Is this yellow face?

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

Woman face?

[Gwin LeShelle]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

You're all still arguing and taking posts from PragerU as having literally any weight on this subject.

This thread is a blatant political troll.

Cultural appropriation is real, so is digital black face. Finding one person as representative of a culture or race to say it's ok is not how that works.

Too many in this thread working real hard to justify being casually racially insensitive (at best).

💩 like this is why these forums are dead. Good job. You won.

And here I am, naive and not bitter, thinking we are all from the same race, the human race. But yes I always had the feeling some people in here are cats in RL x3 and btw how this also not works is, Caucasian people telling people from a certain culture when to be offended.

6 hours ago, Mark Sparkle said:

As an Asian person I also do not think my skin colour is yellow. I was using a term that I did not create the name of. 

I really doubt that, it's just an easy excuse now.... otherwise your post and your answers in here would have looked different, you wouldn't have called it yellowface. This is at best cultural appropriation...and I can tell that the person taking this picture unintentionally mixed like at least 3 cultures XD but I don't see ill intention here. So you singeling out this one picture from a Flickr artist "you like" seems rather fishy and should be taken down for naming and shaming. There's real racist pictures, easily to be found on there. I personally wouldn't call myself asian, I'm japanese. But everyone can do as they please. This discussion is as pointless as my cold coffee here at work at the moment 😂 it's probably just trolling from someone bored.

[Paul Hexem]

You know what? I changed my mind. I've been convinced.

I think all culture in SL should be carefully segregated and only allowed in their own designated regions and designated avatars.

I'm sure that would improve the platform and not have any negative consequences at all.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Hello. I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, so I'd like everyone's opinion on this: is this ponyface? If the majority says "yes", then I'll report myself for this comment.

[Edit] Save the weebs!

Edited January 11, 2023 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Akane Nacht]

17 hours ago, Mark Sparkle said:

Browsing the SL side of Flickr and seeing this made me start thinking. It's not uncommon in SL for people to make avatars that do not match their own race. The global appreciation of KPOP music has a lot of KPOP stans flocking to Mudskin to create avatars that look like their favourite KPOP idols for example. In my head I think this is fine, but then I see this post on Flickr and my brain says "thats yellowface". Then I wonder but what is it when your avatar wears a skin that does match your RL race? Are both not okay or is this flickr post different?

Just wondering out loud if you can be considered doing yellowface when everything is virtual?

PS I love the content of this Flickr user. They make fun and super realistic images that I enjoy. It's just this last post they did that made my brain thinking all these thoughts.

PPS You might need to see their other photo's on Flickr to get the context.

Scrolling through the photos, the creator seems to have a number of looks, and the 'feeling oriental' might be referring to the clothing or backdrop too. It's certainly not cringey in any way. I think it works pretty well, and what struck me was the contrast between the cherry red accessories and the muted tones and snow. I'm not sure a blonde avie would have worked very well for this composition.

fwiw, I'm not Japanese and I have many pics on my flickr of me in kimono (I collect them). I've only ever got positive comments from Japanese SLers. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

17 hours ago, Mark Sparkle said:

I think the context of my question has not come across well. This person used their original SL skin that is of a white European appearing women (please see their other content for context), and then photoshopped 'Asian' features on to it ( monolid eyes and other small tweaks ). I think also the 'feeling Oriental' title is part of whats making me think yellowface.

If your OP contains literally none of that information, yes - I'd say that the context didn't come across well.

[Lewis Luminos]

I don't think any of this is comparable to a RL actor as a caricature of an Asian character.

This is digital art. There is no RL actor here (well there is, but we don't know her RL race, we don't have a RL photo of her and her RL skin was not used in the original image).  The artist (supposedly) took a snapshot of a caucasian avatar and edited it in photoshop to make it look Asian. 

