- Joined
- Mar 22, 2019
Meet Naomi Wu AKA SexyCyborg - a chinese DIY tech enthusiast, programmer and web developer, currently residing in Shenzhen. She is a somewhat well-known persona in the world of technology, 3D printing and DIY scene, and one of the most popular chinese personalities, with over a million subscribers on Youtube and 110K Twitter followers as of writing this.
1. Rise in popularity.
Naomi's rise in popularity began somewhere in summer of 2015, when her posts started making it to reddit's frontpage, such as a photo of her getting herself 3D scanned.
Soon after she became reddit's tech darling, enjoying her status as a local e-celebrity of sorts. Numerous articles were written about her, for instance:
SexyCyborg is Dismantling Cliches About Women in Tech, One Boob Shot at a Time
Female Hacker Plans To Attack Organizations Using Her Hi-Tech Shoes
For This Chinese Reddit Bombshell, Tech Is Sexy
World's sexiest computer hacker claims she could attack massive corporations using her BOOBS
This lasted all the way until Vice got a hold of her.
2. Confrontation with Vice.
Naomi was contacted by Vice in late 2017, to get an interview. She agreed to it, but she said up front that, China being China, some topics might get her in trouble with the chinese government due to her promotion of gender equality, such as her relationship status and sexual orientation, and as a result were completely forbidden. Vice agreed and a journalist representing Vice, namely Sarah Jeong, arrived to Shenzhen. After spending a few days with Naomi, she flew back to Vice's headquarters. Soon after, however, Naomi started getting emails from Vice asking about her private life - a topic which both parties agreed upon was taboo. Naomi's fear was that the article would include speculation about her personal life, which is a somewhat touchy topic for her. Due to her country of residence, her only way to retaliate against a big media corporation was to complain very loudly on Twitter and hope people notice her. Just look at the things she'd tweeted within the first 4 months her feud with Vice started.
Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 on Twitter: "Fucking assholes at @vice I have ONE rules…
archived 8 Aug 2018 14:35:01 UTC
Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 on Twitter: ""Hey you promote women in tech, you make s…
archived 8 Aug 2018 14:36:02 UTC
Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 on Twitter: "The @vice article is not out yet. I took t…
archived 8 Aug 2018 14:40:59 UTC
And boy they did. Over the next year, there was article after article after article talking about why Vice shouldn't publish their article about Naomi. Naomi herself managed to dox one of Vice's employees and then, as a warning, sent it to Vice, but there was no response at all. She carries the grudge against the western media and especially Vice even now, almost 2 years later. Naomi herself wrote a 3-parter on Medium about her interactions with Vice, which you can read here, here and here.
While all of these may sound like well-founded fears, there's something else that you should know about Naomi.
3. The BF/husband/mastermind conspiracy.
There exists an old theory regarding Naomi Wu. The theory is as follows: Naomi is a front for another person, presumably an older western male, who was in the technology industry for almost as long as Naomi was alive, while she herself is mostly there to attract attention for money and free assets. Although there's no solid evidence that proves said theory 100%, there are numerous little details scattered around the web that seem just a little bit too suspicious, making the theory rather plausible.
Here's the summary: The man with the blurred out face in the photo above is the person teaching/creating Naomi's devices. His username on the Internet was Timaz. Timaz was very well-known in the maker community. Whenever a question regarding anything tech-related arose, they referred to Timaz. Timaz claimed to have lived in Shenzhen for almost 10 years and being very active in the local 3D printing community. Around the time SexyCyborg began her rise to fame, all of Timaz's accounts were suddenly deleted or abandoned.
While a programmer can make a decent living with their skills, Naomi herself said that she charges local rates for her work online, which, when compared to western standards, isn't enough to live the opulent life she does. She claims to have learned English mostly via IRC chats, which aren't known for being very grammatically correct, but despite that her texting English skills can rival many actual english-speaking people. The printer she uses is the same brand Timaz used back in the day. She almost injures her fingers multiple times on camera. The photo Naomi published of herself working on a project (left) contains the exact same furniture that Timaz's apartment has in the photos he published (middle and right).
Her feud with Vice began after they wanted to hear her opinion on the conspiracy, which also makes her look like she's trying to hide something. Said article didn't uncover anything about her that wasn't already known by most people. In fact, the article was mostly very positive, so she attacked them for basically no reason whatsoever. Her doxing of Vice journalist got her Patreon account taken down, as it is against their ToS, which she also blamed on Vice.
Hell, despite being supposedly very well-known in China, their local search engines such as Baidu seem to barely find anything, if anything at all.
If you're interested in doing more research of your own, let me point you at a few places where you can start:
Article on youthsnews.com.au
Post on r/drama
How a DIY YouTuber became the target of a sexist conspiracy theory
Thread on warosu.org
Google results for "sexy cyborg boyfriend"
Google results for "timaz naomi wu"
4. About Naomi herself
As you might've gleaned from the pictures above, Naomi wears VERY little. Her breasts are very obviously fake and she doesn't hide it. In fact, she very recently "upgraded".
Naomi claims that having big breasts will not affect your health in any way.
She doesn't wear a bra in most of her pictures, and the outfits she does wear barely cover her at all. Her reasoning for those is that it's her gender expression and that it isn't sexual, that she doesn't dress sexy to sell and that she "cannot bear feeling invisible" - claims which I personally find rather dubious because she posts her photos herself on various subreddits made mostly for masturbatory purposes, such as r/bimbos: example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4. One of her projects was also an "downskirt" camera, which really screams "fetish" to me, just not really sure what it is.
Despite saying that she's a very well-known persona in her province, posting videos of herself walking around Shenzhen under her supposedly real name and with her face very much visible, she also claims that the chinese police will be at her doorstep the moment they see her openly talk about touchy topics such as gender equality and sexual minorities. She openly claims to be a lesbian, but then, strangely, says that apparently "no homo" is a real policy amongst chinese homosexuals, and that "sleeping with femmes seems kinda gay", as she apparently only dates very manly-looking women. Very recently she went of a gigantic Twitter rant about how her clothing choices hurt her career in the IT industry.
At one point she raised a huge stink about not receiving her 100K and 1M Youtube buttons.
At some point she said that if she ever got in detention she would be systematically raped by the policemen, but after apparently being detained for a few hours in 2019 she has never claimed that she was.
It is also possible, although very improbable, that Naomi is in fact (a post-op) transgender, due to her saying that she was once confused for a trans person and talking about her super femininity, which seems to be a somewhat common topic amongst many other transgender people, especially combined with fake breasts, and saying that he is "a female drag queen".
5. The crossovers.
MovieBob:
Brianna Wu:
Sapphixy:
Social media links: Twitter (archive)
Youtube (archive)
Facebook (archive)
Instagram (archive)
Thingiverse (archive)
Imgur (archive)
Pastebin FAQ (archive)
kuula.co (archive)
Subscribestar (archive)
Tipeee (archive)
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