A pro-Trump avatar troll hacked the instagram account of another avatar

Miquela Sousa and Bermuda are computer avatars with Instagram accounts. The humans who post on their behalf are anonymous. Sousa is a "19-year-old Brazilian-American model, singer" with almost a million followers. The CGI avatar for Sousa is nearly photorealistic. Bermuda is a blond Trump troll with 64,000 followers. The CGI avatar for Bermuda is much less realistic, at about the level of Tomi Lahren.

Last week, Sousa's account appeared to have been hacked by someone who removed all of Sousa's posts, replacing them with photos of Bermuda.

It smells like a stunt. The Cut attempted to get to the bottom of it, but nothing they unearthed makes much sense:

Lets start with what we know. Or what we think we know. Lil Miquela says shes not human. Yeah, no kidding. It seems obvious, but if you look the comments on Lil Miquelas Instagrams, her fans interact with her as though shes a living, breathing person. In fact, when she was hacked by Bermuda, many cried: Bring back the real Lil Miquela! So, fine. Maybe people needed to hear this again: Lil Miquela is not real.

But what is she then?

Heres the real story, according to Lil Miquelas most recent post: She was built in Sillicon Valley by a literal genius named Daniel Cain in order to be a servant. (Reminder: Neither Daniel Cain nor his company are real, as far as we can tell.) Lil Miquela was then stolen by another company called Brud, which told her that she was created based on the life and mind of a human named Miquela Sousa. She was given Miquelas memories, her mind, her personality. Brud also said that theyd re-programmed her to be free. (Hold on, is this the plot of Ex Machina?)

In actuality, though, Miquela Sousa never existed. Lil Miquela and her friends are simply robots her word created out of thin air and used to make money. (For what its worth, when asked if Lil Miquela, was, in fact, a robot, a source replied, Loll no!!!! Shes CGI.)

At end of the day, this whole stunt seems like a neat way for Lil Miquelas creators to continue to profit from her existence with record deals and sponsored posts (which, unlike real-life influencers, shes never disclosed before), while making it seem like she isnt in it for the money.

Of COURSE Miquela deletes my posts the second I give her the account back. Even after all that shes still running from the truth. 47 hours left @lilmiquela. Soon there will be no lies and everything will be revealed. Heres a recap of todays work. Ill always be honest with you guys + make sure you have the info you need #teamBermuda #BermudaHive #hotterinBermuda #Bermudatriangle #theNextStep #discourse #learntotalk

A post shared by Bermuda (@bermudaisbae) on Apr 17, 2018 at 6:47pm PDT

Images: Instagram