That's a bit... late to the party. I can't find when the article was published, but the phenomenon "went worldwide" several years ago by the means of COVID. These days the vtubing as an industry is in a somewhat stable state, if not a possible decline, going by viewership hours over the same period. Many big EN and JP names have already retired too.
For the big VTuber corporate brand, for sure. But the indie VTuber scene as exploded. It used to be fairly expensive to get in the hobby, and you needed to be technically savy or have someone be for you. Now there is a lot of free and open-source VTuber software that don't need complex setup, just a webcam. And you can easily commission a few hundred bucks an artist to get your whole character and animation.
This made the barrier almost inexistent. And since showing your actual face was a big stop for a lot of people, vtubing has allowed a lot of people to get into streaming. There are thousands of <100s viewers vtuber right now.
It's not 2018 anymore, so that's not quite true. By now free models have been there forever, and indies have been using them for as long. I mean, Filian has already been using one over 4 years ago.
Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms.
It's a complex/murky matter with lots of allegations in every direction that's hard to summarize properly.
The absolute barest bone / neutral summary is that Filian is very popular (3.2 mil subs on yt, 1.3 mil subs on twitch, although she may be retiring currently, or is doing an extensive publicity stunt as her channels and socials are wiped clean). Two years ago, the model's creator announced [0] that Good Smile is making a nendo based off his model for an unnamed vtuber, and that they were not informed beforehand, let alone credited or compensated. They were trying to contact Good Smile and said vtuber to resolve the matter. After a few days Jingo posted an extensive message [1] that the situation was resolved and the parties are cooperating, further noting, among other things, that "free to use in VRchat" does not mean "free to do anything without any credit".
Note that this was not the first time Filian made merch off this model, and it was not stated clearly why Jingo took steps only at that point. Possibly because they never heard about Filian and only realized what's going on since Good Smile is a well known Japanese company.
that fillian controversy gives me flashbacks.... suprisingly little of that controversy seems to have survived, even though its only been 2 years.
this one is the only thing i could scrounge up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOyo1BM6Y - but always take what he says with a barrel of salt, he'S more trying to drum up drama then actually portrait things truthfully
A lot of people started with some image they, or a friend, doodled, which they made animate slightly when they talk. That's a pretty low barrier to entry.
I must be old, but five years is not that long ago. OOP was mentioning the covid peak. Before 2019, there was already vtubers, but the setups where way more complicated and janky.
Some more interesting topics around the subject that I haven't seen covered in the comments:
- Hololive is huge and they definitely take a decent cut for their efforts. But why do people sign with them? The short answer is that they're a well oiled machine where people go through a sign up process where they create a test video etc. If accepted they're placed into groups (such as Hololive English) etc., but at the same time they also get to interact with all the other groups which immediately raises their popularity significantly.
They also look for some other related skills, for example probably all of the English group can sing semi-professionally on a stage etc.
In general your success is pretty much guaranteed once accepted, it just becomes a question of scale.
- Downsides: Usually the vtuber character, name, image and all other related copyrights belong to them. If there are disagreements then you can leave depending on your contract, but you can no longer use that character in any way. For example Nimi Nightmare used to be Fauna in Hololive, but she left and restarted on her own, whereas some other really popular streamers left but never seemed to resurface.
In general they also don't seem to collaborate much with vtubers outside of their space, so I'm sure there are some rules in play there.
> In general they also don't seem to collaborate much with vtubers outside of their space, so I'm sure there are some rules in play there.
I think it's more about market dynamics than strict rules.
There are clear benefits to collaborating within the same agency because it helps introduce audiences to other talents under the same umbrella. Everyone involved has a chance to grow together.
Once you start collaborating outside the agency, you're inevitably splitting viewers' time, attention, and even spending across different groups. Since every fan only has so much time and money to go around, those collaborations don't always make business sense.
That's not to say they never happen. If a collaboration is expected to bring in new audiences, significantly increase exposure, or otherwise benefit both sides, then it's much easier to justify. But without that kind of upside, it can end up helping another agency just as much, or even more, than your own.
The first time I encountered VTubing, I thought the point was just to hide your face, for various reasons. Being sensitive about your looks, not wanting to attract stalkers, whatever. But there's apparently a lot more to it; I was surprised.
That's one reason. Another big one is it's fun to put on a character. It lets you step away from things you don't like about yourself while embracing the things you do
I've ran once on some streamer who along with the CGI animation also wears some full body suit of anime girl with helmet, wig. That looked like a blend of two ideas. But that's still nothing new - there were always people on youtube who did fully cover their faces to not be recognized.
That's what many western VTubers don't get, they see it as an "avatar" for themselves which is not what VTubing is. It's supposed to be a completely different persona with no connection to your real identity. It completely dilluted (and I would say even ruined) VTubing in the west.
Maybe they do get it, but are choosing to lean more into the authenticity angle. An art form, a medium, evolves when new cultures and sub-cultures take it up and add their own stuff, both the creator and the audience.
Maybe from their perspective they're correctly doing it their way, instead of, as in your perspective, failing to do it your way.
They do not "evolve" it, they completely misunderstand and butcher it. You can't just take a concept, do it completely different (and we are talking about 100% different) and re-use the same name. That's just disrespectful.
You might prefer things to be that way, but it's important to remember that's an absurd expectation. Especially in the west with how frequently vtubers graduate and show up under a different name. Even hololive JP, who push the entire persona thing very hard, have to periodically break immersion and remind fans that there are real people behind the avatar.
The "different persona" stuff is responsible for some of the most serious abuses the industry has surfaced, and the increasing treatment of VTubing as an avatar is a direct consequence of that.
There's a massive cultural chasm here. I can understand why people want to hide themselves, and I can also understand the audience not wanting to see too much behind the curtain, but at the same time it feels unhealthy to not acknowledge that it's a performance with a performer, who should be able to get credit for their work if they want.
Hamlet dies on stage. At the end of the play, he gets up and an actor takes a bow. This does not detract from Shakespeare.
(aside: I think the possibilities for vtuber theatre have been under-explored in favor of musical performances, but that's probably just a matter of audience taste again)
If I were to make YouTube videos of the camera-to-face variety, I would cloak my face and voice both to avoid stalkers and to avoid deepfakes of each.
But against the flood of videos even before all the AI-generated content churned out by people who don't care about quality, I think I will instead just not make any.
That's a bigger question, like why do people watch streamers in the first place. It's not for me personally but it's a huge worldwide multibillion industry so plenty of people enjoy it and / or aspire to be it.
I didn't get it when it first was a thing (like 15 years ago) but now I watch streams of esports/pvp and I watch longplays to scratch an itch for games I have no intention of putting the full time sink into but need to experience bits of the game (like FF7Remake). Being able to skip or passively consume the boring bits is good and it's less addictive than playing.
