Building an alter ego through technology

One of the clearest case studies is Mu Kepzo and his virtual avatar, Ezmusgita. In 2009, in a small conservative town in Turkey, a nine-year-old boy created an avatar on Stardoll, a browser-based dress-up game. Through curated captions, staged photos, and music releases, Ezmusgita stepped out of the screen into social feeds, then into galleries, brands, and live performance. Today she’s recognized as one of the first digital models and influencers, before “virtual influencer” was even a phrase.

Mu’s early posts read like a secret diary written in code: poetic captions, emotional fragments, photographs staged as if Ezmusgita were autonomous. This is a familiar arc for digital natives. But Mu pushed further. By 15 he was teaching himself 3D modeling, AI, and digital cloning to fracture reality.

While early social media worshipped polish, Ezmusgita embodied glitch, exaggeration, and hyperfemininity. She became a distortion of Mu’s own limits, a place where suppressed parts could survive. “She wasn’t trying to imitate reality.,” Mu says. “She embodied distortion.” That purpose now fuels his career as a designer and creative director, collaborating with artists and brands he once admired from afar.

In learning to animate Ezmusgita, Mu built a technical foundation: CGI environments, AI workflows, machine learning, that has since become his professional toolkit. This mirrors a larger trend: The global digital-avatar market is projected to hit $527 billion by 2030. But behind those numbers are individual stories like Mu’s, where technology isn’t simply monetized but mythologized.

Ezmusgita’s partnerships with brands such as About You, Escentric Molecules, and Alan Crocetti show how digital personas can move through fashion and beauty like living campaign stars. Yet Mu resists the idea of her as a product. In his words, “Mu performs survival; Ezmusgita performs transcendence.” Their new SYKY drop, “Suspended in the Portal of Becoming,” makes this explicit: garments as portals, AI-driven textures as relics from a future religion.

If avatars once meant escape, the next phase is governance. As Mu develops Cyberclone, a framework for authorized digital twins, the stakes are no longer just creative. AI systems are already generating faces, voices, and performances without consent. Digital twins, Mu argues, are “not just creative tools but frameworks for protection.” Today’s artists and coders are rewriting the rules of ownership. Intellectual property must now include the self itself: the body, the face, the data that makes you legible to machines.

Mu’s story is a warning and an invitation. Hiding consumes you, but you can redirect that energy into building your own mythology—an avatar, a gesture, a digital twin that holds your truth even when the world doesn’t. For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who are already fluent in Roblox, Fortnite skins, and AI filters, Mu and Ezmusgita offer a blueprint for turning survival into art, and art into authorship.

We sat down with Mu to talk about building Ezmusgita, the power of digital alter egos, and how technology transforms survival into authorship.

You created Ezmusgita on Stardoll at nine years old. How has your idea of her shifted over time? 

At first she was camouflage. A way for me to exist when Mu couldn’t. Over time, she fractured and expanded from a flat pixel shield into a partner, almost a myth I could walk beside. She’s no longer for just survival; she’s become a second language for me. 

When Ezmusgita stopped being a shield and became a partner, how did your reality change? 

It shifted the moment I stopped using her to hide and started building with her. To expand her world, I taught myself 3D, AI and eventually Machine Learning. What began as a way to protect myself grew into a discipline that became my career. Because of Ezmusgita, I now work as a designer and creative director, collaborating with artists and brands that inspired me when I was a child. She didn’t just give me cover, she gave me purpose, and she’s the reason I do what I do today. 

What would you say to young people who feel pressure to hide who they are?

Hiding consumes you. But you can redirect that energy into making your own mythology. Build a world, an avatar, a song, a gesture that holds your truth even if the outside world doesn’t. That secret language can become the foundation of your freedom. 

Ezmusgita led you into 3D and CGI. Can you walk us through that journey?

