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.