How TikTok creator PinkyDoll mesmerised the Internet with ‘ice cream so good’

NEW YORK – If you watch a live-stream video hosted by TikTok creator PinkyDoll, it will not be long before you hear her say, “ice cream so good”.

She will say those words again and again, her tongue hanging out as she noisily pretends to lick a cone.

Every time she utters the catchphrase, she is getting paid. This is her job.

PinkyDoll, whose real name is Fedha Sinon, became a social media celebrity this month thanks to the eccentric live streams in which she mimics video game characters.

In a typical performance, Ms Sinon, 27, who lives in Montreal, Canada, stares into the camera lens while delivering a set of canned phrases.

As she streams, viewers send her digital gifts in the form of cartoon items like roses, dinosaurs and ice cream cones. Each item translates to a cash payment for Ms Sinon.

The gifts float onto the screen and she reacts to each one with the same cartoonish mannerisms.

Her reaction to the ice cream cones has become a meme, with many people posting images of United States President Joe Biden with his favourite snack along with the words, “ice cream so good”.

Ms Sinon speaks in a singsong voice that might be described as “sexy baby”. Sometimes, she pops corn kernels one at a time using a hot-hair flat iron. The effect is mesmerising, nestled deep within the uncanny valley.

Ms Sinon is what is known online as an NPC streamer.

NPC stands for “non-player character”, a video game character that comes pre-programmed and typically cannot be manipulated by the person at the controls. As such, an NPC’s phrases and movements are often formulaic and repetitive.

Ms Sinon brings these rather mechanical characters to life.

She found herself playing the Internet’s main character when screen recordings of her streams went viral on Twitter last week.

American producer-rapper Timbaland appears to be a fan, recently reposting a video to his personal TikTok account of Ms Sinon breaking character during a live stream after noticing he was watching.

Popcrave, a pop culture news account on Twitter, reported that Timbaland was ranked the top viewer of the PinkyDoll stream, based on gifts sent and time spent viewing.

What Ms Sinon is doing is considered by some to be fetish content.

For certain viewers, there is something sexual about being able to control her every word and gesture by sending her this or that gift. For other viewers, she is just plain fascinating to watch.

Think of NPC streaming as an extension of cosplay – a hobby in which fans dress as their favourite characters from books, television shows and movies – said professor of game design and experimental media Carly Kocurek at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

“Often, people will consume media and then think about different ways to either dress up or act as or mimic affordances of that character,” Prof Kocurek, 41, said. “I don’t think this is unprecedented or unrelated to ways that people have been engaging with media, especially games.”

Ms Sinon, who previously worked as a stripper and owned a cleaning business, said she started live-streaming on TikTok at the beginning of the year as a way to make money.

“I was just being cute,” she said in a phone interview. “I remember someone saying, ‘Oh my god, you look like an NPC’. And then they start sending me, like, crazy money.”

Ms Sinon said she now makes between US$2,000 (S$2,700) and US$3,000 a stream. Across all her social media accounts, which include Instagram and OnlyFans, she puts that number at US$7,000 a day.

Other creators cashing in on this digital genre include Cherry Crush, who lives in Ohio, United States and has more than one million subscribers on YouTube; and Satoyu727, an NPC creator in Japan with over two million TikTok followers.

“It’s very stimulating because it’s fast and very repetitive, so people sit and watch it to see the next reaction or if I will break character or mess up somehow from too many gifts,” Cherry Crush said in a direct message interview for this article. (She would not give her real name, which she does not reveal online.)

Cherry Crush said she did not consider her live streams to be fetish content. “I don’t make my show sexually suggestive at all,” she said. “I always thought it was just funny and entertaining.” NYTIMES