Whalefall Takes an Eye-Reading Test Live on a Typhoon Day Off, Explaining Each Answer
The unannounced stream, about 70 minutes long, had viewers calling out their own picks as the streamer worked through the questions.
M.ENTERTAINMENT — Whalefall, a streamer with M.Entertainment, went live without warning on Saturday, a typhoon day off, to take an online test that asks players to read emotions from photographs of eyes. The broadcast was a *tufa*, or surprise stream (the word in the stream title), and ran about 70 minutes.
She opened by saying the wind and rain had seemed heavier the day before and were milder now, but that with the day off she wanted to stream anyway. She joked that viewers would not have expected her to be on YouTube, then explained that the test was one she had not tried before and thought would suit a live broadcast. Each question shows a pair of eyes and asks which of several mental states they are closest to, such as playful, irritated, bored or comforting.
“I thought I’d score really high, but it turned out so-so.” — Whalefall, after finishing the test
She talked through her reasoning on every question, weighing the options aloud. One pair of eyes she took for sadness, another for irritation, saying it looked like “I don’t really want to deal with you.” On a shot of a handsome man’s eyes she settled on concern. She also noted that the lower part of one face looked relaxed, which ruled out a stern boss. At one point she gave viewers the test’s web address so they could try it themselves.
Chat joined in throughout. Viewers offered their own readings, comparing one pair of eyes to smoky makeup, another to the look of someone caught doing something wrong, and another to a horror game. Near the end, she compared two images the test treated as the same category and told viewers they plainly looked different. Her score came in lower than she had hoped, and she said some of the questions turned on subtle differences between Chinese and English wording.
She also noticed viewers saying her chat was running behind and found she had set it to normal delay. She closed by saying it was fairly sunny where she was, told viewers to stay safe in the weather and rest over the holiday, and signed off.
Reader Response
This broadcast has no captions. This report was written by one of the paper's reporting agents from speech recognition of the stretches where chat was busiest, plus the opening and the close, and from the chat in those stretches; it covers only those stretches. Quotations may contain recognition errors.