Occasionally if they are genuinely funny or are a personality I care about, I find the streamer can be additive to the experience.
For example it was quite hilarious and interesting seeing Justin Wong of street fighter fame trying out Elden Ring. Same for Demetrious Johnson from UFC
I love longplays and other let's play style things, even barely adjacent categories like Game Grumps where it's half podcast.
But I can't stand streaming because the entire culture is infantile and lowest common denominator. It's the same problem I have with Short form video content and microblogging, that in order to optimally attract the large market that prefers that content, you have to do things that are extremely off putting to people with my interests.
So for example, anyone playing a game on twitch will be pushed, by chat and by the invisible hand of the attention market, to optimize for stupid things. Instead of a roguelike build that is good, you will make a roguelike build that is "memey" because that gets you a larger audience. There's an aura of forcing chaos and chat sycophancy. It encourages the kind of antisocial behavior that sucks, like people in twitch plays pokemon who spent the entire time trying to ruin it.
There's also the problem that half the platform seems to be just softcore porn. Or gambling now.
Many streamers also run a popular youtube channel, and you can recognize a massive difference between content made directly for long form youtube videos vs their streamed content. IMO the quality itself is drastically different.
Streamers who don't do those kinds of things remain niche.
"Normal" streamers are watched for a variety of reasons: maybe their personality is entertaining and charismatic, maybe they're really good at the game(s) they play (speedrunners in particular fall into this camp), and so on. There will always be viewers watching purely for parasocial reasons, but it's usually not the primary reason to watch them.
With vtubers, though, the parasocial element is essentially the full extent of the appeal. They're not very charismatic (vtuber humor is infamous for consisting mostly of loud childish noises and sex jokes), they're usually not very good at games and rarely dedicate themselves to one game or one genre. They are watched because the viewers are lonely and want to feel like they have a (girl)friend, that's about it.
I can at least understand why someone watches a streamer, even though it isn't for me. Streamers tend to be charismatic and entertaining, so watching the person do his or her thing makes sense. But I can't understand the desire to watch a broadcast of a fake persona.
99.9% of Western vtubers do exactly what streamers do, including being charismatic and entertaining, just behind a computer generated avatar. The "lore" and design of their avatar is mostly just aesthetics, a bit of branding and a means of self expression. Japanese vtubers take the kayfabe more seriously but that's because their personas are essentially corporate generated identities and that's their job - but even then their actual personalities inevitably leak out, and their talents become a part of the character.
VTubers separate the actor and the on-screen character, which is good for both the actor and the audience.
Audiences tend to be young (because, in general, they have the free time), and some struggle to distinguish the two, leading to strange parasocial interactions where audiences believe there is an actual relationship between them and the streamer. Some streamers are good at leveraging this relationship for money and clout; at the extreme example, there is OnlyFans.
At the worst, this fake one-sided relationship can lead to stalking and murder, but even lessor forms such as constant rumors over relationship status or sexualized screenshots can take its toll. VTubers reduce or eliminate this from audiences, but their use also helps the streamer since the VTuber is obviously a character they play, it is not them as a person.
This is not different than how some people obsess over actors, musicians, sports players, or models.
I watch a few indie vtubers (and was a fan of idol corp before they got sold off and their first english gen left). I like the streamers and would watch them regardless of what they look like in meatspace
I also wondered this before I ever saw any. There is a gradient from someone streaming with no cam, then a non-human vtuber, then human vtuber and finally a real human.
The simplest answer is probably that we all have our likes and dislikes, but personally for me I fall inbetween the non-human and vtuber section. If they stream permanently as e.g. a fish I find it too odd, whereas apparently my brain is perfectly happy seeing any kind of expressive humanoid that I can link to the speaking person.
If they have no cam then its just a voice over which feels too impersonal for the streaming space, which I don't like.
* I get to experience games I wouldn't normally have time for: I work full time, and as much as I love games and always make time for them, I still have a finite amount of time to make and a solid chunk of that time has to be devoted to multiplayer games, since it's a big part of how I meet my social needs. And even then, some games that are quite fun to watch for me are games I don't necessarily want to play? Like I love watching people play things like Lethal Company, but I don't have a friend-group to play with, so a streamer is great for that. Also horror games usually have really interesting worlds, but uh... I am a chicken shit LOL
* It also broadens the number of games I'm exposed to quite a bit. Many a time I have tuned into a stream, watched it for awhile, and been like "okay this actually looks really good/fun/interesting" and turned off the stream to go buy it on Steam. I've just bought Claire Obscur because I initially thought it was Yet Another Damn JRPG (objective 1: go to class, final objective: kill god) but I was thoroughly incorrect, and corrected by watching some streamers and an essay on it, and I'm really excited to play it now.
* Additionally, a wild third option: sometimes it's nice when working remotely to have a stream on for background noise. It hits your brain in a way that's vaguely similar to hanging out with a friend when you're both doing completely different things and just... existing together. It's completely fake of course, the streamer has no idea who I am, but it doesn't need to make sense to feel nice to my brain.
You all are beating around the bush. Some people like anime girl personas better than 3d girls. It is somewhat similar to the whole furry thing on a few levels. This creates the demand for services/content which we are now discussing. /thread
Oh I wouldn't say I go for VTubers specifically? It's more about the streamer, what they play and what their commentary is like. I honestly don't care much if they have webcam, vtuber avatar, or neither.
Same reason people watch any streamers; they either enjoy the streamer's personality, the games they play, or both.
For a lot of people, it's basically like watching one of your friends play a game you enjoy, and a way to become part of a community of others interested in the same thing.
Meanwhile in other cases it's a matter of just not having the time/energy/skill to play the games they're covering, but being interested in seeing how they pan out. For example, I often watch people play extremely difficult mods of games like Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 and New Super Mario Bros Wii. Yes, I could easily go ahead and do the same thing, and I do play mods of those games which are a lot easier...
But I find a good player's experience of these games fun to watch, and don't feel like spending hours on every level trying to match that myself.
People will make up a million different reasons, but at the end of the day, the vast majority of vtuber viewers are single men who like to pretend the streamer is their (girl)friend.
Oh I can answer this! I watch quite a lot of VTubers, almost all of them from the Hololive brand and a few indies. I don't watch regular streamers anymore.
- The most succinct way I can describe it is it has some overlap with the appeal of the anime/manga subculture in the West. Imagine a character in an anime has a "soul" imbued in them and they talk for hours on YouTube about a brand of ketchup they like and all the specific reasons why they like that brand. Depending on the topic, it's hard for some to get enough of that sort of thing. You feel a sense of (parasocial) connection to the streamer as you get to learn more about them in these hyperspecific ways over the years, in a way that a static, deliberately constructed medium such as anime or manga cannot express. Accumulated personal knowledge of the streamer is the social currency of VTuber fans, and by extension fans of real-life idols, as it can only be gained by watching and following them for a long time. I would recommend the book Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture for an academic perspective of real-life idols, since many of the concepts overlap with Japanese corporate VTubers.
