Edit 2: For people here to tell me it isn't a community, this is the type of community we're talking about: 01:24 The first definition of community, a subsect of people that all are within the same space. Not the type of community where we are all likeminded individuals, but the type of community in which we all live in the same little box of internet. Again, as I directly say in the video, it's not everyone, it's just a generalized way to refer to things. Edit: I really appreciate how well worded and interesting your perspectives are on it all! Obviously this is just my opinion on it, so it's not the end all be all, and not the only thought out there about it. I'm glad to hear what you guys think too! Also, just to be clear, I LIKE idol culture, I've been a part of the idol space for 15+ years with idol anime and through AKB48's best years. I enjoy it. I just don't think that we should gatekeep people who don't want to create that type of content PERSONALLY, just because that's where VTubing culture grew from. We are an English speaking space, people will not always like idol culture. We need to allow people to grow into their own, without telling them they're wrong for it. And this video comes from someone who used to be in the Homestuck community, so you know I recognize when it's bad
I totally agree. I am honestly kinda surprised, at how niche vtubing is even now and especially how most of vtubing seems to still revolve around the same themes and tropes (not saying that is bad for any individual vtuber to play into). I remember the time I first fell into the rabbit hole. I immediately thought about all the potential the concept of vtubing was offering, but I have seen barely any of it being tapped into as of now.
*insert new thoughts and feelings here* yeah my thoughts and feelings have been pretty well addressed &/or I can't get them well enough into words so I'm pretending I don't have any, otherwise, I'll just keep typing and typing and have an unstructured mess* I envy your(and others) abilit(y)(ies) to translate experiences to words so clearly. Seriously, its like you're not even real! Same goes for all the other influencers! Like, how do you all have such good-sounding, & simultaneously well-spoken & well-tuned voices? My voice is insufferable to some(myself & I reckon others too, hence why they don't wanna hang I think, and I can't blame them, I have ASD so that means I also phrase things shittily occassionally). Drama be damned, I just want confidence to say "Fuck off drama! I don't care about you cause I know what's happening & know for certain that I have 0 power in changing any of this cause I'm just one person + I'm learning X right now!". But of course, social media being social media, gives us all the illusion of the world being much smaller than it actually is(and that there's less likeminded people out there than there are in reality + placing it on the individual to figure out wtf is going on & somehow have us process or not process it) + multiple things that we "gotta learn immediately or else we won't be ready for the oncoming apocalypse &/or singularity &/or *insert other distraction here*!" P.S. I'm totally not human if I don't know how to do the influencer voice... jk, I got decent vocal range, but the phrasing part is where I fuck up cause I'm just too socially anxious to let myself sound potentially too "normie'ish" or "generic", like I'm some character in a book following a single train of thought like a robot... even though that's not always robotic, its just living life and spending time on one thing for the required amount of time... L my psychologist really hasn't been addressing all these issues, its like I have to be more forceful in expressing it all... or else I won't get anything done about my situation(s). P.S.S. I'm totally a tourist for talking like a spaz/"skizo" according to some in-groups on VR Chat, namely, the Great Pug's U.S. servers... god help whoever gets in that hell hole trying to get from point A to B in learning social skills & feeling confident enough in themselves to keep using them.
You do you. 🙂👍 I think I enjoyed vtubers way more back when the content was still pre-recorded in bite sized chunks by the early generation such as Kizuna AI, Eilene, Natsumi Moe, Mirai Akari etc. It simply felt more organic and time friendly. Whereas today, hours upon hours of gaming and karaoke live-streaming by virtual talking heads that as an audience member you are somehow meant to fit into your own schedule of whatever else you are trying to get done with your own real life just to support your idol. It kinda forces you to reject FOMO altogether if you can’t multitask despite of how fond you may be towards a specific vtuber personality or you’ll get trapped in a time sink. IMO the idol industry is quite bluntly put way too commonly a time and money consuming nothingburger if you aren’t dealing with truly independent creators instead of the corporate mandated ones, especially when the content in question is almost exclusively live-stream centric. Who has that much time to spend just to be able to watch everything? You should be able to understand how the trend can be frustrating even to those of us who aren’t vtubers. I do respect many of them. But I also have an actual life to live.
I"ve just recently 'discovered' vtubing content but it's scary how many of the things you said are more than clearly appearend for newcomers. Thank you for this video!
It is pretty crazy that most of it is immediately apparent I think people have kinda tuned most of it out, or pretend to, unless they're the ones perpetuating it.. But unfortuately it's VERY clear to anyone who even glances in our general direction.
