Vivienne Tye / laowhy's Wife

About

Vivienne Tye (née Wei), often abbreviated as "Vivi" and widely known online as "laowhy's Wife", is a Chinese YouTuber who gained online popularity for being married to American YouTuber and vlogger Matthew Tye, commonly known as "laowhy86" or "C-Milk." Tye's physical appearance, particularly the side profile of her face, spawned several memes, racist caricatures and photoshops that mocked her features. Comments and insults that criticized her looks came from both Chinese and western netizens.

Online History

Wei's first appearance online can be traced in one the early vlogs made by laowhy86 himself on August 16th, 2012.^[1] She gradually appeared more often on the channel until their engagement and wedding became official in the following year. Tye created her own YouTube channel on December 18th, 2015.^[2] As Tye was often featured on her husband's channel, she gained popularity on 4chan, particularly when anonymous online users started posting screenshots of her side profile from the video "What My Chinese Wife Found Weird About America".^[3] Images, screenshots and memes about Tye's appearance became common on the website, being posted several hundreds of times on various boards. A screenshot of her side profile started circulating on 4chan around late 2017^[4] (shown below, left), and a photoshopped version of it was posted on /pol/ on December 16th, 2017,^[5] which has been posted over 220 times on the website in 4 years^[6][7] (shown below, right).

As these screenshots were posted frequently on the website, various 4chan users reached the source of the video to visually confirm their authenticity and often commented its time frame (0:33) in the comment section (shown, below).

An MS Paint drawing of the YouTube couple was posted on /pol/ on April 18th, 2019^[8] (shown below, left). As it spread, the source was later found to be a screenshot from the video "There's a SECRET MENU at EVERY American Chinese Restaurant – How To Get REAL Chinese Food", posted by an anonymous /tv/ user on January 4th, 2019 (shown below, right).^[9] The video was uploaded the year prior on July 26th, 2018.^[10]

Both the drawing and the screenshot were combined and posted once again on October 1st, 2019^[11] (shown below, left) and a version with its source was posted on February 3rd, 2020^[12] (shown below, right).

On June 14th, 2019, the drawing was posted on laowhy86's Instagram page, with the caption "This “fan art” of me and Vivi has been circulating. Wait… this isn’t fan art, is it?".^[13] The post received over 1,050 likes in 3 years (shown, below).

On April 29th, 2017, Tye uploaded a video titled "Are You Ugly in China?". Receiving over 1,350,000 views in 4 years, it remains currently the most viewed video on her channel.

On April 16th, 2018, laowhy86 and South African vlogger and video producer Winston "SerpentZA" Sterzel talked about the comments directed towards Tye's appearance coming from the Chinese netizens, who described her as a "Vietnamese slave monkey." Uploaded on the channel AVDChina, and ironically titled "Why do Foreigners date UGLY Chinese WOMEN?", the video received more than 1,050,000 views in 3 years.

While some of the memes and caricatures about Tye were posted also on Reddit, Twitter and other websites,^{[14][15][16][17]} they remained primarily a phenomenon on 4chan, with them often being posted in WMAF threads or with captions meant to denigrate Asian women in general. Being posted so often, that several anonymous users started getting annoyed by them.^{[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]} (example shown, below).

On June 19th, 2018, the video "Chinese Wife Finds Out She's NOT CHINESE! DNA TEST!"^[26] was uploaded, which explored the couple's ethnic background, revealing that her ancestry comes primarily from Hmong people. A fact that was also brought up in threads in which she was posted^[27] (shown, below).

On April 8th, 2021, an anonymous /pol/ user colored Tye in a way she would resemble Pepe The Frog ^[28](shown below, left). On August 11th, 2021, another version of her as Pepe was posted on /int/ by an anonymous user^[29] (shown below, right).

Personal Life

Vivienne Wei was born on November 18th, 1986, in China.^[30] She described her childhood as being from an undeveloped rural Chinese village, and bikes being the primary mode of transportation, which her parents used. Because of this, her dream job used to be being a bus driver, so that she could avoid to her parents the fatigue of biking for hours their way to work.^[31] Vivienne and Matthew Tye were wed in February 2013, and have two daughters.

Search Interest

External References