Who is Magibon / MRirian ?

One of the most popular profiles on YouTube features videos of a young girl named "magibon" or "MRirian" staring bashfully into a webcam. Her profile says she is 21-years old but various sources say she is actually only 14. Wonder if her parents know she is getting hundreds of thousands of views each week? She looks like she is either gonna break out into tears or peals of laughter.
What is this? Who is this? More important, why are so many people watching this girl, and not just watching but responding with imitations -- some better than others -- of their own?
There's an easy answer for this -- you can account for her popularity in the same way one explains any Internet phenomenon, which is that when you put a billion people or more together in a liberating digital landscape, kickass things happen -- but, of course, it's possible to gin up more penetrating arguments.
MRirian, as she calls herself, is a Japanese girl who lives in the United States, or an American girl who longs to live in Japan, or both, or neither. She looks like a teenager, but her profile pegs her as 21. She writes a blog in Japanese, and in the videos in which she speaks, she speaks Japanese, though Japanese speakers say she's not very fluent.
MRirian, as she calls herself, is a Japanese girl who lives in the United States, or an American girl who longs to live in Japan, or both, or neither. She looks like a teenager, but her profile pegs her as 21. She writes a blog in Japanese, and in the videos in which she speaks, she speaks Japanese, though Japanese speakers say she's not very fluent.
Two themes interleave the online discussions -- some not at all nice -- that seek to grapple with her popularity: One, that she's playing "pedobait," to use a lovely phrase, aiming to gain an audience of boys and men for ad-revenue purposes (i.e., she's a camgirl).
And/or two, that she's making some kind of artsy, deep comment by playing a stereotype, that stereotype being either -- now hang with me here -- of pop culture-addled Japanese teenage girls, or of white American girls who play pop culture-added Japanese teenagers (which girls are known as "wapanese," a word roughly comparable to "wigger.")
Probably a little bit of all of these things is true. None of MRirian's videos is overtly sexual, but you can tell from the YouTube comments that that's where some in her audience have their minds. Look at the way she writes -- all those smileys! She's trying, to be sure, to be cute in the cute-overload way that some Humbertish men find arousing.
At the same time, much of the interest in her seems to be driven by sheer puzzlement. People are watching just because other people are watching, all of us as interested in why everyone else is interested. That she seems to be trying to make some kind of point animates the attention, but her point, whatever it is, is not really the point.