Honestly, it sounds like most communities. People straight up need to just fix themselves for their sake and the community. But it is good to talk about these things and I'm glad you are
Not wrong! But I think some are a lot more open to new people, while vtubing always feels very hostile towards those outside. That much I think can change.
@@nevisysbryd7450 I consider an abusive relationship of any kind to be unhealthy. Mentally, physically, sexually, emotionally. That's an unhealthy relationship.
I've had a couple people I enjoyed talking to when they got started..and I think that when people enter in, they feel compelled to cater to specific genres. I know ASMR is given a lot of grief, but I have seen some of my friends do that only to hate it down the road because it attracts a very weird and inappropriate audience. But I notice some people feel like they gotta do that to grow, it seems. I just wish people would delve into the content they WANT to do instead of trying to please others, cause that's what I like the most.
I ignored idol culture, have no debut, just talk to my friends. Have fun. I exist beyond the veil, hang out with fleshtubers and disembodied voices. I watch a vtuber who talks about dungeons & dragons horror stories. The community is horrible and the norms are horrible... they just want everyone to do the same thing over and over; heck, people don't even remember what it was like before. Kizuna Ai manifested into existence, Kaguya Luna was a drunkard who just goes on hyper rants, Nekomiya was an old man who played a cute fox girl. There wasn't any of this, shady agency stuff. You can be a vtuber with just help from your friends. You don't need to be Hololive or Vshojo or the mess that is Nijisanji. :c
@@Chainereight There are other ways to entertain people than being an some e-idol girl though; this medium can be used for so many outlets but (most) everyone's locked up doing the same things. It's like being on youtube an expecting all youtubers to be gamers. There's all sorts of channels here. (: There can be more types of vtubers than that, they just gotta think outta the box.
Yeah "rotten apple ruins the bunch" is such a true saying, many times have toxic people made their way into a friend group or community and rocked the boat.
My opinion is that this is a niche market being filled by people who really love that niche. Anime by and large used to be niche until shounen started getting popular(for the worst). The same can be said for Vtubers, the entire market has become saturated and stale because it's filled with people thinking they'll become breakout success. That is only for the very small majority who already had an established audience or by sheer luck. Vtubers were a thing that came from east and shared the same core audience of anime fans. Mostly hooking the more hardcore crowd who prefer pretty girls over the boys. While they are indeed annoying and should ease up on their own desires but they're also very protective over the idea of the character and not the one behind the avatar. They're apprehensive to change but it's to make a change when majority of the larger groups are either tied to JP or Asia. In all honesty, I'm fine with this being a niche community. Talents and fans built this community up. Let people think what they think of Vtubing, there were reasons why anime before was considered "weird". If they don't want to make an effort to learn or enjoy the medium. It's fine, everything isnt meant to be catered too. The mainstream shouldn't be the end goal of everything. Because what's the point in trying to cater to people who in all likelihood not care at all? Why try to change yourself to appease a large group of people and instead of the ones who help build you up to where you are now. I dont disagree with your outlook on the community. Yeah change would be nice but turning away what built the medium to what it is now won't be a good idea. Unless some the corporate groups start doing things differently, it'll all remain the same.
@@koziitwo Since VTubing is such a novel thing, it's actually just catching up to the rest of the world in terms of toxicity. It only seemed clean because not enough people knew about it. Now that the troublemakers have learned of its existence, they're flooding in to ruin the fun in the same way they do to all other communities.
@@MissionSilo I don't think that a lot of people all trying to fit into the same box is honestly very competitive. It's competitive on a corporate level, but not on an indie level. It's stagnant on an indie level.. with a lot of complaining. 😂
idk much about vtubers but i hate the word community, it's fake and meaningless and the word we is only used to manipulate people and strip them of their individuality
Interesting take. I feel like I might've agreed when I was younger, but nowadays I pray for a little more cooperation and care between human beings, and a collective grouping has different needs than the individual, so it's important to differentiate them. An individual can do something, and it may or may not affect the group, but if the collective perpetuates an idea, it could harm others in the collective. ...Which, that idea might be born from the fact I live in California, which makes decisions for the entire state, but the people who live in rural areas are begging for them to stop raising the minimum wage because small businesses are dying out, and big box stores are the only thing that can survive. Or, we're having consumption limitations applied in areas where it's not needed, or etc, cus it's a statewide measure. Cali people are kinda divided between wanting to split into 3-4 separate states based on regional necessities, or sticking together under one collective banner. Kinda similar to the vtubing community tbh. I think some want to split off and don't want to be considered as part of the collective. Except, with social groups, it's easier to split off and form your own subcommunity, and I think people do that fine. The generalized collective, like I mentioned at the start, really doesn't mean everyone. Some people don't want to be involved, and that's fine. But, this was speaking to the people who try to gatekeep things, or force definitions onto certain vtubers - cus they clearly want to strip people of their individuality, and not allow them to do or be what they want. ...So tldr, basically, we currently are a community, and it would be better if we weren't. xD
...huh, why is youtube algorithm bring me here? But after watching this video i realize ........i miss early vtuber era when everything is fun with zero drama involved, thanks for reminding me girl.