- Many anime/manga franchises and brands like Vocaloid have historically appealed to a need of emotional connection in the past with things like character goods, but VTubers interact directly with their audience so the effect is much more pronounced. It is like those characters are actually speaking to you for once (though usually they aren't speaking to anyone in particular). Plus they talk about their own favorite anime, manga and games. This is very appealing to some.
- An added benefit to watching VTubers that are part of a corporation is you get to see them interact regularly with the other members, which becomes a large part of the appeal. It makes it feel as if you're watching one cohesive group of friendly individuals, and you can also switch between watching different members if you feel like it/the schedules overlap.
- I don't know about regular streamers, but with VTubers it's a surprisingly social activity. People are encouraged to create art and post it on the hashtags of each streamer, so watching streams is a wellspring of motivation for creative types. A lot of the things depicted in that art would be unusual or weird if they were drawn for real-life streamers IMO, but in the VTubing sphere it is seen differently. I would say the vast majority of VTubers aren't insulted if you post something explicit of them so long as you keep it off of the offical channels. They will just ignore it and carry on. There is something to be said about this in a culture that some might say is becoming more and more puritanical.
- The fan communities are niche but very devoted. The people I've met through them have helped me in a lot of ways, and I have also managed to give back as well. Being a fan gives you a sense of identity. Meeting with a fan that watches the same streamer instantly gives us a lot things to talk about. Multiple people I met at in person events have described the community as "home" to them, maybe same as football fans are with a favorite team. People wear the liveries of their favorite streamer or cosplay and group together for large gatherings or do online fan activities. I'm not aware of an equivalent for someone like Asmongold!
- In Hololive's case, it is a truly apolitical streaming experience, I believe one of the few that exists with their level of popularity. I watch VTubers to shut out the chaos and cynicism of the rest of the world. You can depend on Hololive for this anti-cynicism bubble because they have stringent rules that politics or inflammatory topics are off-limits. Instead of feeling that it's restrictive, I would say it's a breath of fresh air. But in addition, the VTubers themselves are just fun to watch. Reading the interactions they have with each other online is one of the few times I get the "old web" feeling that has mostly vanished from modern social media. It is a precious feeling and I end up wanting to protect and cultivate it.
- With Hololive in particular, it's hard to describe but after watching for a while you get a "feeling" for what brand identity the management is trying to build, and that identity appeals to me. It is built on some level of restrictions on topics/activities (permission to steam certain games being one example) but the trade-off is the amount of resources thrown at each VTuber means they are freer to be themselves within those limitations and they don't have to act outrageous all the time to get attention, since the company takes care of promotions and reach. This one is big for me. I disagree with the article's notion that "eccentric", "expressive" and "weirder" necessarily contributes to a more appealing stream environment. A lot of those things mean being loud and attention-grabbing if you're an indie with no support to stand out in the overcrowded market, which quickly loses its appeal to me.
- Being a fan gives me an excuse to feel like a child again, without the feeling of being perceived as weird or a loner. I think this is common to a lot of hobbies. I can carry around a plushie of a VTuber I like in public and people have randomly come up to me an said "oh! Is that ______?" and we can hold a sustained conversation for like half an hour.
Wanting a sense of togetherness is why I keep returning. True, it is an experience based on a false sense of connection with the streamer, but I have made a lot of real friends in the hobby and we talk regularly.
Ehh I'm fine with it these days! It's pretty small and chained to my backpack inconspicuously. I've realized it's more important to express myself how I want than caring what people think all the time.
Knowing that I enjoy something this much means I can just ignore people that don't understand how I feel, is what I meant to say.
I'm a Vtuber myself. I'm an indie, self supported, just for fun type rather than someone trying to make a living from it.
If you're genuinely interested in becoming a Vtuber, the barrier to entry is surprisingly low. You don't necessarily need to commission a custom model or a unique character design. You can use one of the VR avatar generators, which is what my avatar is based on, or even start with a modified VR avatar if its license allows it. That's actually a pretty common approach in the indie scene.
As the article mentions, the market is definitely saturated, so I wouldn't go into it expecting to make a lot of money. For what it's worth, a large number of Vtubers don't even meet YouTube's monetization threshold. Personally, I think that's part of what makes the community interesting. I tend to enjoy following smaller creators more than the big agency names.
One thing I'd add is that I think the article overgeneralizes the AI topic a bit and leans more toward wishful thinking. A lot of the hesitation around AI, especially at major agencies, comes from the fact that their character designs are often commissioned from well known artists. That creates a relationship between the performer and the artist, often referred to as the "Mama" or "Papa" relationship, and there can be a lot of sensitivity around how those designs are used. To be fair, those dynamics can show up in plenty of situations besides AI.
If you don't have those constraints, people tend to be much more relaxed about AI. Some creators who rely heavily on fan art are naturally more opinionated about it than others, but it really varies from person to person.
Strange omission to talk about the general anti-AI sentiment, while not mentioning that the #3 most-watched English VTuber (Neuro-sama) is an LLM – who is actually widely accepted as a "good" use of AI by other VTubers and viewers.
I think neuro-sama has been accepted because she isn't deceptive. It's very clear that Neuro-sama isn't a real person or even really intelligent. The other big reason is that she collaborates with other vtubers and has brought new audiences to them.
Also, arguably nowadays the main streamer is Vedal, her (for lack of a better term) handler. Part of the fun is seeing them interact
Does anyone actually believe the premise of Neuro-sama that she is an AI? The original premise was that she is a lightweight AI model livecoded on streams, but that is obviously not the case anymore.
It's certainly possible someone could fake something like that for views, but I'm curious what you consider to be the tells that it's no longer an LLM behind the wheel?
Maybe it's LLM and human actor splitting work, but she looks too natural, too fast and too error-free to be LLM based since too long ago. Just their dictation -> thinking -> TTS loop is too fast to be LLM. Context awareness and character adherence is too perfect as well.
The stock prices are not great all things considered- I think that the vtuber audience needs something new/different to broaden beyond it's current market base AND I think investors would rather put money into AI related stocks than IP/vtuber related stocks.
Did I say 1950 pop stars popularity was authentic? I'm just saying the implicit question of this post's title can be simply answered with "they're so popular because of marketing, duh"
The VTuber phenomenon is often framed as escape hatch for streamers who do not prefer to show faces; IMO, it couldn't have worked if audiences found it disappointing - the audiences must prefer the presenter hiding their face than prominently displaying it. I think that's more noteworthy than the person behind it opting to hide their faces.
I'm not particularly into VTubing (not a fan of social streaming or the japanese style), but i find the tech and creativity amazing. I'm very into mocap and started building an experimental facial capture system, which overlaps a lot with the VTubing concept, but using different protocols (most VTubing models/solutions uses VMC) and more varied custom cartoon models.
