What I Learned By Playing 'My Idol'

Man, guys, this world is an amazing place. I mean, think about it. Here's a list of awesome things that this spinning, watery orb has to offer:

-Mountains

-Balloons

-Crab cakes

-Those restaurant mints that melt in your mouth

-The Marvel Universe

-Bras with front clasps

-Twinkle lights

-Food samples

-Toddlers wearing glasses

-The peach emoji 

-Wrap dresses

-Pastry chefs

-Munchkin cats

-Kristen Wiig

And speaking of wondrous things that this world has to offer, can we talk about the My Idol app? Because, seriously, guys, it is everything I love about living on Planet Earth. 

If you haven't heard of My Idol (you have, though, because it's been everywhere), it's an app by Chinese developers that creates strikingly realistic avatars. It's pretty much what dreams are made of, and by dreams, of course, I mean nightmares. Feast your eyes upon this:

If it is't plainly obvious at first glance, that's me. And if you are quite familiar with my appearance, you'll note that this avatar really looks like me. I've seen a lot of pictures of myself in life and I look in the mirror just about every day, and I have to admit that this creepy as all hell app got it totally right.

I first heard about My Idol whenever my sister sent me this article from Buzzfeed last week. Without it, I'm sure I would have been completely lost because as you may have realized by now, the entire app is in Chinese. Sadly, I've been putting off learning Chinese for a while. My bad.

Anyway, the way it works is that it constructs your avatar based off of an image. And it doesn't even have to be a particularly good image. Here's what I started with:

Ignore the crazed expression and hair. I was trying to get my bangs out of the way so that my avatar didn't look like it had random strands growing out of its forehead.

From there, the app constructed an image for me. For some reason, it seemed to guess that I was female, but I've heard stories of ladies ending up with guy bodies and the other way around. Here's what my avatar looked like at first: 

I'm rocking a giant head and a significant thigh gap just like I do IRL, obvi. 

Of course, there are tons of ways to customize these things. Here I am as a cowgirl:

Here I am in a dignified red suit:

Here I am as some kind of giant, sexy ram:

It's shocking enough to look at a still version of my avatar, but it's downright terrifying once these things start moving. Here I am jubilantly distributing pills out of a giant suitcase, because of course:

Here I am chilling with my surfboard while still being genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of others:

Plus, there's a million other things My Idol lets you do such as sing Chinese pop songs, ride a motorcycle, be a zombie, pole dance -- pretty much everything you've always wanted to do. The app used to have a feature in which you could dance to a Justin Timberlake song, but I'm pretty sure they didn't have the rights to it, so it has since been replaced. Sorry, I guess your avatar can't bring sexy back.

As I was using My Idol, a thought occurred to me: what would it look like if I tested this whole thing out with my celebrity doppelgänger? By the way, if you're new to this blog, let me catch you up to speed. My celebrity doppelgänger just so happens to be the #1 person on your mom's celebrity sex list: Josh Groban.

If you're not sold on this comparison, that's fine. Still, the similarities have been pointed out to me by friends and strangers alike ever since I was in high school. When I look at pictures of Josh Groban, that part of my brain that signals that I'm looking at a picture of myself fires like crazy. I see the resemblance, for sure, but I figured My Idol would be the perfect arena to test this out. Here's how it went down:

Test #1: Turn Josh Groban into myself.

I grabbed this picture of J-money from a good ole Google image search.

After a significant makeover, here's the Christyfied version:

I'll be the first to admit, it's not great. He looks more like a terrified Zach Braff with no eyebrows (no idea how I did that). Of course, I didn't want to put anymore effort into finding a better picture of Grobes, so I just did the next logical thing:

Test #2: Turn myself into Josh Groban.

I think we can all agree: I nailed it. 

So after all of this time spent on My Idol, what have I learned? Well, for starters, nothing. I learned absolutely nothing. But if I had to make something up, I guess I would say that --

1) Chinese fashion is ON POINT. I legitimately want that cat sweatshirt, like, now.

2) Regardless of how many times I've watched myself aggressively rapping in Chinese, this game has yet to lose its novelty.

3) The uncanny valley is a real thing.

4) I am not my own idol.

5) I look really cool on a motorcycle. I should get a motorcycle.

Also, before I go, please enjoy this "Early Morning" version of myself that I created by taking a selfie just as I was waking up:

She keeps me grounded.

Have you played My Idol? What was your experience?

UPDATE: Josh Groban has since confirmed that I did indeed nail it. 

@christyoshoney #nailedit

— josh groban (@joshgroban) May 1, 2015

The Internet is a wonderful place.