Really good video, bringing the Vtuber community together is as difficult as to bring about world peace, people are different and many lack the most basic common sense (and I don’t even count the malicious people who only seek to attack others for sport). The less you care about others and their opinions the better, you’ll always find support amidst the rambling chaos of the internet, thick skin is a necessity.
Very true, gotta keep going even if people do try to exclude you or stuff, if you really like it. Can't just stop because some people decide they don't like you!
The problem is social media, hence why I abstain from it. Drama exists because people perpetuate it due to their meaningless lives needing some kind of purpose. Even this video perpetuates this cycle, *even if well-intentioned.
@@redguard1607 Literally every video on UA-cam is something put on social media. This is a social site just as much as the next is. The things I'm talking about here are just as present if not more present on this site as the next one- since a lot of the stuff I'm talking about here is stuff I've seen constantly perpetuated across sites like UA-cam, in the comments of streams from agency friends or indie, of all sizes.
@@koziitwo That's fair-I was merely remarking upon an unescapable irony. The Internet is effectively owned by Google, whose hegemonic structure pushes the tyranny of the majority against the individual. I wish you luck in attempting to find a voice on this platform whose algorithm is designed nullify your existence.
I really love this video. It makes me so frustrated seeing how much potential we have with vtubing and how things people can do with it. I wanna see some weird stuff
Hololive used to do weird stuff back around 2020, actually - that was what made me a fan back then! Kiryu Coco taking advantage of the medium to get away with lewder shit than Twitch allows, Haachama's whole psychological-horror storyline...that spirit's been gone for a while now, but it was there once upon a time. Same deal with NijiEN, actually (e.g. Pomu's interactive dating-sim stream that went in *interesting* places). The corpo environment just isn't conducive to keeping up that kind of creativity in the long run, so we need more off-the-beaten path weirdos to break into the medium imo
vtubing is a medium that has been mistakened as a formula for all vtubers to use, which is why people have such a hyperspesific view of vtubers even though vtubing itself is just an art form
Individuals can't change anything. Only two ones can: 1. Platforms 2. Big corpos. First ones correcting rules, second ones forming bubble. In Japan Niji are strongest, but in the west Hololive has power to change vtubing position in media. They have resources and will to do that
I love the way you addressed this, Kozii. Definitely good to distance yourself from the toxicity, while also wanting positive change to happen. It can be hard not to comment on certain things in the vtubing sphere at times.
The Vtubing community and idol culture surrounding it is really intimidating and scary. Ive thought about trying Vtubing for fun but never act on it mostly because I'm male and its mostly a female dominated space and what few male Vtubers I do know of always seem to be controversial figures do to things they say or do. Forgive me if my comment is trialing off subject.
I always appreciate your perspective Kozii. I was surprised when you said this was unscripted because it was extremely cogent and polished. I'm looking forward to seeing more videos on this channel!
I've considered getting myself a vtuber avatar, but i don't know where to start with getting art commissioned or who to go to for rigging. But also, i know male vtubers generally aren't as popular and my stream usually only gets around 40 viewers, so it might be too expensive for my small stream.
I actually plan on doing videos about male vtubers, about big vs small streamers, and about getting started for cheap, ironically, so hopefully some of those help out! 🙏
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I think that vtubing has fundamental aspects in its essence that are controversial to the general public. The aesthetic of vtubing, that it borrows from anime, already gatekeeps a sizable demographic as is, but it also gatekeeps a lot of anime fans that are not into kayfabe. For this reason, many people that are drawn to vtubing see themselves as social misfits, and pariahs (to varying degrees). Which is reaffirmed on twitter and other social media platforms. (Even long before the controversies with nijisanji and kizuna ai). Because of this, we have always been cognizant that the public perception of vtubing has been poor, this is the reason why gatekeeping bad actors from the community is necessary. However, we also don't want to conform to mainstream societal values we want maintain our distinct identity. Because for us, the priority is not growth, but protecting the last vestige of community that society allows us to have.