If you are into the tech behind mocap this community is a fun place to explore.
My favorite story about Vtubing was someone explaining what Vtubing was to their older dad. And after some explaining he said "Oh! Like Tool Bear!" He's a youtuber vtuber who reviews and talks about tools.
A testament to how tech has come along, first you needed complex equipment, then Adobe released a home animator thing which needed a webcam and was paid.
In case you need a real example that's not just gaming or concerts, join me and thousands of others watching Sumo live hosted by MidnightSumo (he's not a cat)
The olds always told me some day I would be old myself and would be baffled by what the youngs are into, I think that day has arrived. I haven't hit the "afraid" stage yet but I'm guessing that is coming.
well at least my generation hasn't destroyed the world, so they weren't completely right. Yet?
I don't understand the draw of video anything at all; I never have. I can read information 100x faster than a video can provide and I just cannot possibly understand why anyone would want to sit through a 45 minute YouTube video that would have taken 1.5 pages of text.
That said, I'm not at all opposed to OTHERS getting the information in the delivery method they prefer. Great; good for you. But! I don't want to see written word be entirely replaced by video. And, before you ask: no; a transcript of the script is not what I want either.
None of this is about "information" (apart from the occasional serious moment, like the Juufutei Raden art education streams). It's entertainment.
> sit through a 45 minute YouTube video
This is the reverse. You have 45 minutes and need to fill it with something more interesting than staring at the wall, but not too demanding. Into that hole fits a million different possibilities for entertainment, of which streamers and vtubers are one.
Interesting. I prefer video/audio for the same reason. But I watch most things on 1.5x or 1.8x speed. I'm not a particularly fast reader, so I prefer audio/video forms.
Totally agree with you though about not thinking written form is inferior. I do still enjoy a good long form article. (Also I'm not including technical writing like documentation.)
A TTS read out of written text I find ideal. I don't have time to read nearly as much as I would like, but I can listen while doing other things, and can do it at 2x it even slower than 1x if it's dense. You can match it to your cognitive capacity which I find optimal
I think this can be very fun, practical amd enjoyable approach for teaching and sharing online techical contents especially presenting to the younger generations, but focusing on the non-AI generated contents.
It can be a very good trade-off between the sloppy AI and the boring lectures.
I can see myself doing this in the future, but why they need agents for VTubing, is it because of VTubing platform, marketing/promotion or payment?
Agencies are helpful for the tech and business side, sure, but as the article mentions, the indie scene has exploded. Plenty of creators are putting out high-quality stuff entirely on their own [1].
So, nothing is stopping you from giving it a shot. People are already looking into using VTubing for education, too. [2]
Moreover, these days as more people experiment with real-world integration and interactive setups, the traditional constraints of being a VTuber are really starting to disappear.
Some VTubers treat it as a gateway into Japanese idol culture. So being part of an agency helps them with access to resources and opportunities for that sort of thing, e.g. voice acting gigs, appearances at events, planning concerts, recording studios, 3d motion tracking studios and brand sponsorships.
Marketing and promotion, some level of organization involved (coordinating streams with collaborators etc) and merch deals, I think?
Not all of them need it - plenty of full independents out there. But even some small ones group together to hire a manager and form a little "network" I think.
lol the assumptions remind me of the late 90s and early 2000s
where routine benign things such as playing an offline game with a character that didn’t look like you and a different gender was considered to mean something it didn’t, outside of the gaming community
I've personally met more women into vtubers as a whole than men. Though, I've met a lot more men who exclusively watch a single vtuber to an almost obsessive degree. This probably has its roots, like most things in the scene, in Japanese idol culture. At least from what I've seen, women are more likely to enjoy the entire experience surrounding the industry instead of just a single idol or group
Also, this completely ignores the small but not insignificant minority of male vtubers
This is a very tired insult/joke outsiders throw around about vtubing (though I don't get the impression that you had that intention). It's somewhat ridiculous, vtubers stream very often and voice changers tend to be pretty obvious. There are some men who use female avatars, but it isn't common.
It's also kinda misogynistic, plenty of women enjoy anime culture. Many prominent artists for vtuber models are also women (and occasionally vtubers themselves). To the level that calling the model artist "mama" and the model rigger "papa" is a common trope.
Hentai porn is apparently the most popular porn category in lots of countries! Took me by surprise when I found that out. Closely followed by the more predictable “lesbian”, “Anal”, “MILF” and “Asian”!
That's a bit... late to the party. I can't find when the article was published, but the phenomenon "went worldwide" several years ago by the means of COVID. These days the vtubing as an industry is in a somewhat stable state, if not a possible decline, going by viewership hours over the same period. Many big EN and JP names have already retired too.
For the big VTuber corporate brand, for sure. But the indie VTuber scene as exploded. It used to be fairly expensive to get in the hobby, and you needed to be technically savy or have someone be for you. Now there is a lot of free and open-source VTuber software that don't need complex setup, just a webcam. And you can easily commission a few hundred bucks an artist to get your whole character and animation.
This made the barrier almost inexistent. And since showing your actual face was a big stop for a lot of people, vtubing has allowed a lot of people to get into streaming. There are thousands of <100s viewers vtuber right now.
It's not 2018 anymore, so that's not quite true. By now free models have been there forever, and indies have been using them for as long. I mean, Filian has already been using one over 4 years ago.
Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms.
> Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms.
Can you expand on this? Are they not able to sell merch since they don't "own" their design?
How popular are they? Have they considered buying the model from the authors?
It's a complex/murky matter with lots of allegations in every direction that's hard to summarize properly.
The absolute barest bone / neutral summary is that Filian is very popular (3.2 mil subs on yt, 1.3 mil subs on twitch, although she may be retiring currently, or is doing an extensive publicity stunt as her channels and socials are wiped clean). Two years ago, the model's creator announced [0] that Good Smile is making a nendo based off his model for an unnamed vtuber, and that they were not informed beforehand, let alone credited or compensated. They were trying to contact Good Smile and said vtuber to resolve the matter. After a few days Jingo posted an extensive message [1] that the situation was resolved and the parties are cooperating, further noting, among other things, that "free to use in VRchat" does not mean "free to do anything without any credit".
Note that this was not the first time Filian made merch off this model, and it was not stated clearly why Jingo took steps only at that point. Possibly because they never heard about Filian and only realized what's going on since Good Smile is a well known Japanese company.
[0] https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809101855655670159
[1] https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809811423125729396
that fillian controversy gives me flashbacks.... suprisingly little of that controversy seems to have survived, even though its only been 2 years.
this one is the only thing i could scrounge up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOyo1BM6Y - but always take what he says with a barrel of salt, he'S more trying to drum up drama then actually portrait things truthfully
Nah weaboos and (us) furries been doing it for ages + not necessarily expensive at all, can use a webcam for basic ones for ages now.
