Wow, five years! Time flies when you're an artificial crowd-sourced pop star!

On August 31st, 2012, everyone's favorite aqua-haired synthetic singer Hatsune Miku celebrated her fifth birthday. Of course, one of the advantages of being a nonexistent being is that Miku will forever be listed as "16 years old", so perhaps "anniversary" is a more apropos term.

But whoever said it isn't cool to celebrate mythical people's birthdays? After all, many people celebrate Christmas and Batman-nukkah, too! 

For its part in making Miku a thing that matters, NicoNico streamed a six-hour marathon of her many live appearances, including last year's Mikunopolis concert at Anime Expo, and a rerun of last week's "Summer's End 39 Festival". Miku's "parents" at Crypton Future Media are also sending goods to random Twitter users who post celebratory photos with the hashtag "#miku5thBD".

Sega, Miku's videogame wranglers, also pulled a cute move by having its whole Project DIVA development staff sing "Summer Idol" on video. Check it out embedded below.

And of course, as with almost any prominent 2D character's birthday, Pixiv ran a special tag that helps image-collectors the world over gather up sweet Miku artwork. See it here. In case you don't have a Pixiv account, we've collected a gallery of some of the cooler pics in the offing.