Aside from the fact that we have no proof that this is how the picture was made, let's look at what happens when you do that in Photoshop. It's not a case of "slapping some makeup on it".  When this picture was amended, the original caucasian skin of the avatar ceases to exist at all within the image. It's gone. What remains is an image of a person with an Asian skin.

I disagree that it's different from making the avatar Asian in SL itself.  All you are doing is editing pixels on a screen. Whether that's done in the viewer or in the graphics editor is nothing more than a matter of artist skill and possibly cost (skins aren't cheap, usually). The end result either way is exactly the same - a picture of an Asian character which is just that, a character, not intended  to represent anything or anyone real. 

 

[Nalates Urriah]

18 hours ago, Mark Sparkle said:

Browsing the SL side of Flickr and seeing this made me start thinking. It's not uncommon in SL for people to make avatars that do not match their own race. The global appreciation of KPOP music has a lot of KPOP stans flocking to Mudskin to create avatars that look like their favourite KPOP idols for example. In my head I think this is fine, but then I see this post on Flickr and my brain says "thats yellowface". Then I wonder but what is it when your avatar wears a skin that does match your RL race? Are both not okay or is this flickr post different?

Just wondering out loud if you can be considered doing yellowface when everything is virtual?

PS I love the content of this Flickr user. They make fun and super realistic images that I enjoy. It's just this last post they did that made my brain thinking all these thoughts.

PPS You might need to see their other photo's on Flickr to get the context.

You are apparently accepting woke agenda perpetrated by a political agenda. The political arena has plenty of haters and strives to divide people by any means into small voting blocks with little if any power thus giving their power to to the manipulators. In SL many accept the ideology but we do not have to. In SL you are free to experiment with gender, ethnicity, personality and dress.

When you ask, "Are both not okay or is this flickr post different?" you seem to be looking outside yourself for rules and social acceptance. I suggest you ask yourself why you would chose to have an avatar that looks Asian. Are you making fun of an ethnicity? Or are you more in the realm of "imitation is a sincere form of flattery'?

If you are RL white and choose an SL black avatar you may learn something about how minorities are treated. The same with Asians. In RL Asians are discriminated against and limited in admission to universities in the US but not in SL.

The idea of racial discrimination and racism is highly distorted in RL because of political agenda and its associated propaganda - which works. In SL the community is an international melting pot where people can mix at will and learn first hand what other nationalities and ethnicity are really like. Which counters the control political agendas push on us.

Enjoy SL. Stop worrying about whether you are PC or or woke enough. A red flag should come up when you meet such people.

[Orwar]

1 hour ago, Lewis Luminos said:

The artist (supposedly) took a snapshot of a caucasian avatar and edited it in photoshop to make it look Asian. 

   I still don't get this part either. Why is there any assumption that the ethnicity was 'fabricated' in the editing phase, rather than the creator wearing a different skin from their 'usual' one? And, why would that be any different? Whatever skin they're using was made in an image processing program to begin with either way, so it's not really comparable to using FaceApp's ethnicity filter on an actual person. 

[SabrinaCooke]

17 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   I still don't get this part either. Why is there any assumption that the ethnicity was 'fabricated' in the editing phase, rather than the creator wearing a different skin from their 'usual' one? And, why would that be any different? Whatever skin they're using was made in an image processing program to begin with either way, so it's not really comparable to using FaceApp's ethnicity filter on an actual person. 

I checked the creator's post on Flickr, and there's nothing to indicate that the Asian features were added to a Caucasian skin in the editing phase, so I'm honestly not sure where the OP in the forum got that from. Maybe he can enlighten us as to how he knows that? Is he friends with the image creator, perhaps? This is a real question, BTW, because I'm scratching my head over the info.

That said, what bothers me the most about the photo is the incorrect perspective. The avi's right eye is too small, taking into account the angle of the pose, and the head is much too big for the avatar's body. It's nearly the same size as her shoulders. The mouth pose is also problematic to me, but well, to each their own.