A lot of people started with some image they, or a friend, doodled, which they made animate slightly when they talk. That's a pretty low barrier to entry.
Is this AI? That was the case like 5 years ago. Every big western vtuber right now started out as an indie using free models.
I must be old, but five years is not that long ago. OOP was mentioning the covid peak. Before 2019, there was already vtubers, but the setups where way more complicated and janky.
Yeah it really hit its peak with gen 1 of Hololive English I want to say, along with the explosion of indie vtubers on twitch and stuff that followed.
A lot of female content creators I followed online became vtubers. HikaruStation used to be a singer, but now she’s a whale Vtuber by the name of Bao.
AmaLee (of LeeAndLie) also got famous through anime song covers, but she’s mostly a vtuber now.
I think the current vtuber “market” is a lot harder to break into now than it used to be though.
It quotes figures from Q1 of 2026, so it was definitely published this year.
According to the article metadata:
> I can't find when the article was published, but the phenomenon "went worldwide" several years ago by the means of COVID.
Article cites stats from Q1 2026, so presumably this is a current view of the phenomenon.
Yeah, I was thinking that too
Gawr Gura sang "take me out to the ball game" at a Dodgers game in 2024. This stuff has been super mainstream now for years
Some more interesting topics around the subject that I haven't seen covered in the comments:
- Hololive is huge and they definitely take a decent cut for their efforts. But why do people sign with them? The short answer is that they're a well oiled machine where people go through a sign up process where they create a test video etc. If accepted they're placed into groups (such as Hololive English) etc., but at the same time they also get to interact with all the other groups which immediately raises their popularity significantly.
They also look for some other related skills, for example probably all of the English group can sing semi-professionally on a stage etc.
In general your success is pretty much guaranteed once accepted, it just becomes a question of scale.
- Downsides: Usually the vtuber character, name, image and all other related copyrights belong to them. If there are disagreements then you can leave depending on your contract, but you can no longer use that character in any way. For example Nimi Nightmare used to be Fauna in Hololive, but she left and restarted on her own, whereas some other really popular streamers left but never seemed to resurface.
In general they also don't seem to collaborate much with vtubers outside of their space, so I'm sure there are some rules in play there.
> In general they also don't seem to collaborate much with vtubers outside of their space, so I'm sure there are some rules in play there.
I think it's more about market dynamics than strict rules. There are clear benefits to collaborating within the same agency because it helps introduce audiences to other talents under the same umbrella. Everyone involved has a chance to grow together.
Once you start collaborating outside the agency, you're inevitably splitting viewers' time, attention, and even spending across different groups. Since every fan only has so much time and money to go around, those collaborations don't always make business sense.
That's not to say they never happen. If a collaboration is expected to bring in new audiences, significantly increase exposure, or otherwise benefit both sides, then it's much easier to justify. But without that kind of upside, it can end up helping another agency just as much, or even more, than your own.
The first time I encountered VTubing, I thought the point was just to hide your face, for various reasons. Being sensitive about your looks, not wanting to attract stalkers, whatever. But there's apparently a lot more to it; I was surprised.
That's one reason. Another big one is it's fun to put on a character. It lets you step away from things you don't like about yourself while embracing the things you do
I've ran once on some streamer who along with the CGI animation also wears some full body suit of anime girl with helmet, wig. That looked like a blend of two ideas. But that's still nothing new - there were always people on youtube who did fully cover their faces to not be recognized.
How to not be seen
There's a lot of indie vtubers who do it for that reason. It's just that the biggest ones are corporate.
That's what many western VTubers don't get, they see it as an "avatar" for themselves which is not what VTubing is. It's supposed to be a completely different persona with no connection to your real identity. It completely dilluted (and I would say even ruined) VTubing in the west.
Maybe they do get it, but are choosing to lean more into the authenticity angle. An art form, a medium, evolves when new cultures and sub-cultures take it up and add their own stuff, both the creator and the audience.
Maybe from their perspective they're correctly doing it their way, instead of, as in your perspective, failing to do it your way.
They do not "evolve" it, they completely misunderstand and butcher it. You can't just take a concept, do it completely different (and we are talking about 100% different) and re-use the same name. That's just disrespectful.
You might prefer things to be that way, but it's important to remember that's an absurd expectation. Especially in the west with how frequently vtubers graduate and show up under a different name. Even hololive JP, who push the entire persona thing very hard, have to periodically break immersion and remind fans that there are real people behind the avatar.
The "different persona" stuff is responsible for some of the most serious abuses the industry has surfaced, and the increasing treatment of VTubing as an avatar is a direct consequence of that.
There's a massive cultural chasm here. I can understand why people want to hide themselves, and I can also understand the audience not wanting to see too much behind the curtain, but at the same time it feels unhealthy to not acknowledge that it's a performance with a performer, who should be able to get credit for their work if they want.
Hamlet dies on stage. At the end of the play, he gets up and an actor takes a bow. This does not detract from Shakespeare.
(aside: I think the possibilities for vtuber theatre have been under-explored in favor of musical performances, but that's probably just a matter of audience taste again)
Supposed by whom?
Japanese idol culture and the first few vtubers, iirc
The people who literally created it.
If I were to make YouTube videos of the camera-to-face variety, I would cloak my face and voice both to avoid stalkers and to avoid deepfakes of each.
But against the flood of videos even before all the AI-generated content churned out by people who don't care about quality, I think I will instead just not make any.
The last section should have been titled “Why Do People Watch It?” because I finished the article still wondering.
That's a bigger question, like why do people watch streamers in the first place. It's not for me personally but it's a huge worldwide multibillion industry so plenty of people enjoy it and / or aspire to be it.
I didn't get it when it first was a thing (like 15 years ago) but now I watch streams of esports/pvp and I watch longplays to scratch an itch for games I have no intention of putting the full time sink into but need to experience bits of the game (like FF7Remake). Being able to skip or passively consume the boring bits is good and it's less addictive than playing.
Occasionally if they are genuinely funny or are a personality I care about, I find the streamer can be additive to the experience.
For example it was quite hilarious and interesting seeing Justin Wong of street fighter fame trying out Elden Ring. Same for Demetrious Johnson from UFC
I love longplays and other let's play style things, even barely adjacent categories like Game Grumps where it's half podcast.
But I can't stand streaming because the entire culture is infantile and lowest common denominator. It's the same problem I have with Short form video content and microblogging, that in order to optimally attract the large market that prefers that content, you have to do things that are extremely off putting to people with my interests.
So for example, anyone playing a game on twitch will be pushed, by chat and by the invisible hand of the attention market, to optimize for stupid things. Instead of a roguelike build that is good, you will make a roguelike build that is "memey" because that gets you a larger audience. There's an aura of forcing chaos and chat sycophancy. It encourages the kind of antisocial behavior that sucks, like people in twitch plays pokemon who spent the entire time trying to ruin it.
