This here is a Smithosian article that kind of makes fun of the music union mafia of 1930, at the advent of sound film. They made ads (as you can see in the illustrations) using some rather lame "scare tactics" about how "robots" (a new term/concept at the time as well) would be making "soulless music". Hilarious, right? Because we're talking recorded music, not robot-made music as we understand it:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/musicians-wage-war-against-evil-robots-92702721/
Oo, that's some scary robot there, makin' musical mince-meat with his grinder ...
Now fast forward a bit.
Not to mention them holographic whatchamacllits .. vocaloids ...
This could actually be a recurring series. "We Were Warned".
Vtubers mean even ugly girls get to be treated like they're pretty.
You aren't wrong but I'd add that vtubers probably have to rely on some measure of personality that the regular tittystreamers don't. Vtubing is starting to get pretty saturated so there are tons and tons of qt anime grils out there. Why watch one that's boring when you can just go to the next and the next until you get to one that's actually is more than just a pretty animu face.
But that's coming from someone that watches them and doesn't spend any cash on these streamers. Tbf I'd say to some extent the 'personality' angle is short-circuited by the fact that the men spending all that cash do so because they're so starved for social contact that even getting a "thanks for the superchat!" is more than they get from anyone in their own life so they latch really hard onto that. We've seen that with literal camgirls, with twitch streamers, and anything else where women live stream online. I doubt vtubers would've gotten as big as quick as they did were it not for millions of adolescent and adult men being forced to stay cooped up for weeks and weeks.
I was going to say this as well. If the net-effect of Vtubers is pretty girls have to develop a personality to compete... then we're all being well served in the long run.
Wouldn't that be great. Honestly it's a mix of heartening and disheartening to see there's women who have a personality out there re: the whole vtubing thing. Women generally don't where I live. It sounds like an incel cope I know, but man so many really don't.
Supply and demand is a facet of all interactions, why would it stop at romantic interludes? If the supply is restricted, people will demand even inferior product. If the supply is flooded, people will only "purchase" that which they view entirely meets their desires.
No women like socially awkward nerds. By virtue of being utterly average and plain, a woman could become a nerd "queen" with literally zero effort or luck, since there was zero supply. Then the "queens" get displaced as the market opens up... And profit in the market is noticed in superchats, onlyfans, strip instagrams, so the "thots" show up: They have the same zero-personality (or even overtly caustic) of the "queen", but by virtues of birth luck, makeup effort, or photoshop skills, they are notably more attractive. The market has more when it was tolerating so few, and so the market flocks to the new product being sold.
Then the market opens up more, as more and more profit is revealed in it. Now you have "personality" as a selling feature, one that few, if any, of the "thots" sold in their product offering. There's some brand loyalty, some customers won't leave, but others are flighty, and like this new product. But this new product is TOO good, non-target-market customerbases start seeking it out, ramping demand. Suddenly "normal women" are needing to compete with "camwhores with personality" for male attention as a whole, it isn't restricted to the market of "socially awkward nerds". They can offer unique product offerings, such as "sex", but the question is: Is that sufficient? They only have one unique product quality, and to "win" in a market, you need to not only have something unique, you must also at least approach the level of qualities of existing product, that is, they need to have not just "a likeable persona", but an actively approachable one.
We will see if the market catched up to that point. Market forces move quickly in the internet age, I could see a push to this new product hitting the market in only two or three years.
There are good Vtubers? Can you show me some who are not just high voices, shameless thottery, and anime faces made by real artists?
I don't really watch actual flesh-and-blood streamers so my experience w/ the stereotypical e-girls extends to bell delphine, Twitch double-standards, and memes of shit like women whining because they aren't getting $5 FoR fReE cOnTeNt so I don't really know what "shameless thottery" is for this context outside of that stuff. That aside
And I only really watch/have on a few different vtubers, you'd probably get a better sense asking over in /vt/ or /jp/. For JP I really like Mio Ookami and Aki Rosenthal, two of Hololive's streamers. The former because she sorta just does her own thing. Lately, she's been doing karaoke (she actually is a good singer w/o autotune) or practicing the ukelele and been playing the hell out of a game that's a mix of 2d-sidescroller and rice farming simulator. Other streams it's stuff like tarot readings, grooming/talking about her pet cat, etc. She did have a scare over copystrikes so she's careful about what games she plays but generally, she doesn't bother with trend-chasing and really just does her own thing or makes appearances on others streames. You get a sense that she is more herself than a character and behind the qt wolfgirl is a down to earth, quirky woman in her mid-30s who is a glorified cat lady without being a complete basket case. Were that not the case you can believe there'd be autists gossiping about how crazy she 'actually' is as they do with Noel, Rushia, the meme rabbit, etc.
Aki is also pretty down to earth, she is still playing a character but as far as I've seen she doesn't really bait for supas and puts a lot of hard work. Irl she was/(is?) a belly dance instructor and incorporated that into some of the MVs for songs she's done, her schtick is she's a half-elf and she made up her own elvish language for a song too. She really tries to reach out to her English-speaking audience (we make up like 50% of her total viewership now) and has actually gone through the trouble of working on English. Her personality really comes out in the superchat readings after every stream and she'll have fun with the audience.
Both of them stand out in contrast to vtubers like, say, Choco, for example. To be fair to they brought her into Hololive to do ASMR and in the past year, youtube's really cracked down hard on Japanese ASMR basically causing her to lose the entire reason she had her channel. She appears to just put in the bare minimum and just doesn't seem to really care anymore. Apparently, others like Ayame actually are thots but I don't really look into them.
English vtubers only in the past week have I started to actually look at them but one that's great is Koopa Fortuna. She got her start over on /a/ & /jp/ and while that could be a red flag in and of itself she really seems to be genuine, I'm new to her but so far I've gathered she started watching vtubers and eventually wanted to try it herself, is old enough to have been on 4chan pre-2009, actually is a giant fucking weeb (enough to go in-depth on the messed up giant connected family tree of the characters in the 0verflow VNs), owns, shoots, and fires her own guns, and does vtubing less as a job and more of a hobby (there's several vtubers that came up from 4chan and they seem to be like that according to /vt/ so it isn't about the money). I'd recommend her but honestly the fact women with this combo of interests actually can exist somewhere out there among the 7,000,000,000+ people on Earth is really hitting hard in a bad way right now lol.
https://pastebin.com/qbS5gyVt lists the favorite ENvtubers of 4chan's western vtubers general thread. Oh! [Ina] (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMwGHR0BTZuLsmjY_NT5Pwg) may be someone you like. She's not my cup of tea but her streams are very chill and the real person was an actual artist/illustrator so iirc she does a lot of her own art, does drawing vids, etc. I'd call her the antithesis of Kiara, who--singing skill of the real person aside-- is a high-pitched streamer with art made by someone else. Even worse the real person supports BLM lol
Thank you.
/me clicks link
Lmao so many girls have started jumping on that train ever since the top youtube earners report came out.
They keep proving incels right
They "jump on" by calling themselves a vtuber whose debut is perpetually tba and complaining on twitter about vtuber fans