GX Aura

Submission 7,995

Part of a series on VTubers / Virtual Influencers. [View Related Entries]

About

GX Aura is a virtual YouTuber launched by Opera GX, a web browser created by the team behind the Opera web browser. GX Aura is marketed as a "silly" singing VTuber who speaks in a British accent. She made her debut on Twitch on August 19th, 2023. News about GX Aura supposedly "breaking" Twitch after gathering over 75,000 viewers on her debut stream began to spread on August 20th, but several internet onlookers speculated that the record was inflated due to the stream being embedded in an Opera GX landing page.

Online History

Aura was first created as a mascot for Opera GX's Discord channel,^[1] with the corporation holding auditions to give Aura a VTuber persona on April 5th, 2023 (seen below).^[2] The post gathered over 11,000 likes in five months.

On June 14th, Aura's voice was revealed in an X post that gathered over 26,000 likes in over two months.^[3] Aura then began posting musical covers on her YouTube Shorts channel in subsequent weeks.^[4] On August 12th, Aura announced August 19th, 2023, as the date for VTuber Twitch debut.^[5]

On August 19th, GX Aura made her Twitch debut, gathering over 75,000 viewers on her stream and becoming one of the most viewed VTuber debuts on the platform.^[8] This was noted by X user @MirabelleVtuber^[6] on August 19th (seen below, left). Also on August 19th, Dexerto^[7] made a post announcing GX Aura's debut, adding that her debut purportedly "broke" Twitch (seen below, right).

Opera GX View Inflation Controversy

Soon after GX Aura's debut, internet commentators began discussing how Opera possibly helped inflate the views on Aura GX's Twitch stream by embedding her stream in the Opera GX browser.

On August 19th, 2023, X user @DoctorPlato^[9] made a post noting this, gathering over 2,000 likes in a day (seen below, left). Opera GX's official X account replied^[10] to the accusation of artificially inflated views by saying that "Stream embed doesn't count if you don't watch/are not logged in. / GX corner is not the start page. / Ofc we gon' promote our Vtuber on our own site but numbers don't matter."^[11]

On August 20th, X^[12] user @Rev_says_desu posted a tweet countering Opera GX's claims, gathering over 1,000 likes in a day (seen below).