There's also the problem that half the platform seems to be just softcore porn. Or gambling now.
Many streamers also run a popular youtube channel, and you can recognize a massive difference between content made directly for long form youtube videos vs their streamed content. IMO the quality itself is drastically different.
Streamers who don't do those kinds of things remain niche.
It's not really the same thing.
"Normal" streamers are watched for a variety of reasons: maybe their personality is entertaining and charismatic, maybe they're really good at the game(s) they play (speedrunners in particular fall into this camp), and so on. There will always be viewers watching purely for parasocial reasons, but it's usually not the primary reason to watch them.
With vtubers, though, the parasocial element is essentially the full extent of the appeal. They're not very charismatic (vtuber humor is infamous for consisting mostly of loud childish noises and sex jokes), they're usually not very good at games and rarely dedicate themselves to one game or one genre. They are watched because the viewers are lonely and want to feel like they have a (girl)friend, that's about it.
I can at least understand why someone watches a streamer, even though it isn't for me. Streamers tend to be charismatic and entertaining, so watching the person do his or her thing makes sense. But I can't understand the desire to watch a broadcast of a fake persona.
99.9% of Western vtubers do exactly what streamers do, including being charismatic and entertaining, just behind a computer generated avatar. The "lore" and design of their avatar is mostly just aesthetics, a bit of branding and a means of self expression. Japanese vtubers take the kayfabe more seriously but that's because their personas are essentially corporate generated identities and that's their job - but even then their actual personalities inevitably leak out, and their talents become a part of the character.
VTubers separate the actor and the on-screen character, which is good for both the actor and the audience.
Audiences tend to be young (because, in general, they have the free time), and some struggle to distinguish the two, leading to strange parasocial interactions where audiences believe there is an actual relationship between them and the streamer. Some streamers are good at leveraging this relationship for money and clout; at the extreme example, there is OnlyFans.
At the worst, this fake one-sided relationship can lead to stalking and murder, but even lessor forms such as constant rumors over relationship status or sexualized screenshots can take its toll. VTubers reduce or eliminate this from audiences, but their use also helps the streamer since the VTuber is obviously a character they play, it is not them as a person.
This is not different than how some people obsess over actors, musicians, sports players, or models.
I watch a few indie vtubers (and was a fan of idol corp before they got sold off and their first english gen left). I like the streamers and would watch them regardless of what they look like in meatspace
I also wondered this before I ever saw any. There is a gradient from someone streaming with no cam, then a non-human vtuber, then human vtuber and finally a real human.
The simplest answer is probably that we all have our likes and dislikes, but personally for me I fall inbetween the non-human and vtuber section. If they stream permanently as e.g. a fish I find it too odd, whereas apparently my brain is perfectly happy seeing any kind of expressive humanoid that I can link to the speaking person.
If they have no cam then its just a voice over which feels too impersonal for the streaming space, which I don't like.
I would rather flip the question. Why not?
If you watch streamers, there are going to be Vtubers on the same platform recommended to you.
Are you going to discard/ignore those streams because the streamer is more privacy concious and doesn't show their face, and instead uses an avatar?
Yes, actually. If I wanted to watch a streamer it would be due to the human element they bring. An avatar doesn't bring that.
I enjoy a handful of streamers for a few reasons:
* I get to experience games I wouldn't normally have time for: I work full time, and as much as I love games and always make time for them, I still have a finite amount of time to make and a solid chunk of that time has to be devoted to multiplayer games, since it's a big part of how I meet my social needs. And even then, some games that are quite fun to watch for me are games I don't necessarily want to play? Like I love watching people play things like Lethal Company, but I don't have a friend-group to play with, so a streamer is great for that. Also horror games usually have really interesting worlds, but uh... I am a chicken shit LOL
* It also broadens the number of games I'm exposed to quite a bit. Many a time I have tuned into a stream, watched it for awhile, and been like "okay this actually looks really good/fun/interesting" and turned off the stream to go buy it on Steam. I've just bought Claire Obscur because I initially thought it was Yet Another Damn JRPG (objective 1: go to class, final objective: kill god) but I was thoroughly incorrect, and corrected by watching some streamers and an essay on it, and I'm really excited to play it now.
* Additionally, a wild third option: sometimes it's nice when working remotely to have a stream on for background noise. It hits your brain in a way that's vaguely similar to hanging out with a friend when you're both doing completely different things and just... existing together. It's completely fake of course, the streamer has no idea who I am, but it doesn't need to make sense to feel nice to my brain.
Not the parent, but I have the same question.
Your reasons above could be said about streamers in general, but what about VTubers in particular appeals to you?
You all are beating around the bush. Some people like anime girl personas better than 3d girls. It is somewhat similar to the whole furry thing on a few levels. This creates the demand for services/content which we are now discussing. /thread
Not to mention a small minority act and look like children doing art commissions with pretty vile dialogue. See more: https://piunikaweb.com/2026/05/01/uk-vtuber-arrested-anime-a...
Can we talk about how gross it is to call real human women "3D girls"? Is that just me?
Oh I wouldn't say I go for VTubers specifically? It's more about the streamer, what they play and what their commentary is like. I honestly don't care much if they have webcam, vtuber avatar, or neither.
Same reason people watch any streamers; they either enjoy the streamer's personality, the games they play, or both.
For a lot of people, it's basically like watching one of your friends play a game you enjoy, and a way to become part of a community of others interested in the same thing.
Meanwhile in other cases it's a matter of just not having the time/energy/skill to play the games they're covering, but being interested in seeing how they pan out. For example, I often watch people play extremely difficult mods of games like Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 and New Super Mario Bros Wii. Yes, I could easily go ahead and do the same thing, and I do play mods of those games which are a lot easier...
But I find a good player's experience of these games fun to watch, and don't feel like spending hours on every level trying to match that myself.
Loneliness, as far as I can tell.
People will make up a million different reasons, but at the end of the day, the vast majority of vtuber viewers are single men who like to pretend the streamer is their (girl)friend.
Oh I can answer this! I watch quite a lot of VTubers, almost all of them from the Hololive brand and a few indies. I don't watch regular streamers anymore.
- The most succinct way I can describe it is it has some overlap with the appeal of the anime/manga subculture in the West. Imagine a character in an anime has a "soul" imbued in them and they talk for hours on YouTube about a brand of ketchup they like and all the specific reasons why they like that brand. Depending on the topic, it's hard for some to get enough of that sort of thing. You feel a sense of (parasocial) connection to the streamer as you get to learn more about them in these hyperspecific ways over the years, in a way that a static, deliberately constructed medium such as anime or manga cannot express. Accumulated personal knowledge of the streamer is the social currency of VTuber fans, and by extension fans of real-life idols, as it can only be gained by watching and following them for a long time. I would recommend the book Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture for an academic perspective of real-life idols, since many of the concepts overlap with Japanese corporate VTubers.