Edited January 11, 2023 by SabrinaCooke
Added some thoughts and corrected typos.

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, SabrinaCooke said:

I checked the creator's post on Flickr, and there's nothing to indicate that the Asian features were added to a Caucasian skin in the editing phase, so I'm honestly not sure where the OP in the forum got that from. Maybe he can enlighten us as to how he knows that? Is he friends with the image creator, perhaps? This is a real question, BTW, because I'm scratching my head over the info.

That said, what bothers me the most about the photo is the incorrect perspective. The avi's right eye is too small, taking into account the angle of the pose, and the head is much too big for the avatar's body. It's nearly the same size as her shoulders. The mouth pose is also problematic to me, but well, to each their own.

The eyes are the same size. The way the bangs lay and then circle back under her right eye creates the optical illusion that one eye is smaller than the other. The body is at an angle to the camera with the head turned towards the camera, again creating an optical illusion.

It's all a matter of perspective. When your perception shifts, it changes what you see. Look at the tree again. Do you now see the gorilla and lioness and the little fish jumping out of the water? That is what happens when you shift or change your perception, also known as an optical illusion.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Silent Mistwalker

[SabrinaCooke]

34 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

The eyes are the same size. The way the bangs lay and then circle back under her right eye creates the optical illusion that one eye is smaller than the other. The body is at an angle to the camera with the head turned towards the camera, again creating an optical illusion.

It's all a matter of perspective. When your perception shifts, it changes what you see. Look at the tree again. Do you now see the gorilla and lioness and the little fish jumping out of the water? That is what happens when you shift or change your perception, also known as an optical illusion.

Be that as it may, it doesn't look right to me. But as I said, to each their own.

[Silent Mistwalker]

26 minutes ago, SabrinaCooke said:

Be that as it may, it doesn't look right to me. But as I said, to each their own.

I thought I was being nice by explaining why it doesn't look right to you. I apologize for offending you.

[SabrinaCooke]

5 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I thought I was being nice by explaining why it doesn't look right to you. I apologize for offending you.

Huh? Where did you get that I was offended?

[Orwar]

3 hours ago, SabrinaCooke said:

That said, what bothers me the most about the photo is the incorrect perspective. The avi's right eye is too small, taking into account the angle of the pose, and the head is much too big for the avatar's body. It's nearly the same size as her shoulders. The mouth pose is also problematic to me, but well, to each their own.

   Mm, I disagree. The left eye appears smaller because it's squinting, it's not the shape or perspective as much as the animation. The shoulders are sloped back and the torso is angled towards the camera so the shoulders look smaller than they are, meanwhile the hairstyle makes the head look larger than it is - proportionally I don't think there are any major discrepancies. The neck might be a touch on the long and thin side, but it's hard to tell with the angle and animation - and then, people seldom perfectly fit our attempts of standardising proportions, so it doesn't strike me as a surreal appearance. 

[SabrinaCooke]

4 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Mm, I disagree. The left eye appears smaller because it's squinting, it's not the shape or perspective as much as the animation. The shoulders are sloped back and the torso is angled towards the camera so the shoulders look smaller than they are, meanwhile the hairstyle makes the head look larger than it is - proportionally I don't think there are any major discrepancies. The neck might be a touch on the long and thin side, but it's hard to tell with the angle and animation - and then, people seldom perfectly fit our attempts of standardising proportions, so it doesn't strike me as a surreal appearance. 

Mmm, there's something off about it to my eye, still, but maybe it's just me. And hey, different strokes for different folks! (Adding a smiley so you don't think I'm offended.)

[Orwar]

2 minutes ago, SabrinaCooke said:

Mmm, there's something off about it to my eye, still, but maybe it's just me.

