Ah. Grimes. Just when we thought the experimental pop artist couldn’t push her out-there public persona any further, she goes and outdoes herself yet again. Now, fresh off the back of a pregnancy announcement that left the internet reeling, she’s introduced a cherubic digital avatar to the world.
Christened “war nymph” the demonic cyber-baby popped up yesterday on the musician’s Twitter and Instagram pages, directing fans to private accounts on both platforms under the username @warnymph. Depicted with scarlet acrylic talons, matching red eyes and a pair of feathery wings, some online commentators have speculated that it’s a visual representation of Grimes and Elon Musk’s unborn child.
Individuals who managed to successfully gain access to these private accounts (speedily responding to follow requests is not yet a part of War Nymph’s skill set) were greeted by suitably terrifying content, with the baby avatar discussing the impending end of the world on IG Story. This kind of rhetoric might be off-putting to some but is largely in-keeping with Grimes’ overall thematic interests. In fact, the artist has stated that each song on forthcoming climate change concept album Miss Anthropocene will be a “different embodiment of human extinction.”
So, is this a taster of what the Musk-Grimes baby is going to look like? Perhaps not, given that the musician responded on Twitter with “What the hell are you guys talking about? can you plz reach out to my team before running stories?” to media coverage claiming the accounts had been created for her child.
Grimes stans on Reddit have an alternate theory, drawing our attention back to November, when she appeared on podcast Mindscape to discuss her long-running interest in AI with host Sean Carroll. Then, she discussed the possible creation of an avatar called (you guessed it!) War Nymph that would function as an alterego of sorts. Also in the podcast episode, she expressed her opinion that; “I feel like we’re in the end of art, human art. Once there’s actually AGI [Artificial General Intelligence], they’re gonna be so much better at making art than us…”
Keep your Grimes/ War Nymph facts straight by listening to the full Mindscape episode below.