- Many anime/manga franchises and brands like Vocaloid have historically appealed to a need of emotional connection in the past with things like character goods, but VTubers interact directly with their audience so the effect is much more pronounced. It is like those characters are actually speaking to you for once (though usually they aren't speaking to anyone in particular). Plus they talk about their own favorite anime, manga and games. This is very appealing to some.
- An added benefit to watching VTubers that are part of a corporation is you get to see them interact regularly with the other members, which becomes a large part of the appeal. It makes it feel as if you're watching one cohesive group of friendly individuals, and you can also switch between watching different members if you feel like it/the schedules overlap.
- I don't know about regular streamers, but with VTubers it's a surprisingly social activity. People are encouraged to create art and post it on the hashtags of each streamer, so watching streams is a wellspring of motivation for creative types. A lot of the things depicted in that art would be unusual or weird if they were drawn for real-life streamers IMO, but in the VTubing sphere it is seen differently. I would say the vast majority of VTubers aren't insulted if you post something explicit of them so long as you keep it off of the offical channels. They will just ignore it and carry on. There is something to be said about this in a culture that some might say is becoming more and more puritanical.
- The fan communities are niche but very devoted. The people I've met through them have helped me in a lot of ways, and I have also managed to give back as well. Being a fan gives you a sense of identity. Meeting with a fan that watches the same streamer instantly gives us a lot things to talk about. Multiple people I met at in person events have described the community as "home" to them, maybe same as football fans are with a favorite team. People wear the liveries of their favorite streamer or cosplay and group together for large gatherings or do online fan activities. I'm not aware of an equivalent for someone like Asmongold!
- In Hololive's case, it is a truly apolitical streaming experience, I believe one of the few that exists with their level of popularity. I watch VTubers to shut out the chaos and cynicism of the rest of the world. You can depend on Hololive for this anti-cynicism bubble because they have stringent rules that politics or inflammatory topics are off-limits. Instead of feeling that it's restrictive, I would say it's a breath of fresh air. But in addition, the VTubers themselves are just fun to watch. Reading the interactions they have with each other online is one of the few times I get the "old web" feeling that has mostly vanished from modern social media. It is a precious feeling and I end up wanting to protect and cultivate it.
- With Hololive in particular, it's hard to describe but after watching for a while you get a "feeling" for what brand identity the management is trying to build, and that identity appeals to me. It is built on some level of restrictions on topics/activities (permission to steam certain games being one example) but the trade-off is the amount of resources thrown at each VTuber means they are freer to be themselves within those limitations and they don't have to act outrageous all the time to get attention, since the company takes care of promotions and reach. This one is big for me. I disagree with the article's notion that "eccentric", "expressive" and "weirder" necessarily contributes to a more appealing stream environment. A lot of those things mean being loud and attention-grabbing if you're an indie with no support to stand out in the overcrowded market, which quickly loses its appeal to me.
- Being a fan gives me an excuse to feel like a child again, without the feeling of being perceived as weird or a loner. I think this is common to a lot of hobbies. I can carry around a plushie of a VTuber I like in public and people have randomly come up to me an said "oh! Is that ______?" and we can hold a sustained conversation for like half an hour.
Wanting a sense of togetherness is why I keep returning. True, it is an experience based on a false sense of connection with the streamer, but I have made a lot of real friends in the hobby and we talk regularly.
I can guarantee you that if you're an adult carrying around a stuffed anime doll, many adults are going to perceive you as weird or a loner.
Ehh I'm fine with it these days! It's pretty small and chained to my backpack inconspicuously. I've realized it's more important to express myself how I want than caring what people think all the time.
Knowing that I enjoy something this much means I can just ignore people that don't understand how I feel, is what I meant to say.
I'm a Vtuber myself. I'm an indie, self supported, just for fun type rather than someone trying to make a living from it.
If you're genuinely interested in becoming a Vtuber, the barrier to entry is surprisingly low. You don't necessarily need to commission a custom model or a unique character design. You can use one of the VR avatar generators, which is what my avatar is based on, or even start with a modified VR avatar if its license allows it. That's actually a pretty common approach in the indie scene.
As the article mentions, the market is definitely saturated, so I wouldn't go into it expecting to make a lot of money. For what it's worth, a large number of Vtubers don't even meet YouTube's monetization threshold. Personally, I think that's part of what makes the community interesting. I tend to enjoy following smaller creators more than the big agency names.
One thing I'd add is that I think the article overgeneralizes the AI topic a bit and leans more toward wishful thinking. A lot of the hesitation around AI, especially at major agencies, comes from the fact that their character designs are often commissioned from well known artists. That creates a relationship between the performer and the artist, often referred to as the "Mama" or "Papa" relationship, and there can be a lot of sensitivity around how those designs are used. To be fair, those dynamics can show up in plenty of situations besides AI.
If you don't have those constraints, people tend to be much more relaxed about AI. Some creators who rely heavily on fan art are naturally more opinionated about it than others, but it really varies from person to person.
Strange omission to talk about the general anti-AI sentiment, while not mentioning that the #3 most-watched English VTuber (Neuro-sama) is an LLM – who is actually widely accepted as a "good" use of AI by other VTubers and viewers.
I think neuro-sama has been accepted because she isn't deceptive. It's very clear that Neuro-sama isn't a real person or even really intelligent. The other big reason is that she collaborates with other vtubers and has brought new audiences to them.
Also, arguably nowadays the main streamer is Vedal, her (for lack of a better term) handler. Part of the fun is seeing them interact
Does anyone actually believe the premise of Neuro-sama that she is an AI? The original premise was that she is a lightweight AI model livecoded on streams, but that is obviously not the case anymore.
Do humans often repeat JSON spewed by integrations? It’s still very much a LLM.
It's certainly possible someone could fake something like that for views, but I'm curious what you consider to be the tells that it's no longer an LLM behind the wheel?
Maybe it's LLM and human actor splitting work, but she looks too natural, too fast and too error-free to be LLM based since too long ago. Just their dictation -> thinking -> TTS loop is too fast to be LLM. Context awareness and character adherence is too perfect as well.
Because Vedal is apparently obsessed with latency, and running the model locally.
Even if it were a human, that would require both fast typing and a fast TTS.
Never seen Taalas?
Let alone a decent sized model on a couple 4090s or similar, pretty gud t/s to churn out tts/stt/response/control model actions and emotes.
For a model just sending occasional commands to other integrations, they're actually quite slow...
The two largest vtuber agencies/companies are publicly traded in Japan.
https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5253.T?term=2y
https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5032.T?term=2y
The stock prices are not great all things considered- I think that the vtuber audience needs something new/different to broaden beyond it's current market base AND I think investors would rather put money into AI related stocks than IP/vtuber related stocks.
> The two largest vtuber agencies/companies are publicly traded in Japan.
