipts” saying she’s Austrian, full stop. The alleged Mongolian friend even claims Lisa had zero knowledge of Mongolian culture and latched onto this identity as an after-the-fact justification for her new face. Who knows though: lolcows attract obsessive anti-fans, and anti-fans have a tendency to lie about their fan object.
Naturally, Lisa’s faced a lot of backlash. On various snark threads, people suspect her social media is propped up by bots or sock puppet accounts, claiming that some of the comments on her videos are auto-generated positivity from empty-looking profiles. It’s an odd story. As I said in the stream, I don’t think she looks bad, though I’m curious about what her inner life is like. Whatever the case, I hope she finds peace.
Lisa isn’t the only example of a “diaracial” or “transracial” person, as we know well. Plenty of people online—and throughout history—have lied about their cultural, ethnic, and racial identities.
On Tumblr, for instance, it wasn’t uncommon that people would fabricate entire identities as a form of social currency. In the offline world, we have Rachel Dolezal, Hilary “Hilaria” Baldwin, Jessica Krug, and C.V. Vitolo-Hadad. There’s Oli London, who’s been transgender, transracial, and reactionary.
There’s also a richer history of adopting new identities, before the social media age: Cher implied Indigenous ancestry for decades, so did Senator Elizabeth Warren. Before them, figures like Korla Pandit, Grey Owl, Iron Eyes Cody, and Sacheen Littlefeather misrepresented their identities for a host of different reasons. In a lot of ways, I think it’s baked in to the culture of the United States.
To me—and this is an old DF take—there really isn’t a meaningful difference between the person who has, let’s say, one Mexican grandparent who didn’t grow up speaking Spanish or with any Mexican culture in their immediate environment, including and maybe especially their home, and somebody like Lisa Yo. Lisa Yo is the extreme manifestation of what we see every day in people like Elizabeth Warren claiming to be Native American, or even people who are three or four generations removed from any Italian or Irish ancestry claiming to be European. It’s a spectrum of behaviors that includes your coworker who claims to have descended from “Cherokee royalty,” the invented histories of reconstructivist neo-pagan religions, and Rachel Dolezal.
In my opinion, there are three types of diaracial people:
1. Affinity-Based
These folks develop a deep identification with an image with little lived experience of it. In our globalized, media-saturated world, people can encounter and adopt cultural markers from groups they feel speak to them emotionally or aesthetically. This might also help explain things like neopronouns or even “nostalgia” for places, times, or experiences foreign to people.
I explain what I mean by affinity-based identity over experienced identity at length here:
2. Status-Based
Some shift racial presentation for perceived social or economic advantages or cultural capital. My guess is that this is rarely—if ever—the sole reason for diaracialism.
3. Identity-Based
This category has deeper psychological underpinnings, like body dysmorphia or internalized racism. Some people might see their own race as inferior, leading to internal conflict and attempts to escape that label. For example, there are quite a few black people in the diaracial community who express hatred of being black.
Another thread I’ve picked up on is that white women have a tendency to romanticize Asian identity in an unusual way. They see Asian women as more “pure.” There tends to be an overlap with eating disorders in this type.
Anyway, that’s my rabbit hole for the day—thanks for sticking around!
Housekeeping:
We still need to do our Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? book club. I will set a date for that soon.
I have two releases on Metalabel! We’re doing a second session of Internet Real Life with Sean Monahan, Molly Soda, August Lamm, and Gunseli Yalcinkaya. Buy a ticket here.
I did a really bad job of advertising this but a couple of months ago, I released egirl 001, an illustrated timeline of the history of the egirl. Please buy a copy. I think it’s well done. Humbly.
Me Around the Web:
Internet Overexposure Syndrome for Comment Mag
Inside the Erectile Dysfunction–Industrial Complex for the Free Press
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