A popular Chinese v-blogger with over 50,000 fans turned out to be decades older than her fans thought after a live-stream technical glitch revealed her real face. While feeling shocked, the angered netizens are overwhelmed at how people can be fooled by the virtual world.

Known as “Her Royal Highness Qiao Biluo”, the blogger used to rely on beauty cam filters while live-streaming on Douyu, a Chinese live-streaming service focused on video games. The profile photo and the images posted on her social media are of a cartoon “cute goddess” with a pretty face. However, she seldom revealed her real face. When doing live-streams, she always covered her face with a cartoon face using beauty filters, which could make her look much younger. Many of her fans were attractedby her angelic voice and behavior in front of the camera.

Things changed on July 25, when QiaoBiluo was doing a joint live-stream with another useron Douyu. At one point, a technical glitch caused her cartoon visage to disappear, showing Qiao's real face. People tuned in began to leave the live-stream en masse, and many male followers immediately unsubscribed to her channel and started withdrawing their gifts.

Netizens began to call her “dama (old lady)”in comments left on the live-stream.

Qiao later revealed that she is 58 years old. The superstar’s account on Douyu was permanently banned.

According to an insider, her Douyu profile page swelled to almost one million followers since the incident.

Some Internet users, however, are not too much surprised by Qiao’s incident, as they consider Qiao’s followers “gullible” and deserving ofbeing “tricked”.

The likes of QiaoBiluo are called “wanghong”(Internet celebrities) who can earn money by making live-streams. Given that many of the female v-bloggers associated with videogaming are selling the illusion of being available women, people have been fooled by one of these women seems par for the course. Perhaps instead of giving gifts to female v-bloggers merely for being pretty and having an attractive voice, netizens should seek out v-bloggers with attractive personalities and expertise. And instead of vilifying Qiao Biluo for being an old maid, they should recognize that the illusion she was selling them was no different to that being sold by an actual young maid.