2.5 KiB
Loquendo
{ This is research in progress, please send me notes on this etc. I discovered this awesome rabbithole while learning Spanish -- if you can, try to learn some foreign language, it really does bring to you a whole new culture. ~drummyfish }
Loquendo is a (sadly proprietary) text-to-speech technology (made by some Italian company) that gave rise (around the year 2007) to an awesome -- but in English speaking countries practically completely unknown -- underground Spanish speaking Internet group called loquenderos who use said iconic robotic low quality loquendo voices to create absolutely precious meme YouTube videos that are not just extremely entertaining and hilarious by the combination of the funny voices with quite stupid improvised video (usually some gameplay of GTA San Andreas), but also immensely important for at least somewhat continuing the culture of free speech on the Internet. If you watch a random Spanish meme video, chances are quite high it will be dubbed with loquendo. It's hard to accurately describe the mood and vibes around the group -- it's a bit similar to 4chan maybe -- the videos are oftentimes very silly, just someone's random gameplay of GTA with a robotic voice over it cursing in Spanish, as if a kid is playing the game and just commenting on it, insulting everyone and dropping random shit and slurs, insulting transsexuals, furries, otakus, gays, women and blacks and basically the whole world, but then there are also videos with a lot of energy put into it (but still keeping a similar style) -- for example whole movies or serious political commentaries. Part of the feeling is that the voices are not just extremely funny (imagine someone just doing extreme pitch shifts of a basic robotic voice to create different voices for a movie dubbing) but also completely emotionless and always the same, so you don't know who's behind them and it's pretty funny to hear all the nasty shit being said in complete serious tone. Over time there have evolved characters that reappear in the videos, they have their own inside jokes and so on. The group has even taken it so far as establishing a fictional Loquendo City based on ideals of free speech -- a thing similar to our freedom island.