Which makes their popularity as organic as the explosion of the K-Pop mania.
I have extremely bad news for you about the authenticity of pop stars, going back at least to the 1950's.
Did I say 1950 pop stars popularity was authentic? I'm just saying the implicit question of this post's title can be simply answered with "they're so popular because of marketing, duh"
The VTuber phenomenon is often framed as escape hatch for streamers who do not prefer to show faces; IMO, it couldn't have worked if audiences found it disappointing - the audiences must prefer the presenter hiding their face than prominently displaying it. I think that's more noteworthy than the person behind it opting to hide their faces.
I'm not particularly into VTubing (not a fan of social streaming or the japanese style), but i find the tech and creativity amazing. I'm very into mocap and started building an experimental facial capture system, which overlaps a lot with the VTubing concept, but using different protocols (most VTubing models/solutions uses VMC) and more varied custom cartoon models.
If you are into the tech behind mocap this community is a fun place to explore.
My favorite story about Vtubing was someone explaining what Vtubing was to their older dad. And after some explaining he said "Oh! Like Tool Bear!" He's a youtuber vtuber who reviews and talks about tools.
Anyone remember Max Headroom?
With great affection.
Mind you, when it launched, I was in my mid-teens and I believed the hype: I thought it really was CGI. Ah, innocence of youth...
LOL, yeah I couldn't figure it out back then.
A testament to how tech has come along, first you needed complex equipment, then Adobe released a home animator thing which needed a webcam and was paid.
And now anyone with a phone https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i2hpLm9CEVU
In case you need a real example that's not just gaming or concerts, join me and thousands of others watching Sumo live hosted by MidnightSumo (he's not a cat)
https://twitch.tv/midnightsumo
https://imgflip.com/i/ax3s0h
If ever there was an article that needed a video or two, this is it
The olds always told me some day I would be old myself and would be baffled by what the youngs are into, I think that day has arrived. I haven't hit the "afraid" stage yet but I'm guessing that is coming.
well at least my generation hasn't destroyed the world, so they weren't completely right. Yet?
I don't understand the draw of video anything at all; I never have. I can read information 100x faster than a video can provide and I just cannot possibly understand why anyone would want to sit through a 45 minute YouTube video that would have taken 1.5 pages of text.
That said, I'm not at all opposed to OTHERS getting the information in the delivery method they prefer. Great; good for you. But! I don't want to see written word be entirely replaced by video. And, before you ask: no; a transcript of the script is not what I want either.
None of this is about "information" (apart from the occasional serious moment, like the Juufutei Raden art education streams). It's entertainment.
> sit through a 45 minute YouTube video
This is the reverse. You have 45 minutes and need to fill it with something more interesting than staring at the wall, but not too demanding. Into that hole fits a million different possibilities for entertainment, of which streamers and vtubers are one.
Not everything is about taking information in?
Interesting. I prefer video/audio for the same reason. But I watch most things on 1.5x or 1.8x speed. I'm not a particularly fast reader, so I prefer audio/video forms.
Totally agree with you though about not thinking written form is inferior. I do still enjoy a good long form article. (Also I'm not including technical writing like documentation.)
A TTS read out of written text I find ideal. I don't have time to read nearly as much as I would like, but I can listen while doing other things, and can do it at 2x it even slower than 1x if it's dense. You can match it to your cognitive capacity which I find optimal
> I don't understand the draw of video anything at all; I never have. I can read information 100x faster
It's not about information, it's about shared para-socializing. Totally different intent.
I think this can be very fun, practical amd enjoyable approach for teaching and sharing online techical contents especially presenting to the younger generations, but focusing on the non-AI generated contents.
It can be a very good trade-off between the sloppy AI and the boring lectures.
I can see myself doing this in the future, but why they need agents for VTubing, is it because of VTubing platform, marketing/promotion or payment?
Obligatory VTuber Wikipedia entry [1].
[1] VTuber:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTuber
Agencies are helpful for the tech and business side, sure, but as the article mentions, the indie scene has exploded. Plenty of creators are putting out high-quality stuff entirely on their own [1].
So, nothing is stopping you from giving it a shot. People are already looking into using VTubing for education, too. [2]
Moreover, these days as more people experiment with real-world integration and interactive setups, the traditional constraints of being a VTuber are really starting to disappear.
[1]: https://www.moguravr.com/pq-vtuber-live-review/ (ja) [2]: https://steam-library-gov.note.jp/n/nd0907ba91174 (ja)
Some VTubers treat it as a gateway into Japanese idol culture. So being part of an agency helps them with access to resources and opportunities for that sort of thing, e.g. voice acting gigs, appearances at events, planning concerts, recording studios, 3d motion tracking studios and brand sponsorships.
Marketing and promotion, some level of organization involved (coordinating streams with collaborators etc) and merch deals, I think?
Not all of them need it - plenty of full independents out there. But even some small ones group together to hire a manager and form a little "network" I think.
lol the assumptions remind me of the late 90s and early 2000s
where routine benign things such as playing an offline game with a character that didn’t look like you and a different gender was considered to mean something it didn’t, outside of the gaming community
*Went worldwide, half a decade ago.
The latest and greatest method of exploiting and monetizing the male loneliness epidemic.
I've personally met more women into vtubers as a whole than men. Though, I've met a lot more men who exclusively watch a single vtuber to an almost obsessive degree. This probably has its roots, like most things in the scene, in Japanese idol culture. At least from what I've seen, women are more likely to enjoy the entire experience surrounding the industry instead of just a single idol or group
Also, this completely ignores the small but not insignificant minority of male vtubers
Are VTubers mostly attractive looking female characters?
The extreme majority, yeah. The guys doing it are less popular, although they also have a kind of "anime husband" aesthetic.
> The guys doing it are less popular
I get the impression that a lot of the female characters are dudes.
This is a very tired insult/joke outsiders throw around about vtubing (though I don't get the impression that you had that intention). It's somewhat ridiculous, vtubers stream very often and voice changers tend to be pretty obvious. There are some men who use female avatars, but it isn't common.
It's also kinda misogynistic, plenty of women enjoy anime culture. Many prominent artists for vtuber models are also women (and occasionally vtubers themselves). To the level that calling the model artist "mama" and the model rigger "papa" is a common trope.
That used to be the case, but dudes through a voice changer are quite rare now.
It's quite rare for that to be the case, at least in the English speaking side of the Vtubing world. I can really only think of one example.
Attractive looking cartoon characters, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Hentai porn is apparently the most popular porn category in lots of countries! Took me by surprise when I found that out. Closely followed by the more predictable “lesbian”, “Anal”, “MILF” and “Asian”!
I’ve met a decent amount of lesbian vtuber fans so I don’t think this is necessarily true.
Hey buddy, you ok there?
Alternatively the male porn abuse epidemic.
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aka digital twining