„Forget it Jack, it’s Chinatown” — the sad Naomi Wu’ anniversary story
Naomi 'SexyCyborg' Wu has been silenced for a year and no one cares. Does anyone remember?
July 8, 2024, marks exactly one year since Naomi Wu — a technology influencer from China, known as “Sexy Cyborg”, published her farewell post on X. Since then, she has posted only one more promotional video there, but she speaks from off-screen without showing her face. Her other channels remain silent.
For now, it looks like this is the end for her.
How could this happen? How could this spectacular-looking-tech-girl with the biggest YouTube channel and X in China just stop recording, abruptly ending her long and successful career?
The answer is as simple as it is brutal…
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown
If you’ve been into 3D printing for more than 2–3 years, you must have seen her. Around the turn of the 2010s and 2020s, Naomi “Sexy Cyborg” Wu was one of the biggest, most popular, and most influential personalities on the internet.
Initially specializing in 3D printing, where she gained her initial fame, she gradually expanded her expertise into other areas of technology and electronics.
She was one of the icons of the open-source and open-hardware movement. She reviewed tools, devices and machines, but also created her own projects. Some were functional, others were just intended to cause interest or confusion. But the vast majority were exceptional.
Later, she turned her attention to issues of security in the realm of hardware-software-consumer-electronics. She began to express her concerns about Signal. She began to draw attention to the privacy risks associated with using keyboards on Chinese smartphones.
This brought about her downfall. But we will return to that later.
First, we need to delve into her appearance…
Then we’ll remind about her unequal struggle with the mainstream media brats.
And only at the end will we talk about her issues with the authorities…
CHAPTER I: The truth is, you noticed her body first
When I first wrote these words back in 2020 on the pages of my portal — 3D Printing Center, a lot of people associated with the “woke” and “feminism” movement hurled insults at me, calling me a misogynist.
Funny, because these culturally enlightened communities brought about Naomi’s downfall. But we will return to this in chapter II…
So I’ll write it again, because it needs to be written and we’ll get it over with…
The foundations of Naomi Wu’s success from the beginning were her surgically modified body. Silicone-enhanced breasts. Delicate, super-slim figure.
Added to this, provocative attire. Shoes with absurdly high platforms and heels. Gadgets glowing with neon light stuck near private parts.
It was she who started to identify herself as the “Sexy Cyborg”. Not as a “liberated cyborg” or “stereotype-free cyborg”, but “SEXY-”. She began that narrative.
So no matter how you feel about this statement, it is the absolute truth: Naomi Wu owes her early success to her sexualized appearance. Only then comes her knowledge, skills and projects.
Unfortunately, this later had terrible consequences. The corrupt Western media used this to discredit her. But at the beginning of her career, it was a trigger to gain crazy popularity around the world.
All the YouTubers making videos about 3D printers are guys. Moreover, most of them are either average-looking or plain-ugly. And they record it in a dark, tools-and-cabbles-cluttered garage.
But that’s what gives them credibility. That’s how we imagine a guy who knows about 3D printers.
And then Naomi Wu comes in with her prominently displayed breasts, saying the same things as the male experts.
And you know what? It turns out she’s making sense too!
She’s saying pretty valuable things. And she’s pretty…
This was a big issue for many viewers who at start were a bit ashamed to take her seriously. Even though she was industrial-grade-serious.
But eventually, everyone got used to it and while watching her videos, stopped seeing her body but focused only on the content. Naomi’s career grew to the point where she could start making a living from it.
Initially, she was a Ruby-On-Rails programmer, but over time, she became a full-time content creator.
And then Vice reached out to her. And her career colapsed.
CHAPTER II: A helpful hand that proved to be lethal
In 2018, Vice magazine approached Naomi with a proposal for an interview. It wasn’t the first interview she would give to Western media, so she accepted the offer humbly.
It was a great opportunity to continue reaching out to the world and gaining new followers.
From the beginning, Naomi stipulated that due to the „specific climate” in China, she preferred not to publish any details about her private life. Vice agreed to this in writing.
A Vice editor visited Wu in Shenzhen, where she spent three days with her preparing material and taking photos. She then returned to the USA.
And then the “negotiations” began.
It seems that the agreed-upon material was deemed too ordinary for Vice, while it turned out Naomi Wu had more to offer for “woke” media.