Ezmusgita began on Stardoll, which was fun but limited; it was basically a static, two dimensional stage. I wanted her to exist beyond that flatness, so I started teaching myself 3D just to give her movement, texture, and depth. At first it was very DIY learning new softwares, experimenting with rendering, trying to make her feel more alive. The more I learned, the more her world expanded: from simple 3D modeling into CGI environments, and eventually into digital cloning and AI. What started as a child’s avatar slowly became a living project that taught me the entire language of digital creation. By pushing to make her more realistic, I ended up building the technical foundation that shaped my career as a designer and creative director. 

Ezmusgita was one of the first virtual influencers. Why do you think people were drawn to her then, when social media was just emerging? Did you expect that response? 

She wasn’t trying to imitate reality. She embodied distortion. While early social media worshipped polish, Ezmusgita was glitch, exaggeration, hyperfemininity and fracture. I didn’t expect a response, I made her in order to survive. But people saw themselves in that crack, and I think that’s where the connection happened.

When did you know it was time to coexist with Ezmusgita instead of keeping her as an alter ego? 

It happened during one of the darkest periods of my life. My personal world had collapsed, and I was forced to confront myself in a way I never had before. In that silence, Ezmusgita was the only constant. She had never been just an alter ego — she was a co-author, a force that carried me when I couldn’t carry myself. What began as survival turned into power. Coexistence wasn’t a casual decision, it was the only way forward. What once felt like surrender became the foundation of everything I create today. 

If technology didn’t exist, how do you think you would’ve found this path?

I think I would have ended up in performance or poetry. The instinct to build another self would have always been there. Technology just amplified it, it gave me sharper scissors, bigger mirrors. 

Now that you and Ezmusgita coexist, where do you draw the line: who is Mu, and who is Ezmusgita? 

Mu is the body of the one who bleeds, pays rent, and feels hunger. Ezmusgita is the distortion of that body; she takes those limits and rewrites them as myth. If I collapse, she rebuilds me in another form. Both are performance: Mu performs survival, Ezmusgita performs transcendence. The line between us isn’t fixed, it shifts like a glitch. Some days I wear her to escape, other days she wears me to exist. It’s never one or the other. It’s the scissors cutting between flesh and code, and the performance happens in the blur. 

Tell me about your new SYKY drop. How does it show your vision of fashion?

For me fashion isn’t fabric, it's a portal. The SYKY drop plays with AI driven textures like relics from a future religion. I wanted it to feel like clothing you don’t just wear but enter into, garments that behave like mythology. 

Let’s talk about Cyberclone. Why do you think people need digital twins?

Our bodies are finite, but demand is infinite. Digital twins bridge that gap — they extend presence, reduce unnecessary travel, and lower carbon emissions. But beyond efficiency, the real urgency is legal and ethical. We’re entering a moment where likeness can be replicated without consent. AI systems are already generating faces, voices, and performances of people who never agreed to it. Without legislation, that becomes exploitation. Digital twins, in my view, are not just creative tools but also frameworks for protection. By building authorized, traceable, and contractual versions of ourselves, we set a precedent: your likeness is yours, and its use must be respected. 

Cyberclone is about coexistence, yes human and digital labor operating together but it’s also about governance. We need copyright structures, contracts, and policies that recognize digital identity as intellectual property. Protecting people from unauthorized AI is as important as empowering them with the authorized version. 

What’s next? Any projects or collaborations you can share? 

My focus right now is the music project where each track reveals a different fragment of Ezmusgita’s story through my own voice. It’s more than music, it's the first chapter of a mythology written in sound from Mu’s perspective. Alongside that, I’m developing a performance piece where I appear on stage with her, merging music, avatar, and fashion into one language. The aim is to create an immersive world that audiences don’t just hear, but fully inhabit a mythology that unfolds across sound, image, fashion and presence. And yes, there are a few collaborations in the works that I can’t reveal just yet, but they’ll add even more unexpected layers to this universe.

Collect Mu and Ezmusgita’s SYKY drop Suspended in the Portal of Becoming now exclusively on SYKY.com.