On December 19 2019, “Hatsune Miku” trended on Twitter during a controversy involving J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, and trans-exclusionary feminism (“TERF,” an abbreviation for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” also trended.)
That morning, Rowling had confirmed long-circulating rumors that she supported “gender-critical” feminism, also known as trans-exclusionary feminism, when she tweeted:
As noted above, “Hatsune Miku” consistently trended alongside J.K. Rowling’s name and “TERF.” The meme appeared to have emerged from a similar controversy earlier in 2019, involving the creator of the game Minecraft:
Microsoft is hosting a ten year celebration event on May 17 [2019] for seminal game Minecraft. A spokesperson from Microsoft told Variety that Markus “Notch” Persson, the original creator of Minecraft and founder of game studio Mojang, has been purposefully excluded from the event due to his past comments. “His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft,” the spokesperson told Variety.
[…]
In the past several years, Persson, who currently has 3.7 million twitter followers, has broadcasted several controversial and frankly abhorrent opinions and views regarding politics, race, gender, and sexuality, and even full-blown conspiracy theories.
On March 29 2019, a fan/parody account for the character Hatsune Miku retweeted Persson, and added:
At the same time, fans of Minecraft also joked the game “came from space”:
The meme was readily available when Harry Potter fans felt disappointment at Rowling’s opinions on transgender people. Within a few hours, many fans began praising Hatsune Miku for creating the Harry Potter series:
Agreement wasn’t unanimous, however:
Oopular tweets about Hitsune Miku authoring Harry Potter books are a meme, a rapid response to news about J.K. Rowling’s tweet voicing support for trans-exclusionary feminism. An alternative, less prominent iteration of the meme claimed that Rowling’s works “came from space.”