For example — she’s in a relationship with a woman!
This turned out to be much more interesting than 3D printing and electronics.
READ ARTICLE ON VICE: Shenzhen’s Homegrown Cyborg
Wu tried to stop the publication, knowing it could draw the attention of the Chinese authorities. And she started to act a bit blindly… She posted a video with boots with tiny video screens on heels, which displayed the Vice editor-in-chief’s home address.
This, in turn, led to her Patreon account being blocked. And it showed how big Western, liberated media really operate.
Naomi Wu faced a torrent of hate from Vice editors and their supporters. An ideological war erupted. Issues of race, gender, and orientation arose.
Oh, and guess who ended up looking unserious in all of this?
The entire story was described in details by Naomi Wu herself on Medium. The articles are long and at times emotional, but I encourage you to read them. They will help you understand many things.
Shenzhen Tech Girl Naomi Wu: My experience with Sarah Jeong, Jason Koebler, and Vice Magazine
It shows the position of an individual confronting a large corporate media machine.
Shenzhen Tech Girl Naomi Wu, Part 2: Over the Wall and into the Fire
Fortunately, Vice has already collapsed. It won’t be publishing anything new.
Unfortunately for Wu, with the closure of Patreon, she lost her main source of income. She had to return to coding. Later on, she experienced several ups and downs with other platforms funding creators — but you can read about that in her own words.
Shenzhen Tech Girl Naomi Wu, Part 3: Defunding, Deplatforming, and Detention
Either way, first Vice, and then subsequent American, liberated media ruined her career.
And they caught the attention of authorities. She stopped being anonymous. She started being watched.
She received her first warning. It was in 2019.
CHAPTER III: The clipped wings and the silence
After 2020, Naomi Wu’s online activity returned to previous levels. She also engaged in more serious collaborations, such as with Creality3D — a leading manufacturer of amateur 3D printers, with whom she developed a new machine.
In November, a Kickstarter campaign with Creality for the 3DPrintMill (CR-30) belt-based 3D printer was launched, where Naomi was the face of the campaign.
Gradually, her focus shifted towards more electronic projects, including those related to security. Wu began pointing out Chinese companies developing smartphone software that left vulnerabilities allowing for hacks and keylogger installations.
Additionally, Wu warned that the encrypted messaging app Signal is susceptible to attacks. She publicly suspected that activists participating in protests in Hong Kong in 2018 were monitored and detained by police after using Signal to communicate with the media.
That was not good.
I mentioned that Wu has a female partner. This in itself is problematic because in China, it is better if a woman has a male partner. But to complicate matters, Naomi’s partner belongs to the Uyghur minority, towards whom China has very „specific and final” plans…
That makes things worse.
We don’t know what exactly happened? We only know what Naomi Wu wrote:
Ok for those of you that haven’t figured it out I got my wings clipped and they weren’t gentle about it- so there’s not going to be much posting on social media anymore and only on very specific subjects. I can leave but Kaidi can’t so we’re just going to follow the new rules and that’s that.
Nothing personal if I don’t like and reply like I used to. I’ll be focusing on the store and the occasional video. Thanks for understanding, it was fun while it lasted.
It was July 8, 2023. And that’s it.
Well, on December 8, 2023, another video appeared, but it was different from anything Wu had posted before. It looked like “what she got consent for.”
And since then, there has been silence. Not only on her social media accounts but in general, in Western media. But why?
Naomi Wu is a woman.
Naomi Wu is an attractive woman.
Naomi Wu is an intelligent woman skilled in software, technology, and electronics.
Naomi Wu is a lesbian.
Naomi Wu is a supporter of minorities.
Yet despite this, the world remains silent.
Perhaps the world saw what happened when in 2019 Daryl Morey — GM of the Houston Rockets NBA team — posted on X his support of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests? Don’t you know what happened? It resulted in the termination of all mainland Chinese sponsors of the NBA. In effect Morey resigned from the Rockets job politely.
Don’t dig into it.
Don’t ask.
Don’t look.
Forget it.
It’s Chinatown.
This article was originally published on Medium on July 8, 2024.
I'm reading this post at the start of 2025 because I haven't forgotten about Naomi Wu, and found this article searching for anything about her in the past year. Sad.
Reminded about her by seeing a lot of (western) OSHW posts