   There's pretty much always some level of uncanny valley factor going on with any given SL avatar; the more we try to make it realistic, the bigger that factor becomes. Making avatars smile via animations look unnatural, as do a lot of parts of any facial expression - the way the eyes move and how the eyelids don't move with them, the way some animations affect the nose (I've seen chewing animations I've seen make me think of rabbits, with how the nose tip move up and down - yeah that's not what chewing looks like!), the way the lips move when we talk but the cheeks don't - there's not enough bones in an SL avatar to realistically replicate natural human facial movements (a human face has 42 muscles in it that can create some pretty complex movements). It's why whenever I use facial animations, I tend to try finding subtle ones (and since I usually shoot my pics with both my AO and my facial animations running live, I may have to reset, resync, and re-shoot a few times until I catch a snap where there's nothing too weird happening and no extremities clipping through my avi). 

   Still, it's nowhere near as jarring as when people put their SL pics through those wonky FaceApp smile filters .. There's no more effective way to ruin an SL pic.

[SabrinaCooke]

2 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   There's pretty much always some level of uncanny valley factor going on with any given SL avatar; the more we try to make it realistic, the bigger that factor becomes. Making avatars smile via animations look unnatural, as do a lot of parts of any facial expression - the way the eyes move and how the eyelids don't move with them, the way some animations affect the nose (I've seen chewing animations I've seen make me think of rabbits, with how the nose tip move up and down - yeah that's not what chewing looks like!), the way the lips move when we talk but the cheeks don't - there's not enough bones in an SL avatar to realistically replicate natural human facial movements (a human face has 42 muscles in it that can create some pretty complex movements). It's why whenever I use facial animations, I tend to try finding subtle ones (and since I usually shoot my pics with both my AO and my facial animations running live, I may have to reset, resync, and re-shoot a few times until I catch a snap where there's nothing too weird happening and no extremities clipping through my avi). 

   Still, it's nowhere near as jarring as when people put their SL pics through those wonky FaceApp smile filters .. There's no more effective way to ruin an SL pic.

Yeah, that's true re: the uncanny valley effect. SL animated smiles tend to either look like Joker, or like the avi ate a whole lemon.  I tend to take my pics with my head's built in animations, since it has a small smile that doesn't look creepy, at least to me. If not, I just use my Axis HUD to get a decent expression. 

I'm not a huge fan of the FaceApp filters, but I've seen a few pics that were able to use them effectively. Few and far between, though. I hope someday we get actual, decent smiles in SL. 

[Rick Nightingale]

I wasn't going to say anything, but the picture reminded me of something done by those irritating AI things that art sites are being flooded with. My brain even automatically counted the fingers when I first opened the post, before I read anything.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[colleen Criss]

If the OP intended this to be about race, they did a damn sneaky thing. When I read that post I rolled my eyes over ignorance, period. Had they presented a post on racism out right this thread would have been locked immediately! The OP is aware of this , they wanted to stir the pot.

This is exactly why intelligent conversations on race can't be had on or offline.  Besides we should be talking about ways to end racism if we want to talk not about who is or isn't but what we can all do as the race of human beings to end it.

[FelicityPage]

I don't see yellow face. I see someone making art, digital art.

 

[StarlanderGoods]

I keep missing this lovely threads, and finding them when they are already way too mature for me to read every comment, that´s the real racism, excluding me from the early spoils of these threads.

[CaithLynnSayes]

1 minute ago, StarlanderGoods said:

I keep missing this lovely threads, and finding them when they are already way too mature for me to read every comment, that´s the real racism, excluding me from the early spoils of these threads.

I'll PM you when another juicy one comes up

[Quartz Mole]

I've just removed a load of posts in an attempt get this thread back on topic.  While obviously it's difficult to discuss the OP's original post without bringing in wider issues, please let's try to concentrate on the specific question, and not go off into wider issues about Prager U and Hawaiian pizza.

Otherwise I'll have to lock the thread.

[Kalegthepsionicist]

east asian skin are various is not always yellow lol.

ftom dark to pale

ex

uyghur people actually mixed race

google it

Edited January 12, 2023 by Kalegthepsionicist