@@bxq207 Good addition! But unfortunately, a lot of what I'm talking about also is gatekeeping the people already in the community, who have already been a part of other anime circles for years, who just don't like certain bits and pieces. In the end, anyone can dislike certain aspects of it, and we can't just shun them because they aren't into certain things, or tell them they're not real vtubers for their preferences. Because we ARE usually the outcasts, because we're used to being the ones shunned by others, I think we should offer the understanding and kindness we'd want to have from others.
The thing is, what is defined as a "bad actor"? In particular, if 4chan heavily influences the opinions in the vtuber community? They themselves are bad actors and try to gatekeep what they see as a "bad actor".
I've been thinking a lot over the past month or so about finally starting to do some sort of online content creation (an idea I've actually been bouncing around and procrastinating on for like 10 years but whatever), and I've been looking into the idea of doing it as a vtuber. And honestly if I do, my take is basically that I'm just gonna be doing my own thing. I don't care what other people in the space say or think vtubers are supposed to be and what they should or shouldn't do. I don't care what any individuals or groups say the rules or requirements of being a vtuber are. I don't care what the culture is and whether I fit with it or not or where the community is shifting and if I'm following or not. I mean look at it this way, I have no delusions about "making it" by any means. Sure, it'd be cool to pay my bills off of it, but it's probably just going to be a hobby for me. And hobbies are supposed to be fun. So I'm gonna try to do what I find fun, first and foremost. I just wanna make neat stuff that hopefully a few cool people will find and get some enjoyment out of. And if I ever get hit with a "you're not a real vtuber" or some similar nonsense I'm just gonna be like "oh no!...anyway, new video tomorrow" BTW just found this channel today and think I'm getting sucked into binging all your videos. The topics look really interesting and if you couldn't tell vtubing is something that's been on my mind a lot lately.
@@KrispyToast-YT Yeah! That's basically the perfect way to think of things these days. Just do what you want, don't let anyone's opinions influence you, and become the type of content creator you think is the most interesting. 👌 Also thank you so much! 🥺🙏
Good video! And very true! While I might not feel connected too the community or idol activities, onlookers will still assume I break up via Twitlonger and have a King Cover, while covetting girls that look like they are 11. Same with my flag, people will assume I am hyper sexual and I attack viciously. People will always have an image. And the current image of VTubers suck! (Within EN) A community is only perceived by its outliers (except from within). So the only way to change it is become an outlier and we can only do that in spots we havent been before!
Agreed! I'm looking forward to the future of further innovation and creativity. While there's already established purpose and ideas through the idol culture, there's no reason as to why one must stick to those, as one can also do something entirely different. There's bound to be backlash with going against any current though, but there's also supporters out there who didn't know they needed your work in their lives.
There will always be people who just can't stand the idea of change in their space. There will also always be people that just.. prefer the way Japanese vtuber culture is, and honestly, that's fine! But we'll keep progressing anyway, I hope, and hopefully the English sphere will create our own culture that's defined more by cool content than it is by.. well, currently, drama 😂
As somebody who's been in the community since before the pandemic (not saying that to be elitist, I just feel old lol) all the drama is really sad to see. I remember how innocent and exciting VTubers were as a concept and seeing it blow up and become mainstream, but it quickly became a minefield of drama and has made it harder for me to consider doing vtuber collabs on my main channel, because I'm paranoid I'll interact with somebody who gets into a big controversy, I just want to break out of my shell and interact with people who share the same kind of passion I have for this industry.
@@koziitwo I applaud what you're doing and trying to achieve with your channel. I too strive to make videos that provoke thoughts or discussions within vtuber viewers. I think a video on idol culture within the vtuber community and how it's affected the fans' view/expectations on what it means to be a vtuber would be interesting. I don't think I could personally do that topic as much justice as you probably could. Maybe do some interviews with ex-corporate vtubers or vtubers who stopped pursuing the "idol lifestyle" and pivoted elsewhere. Wouldn't be easy to find people for that but you could at least interview ex-vtuber or ex-fleshtuber creators for another video idea. I think the way people change their approach to content creation can speak volumes on the industry as a whole. Either way, there's much to be said about the past, present, and future of VTubing.
This is just being nitpicky, and having an opinion for the sake of it. If you don't care about definitions, just ignore this. It has nothing to do with the rest of the video. The reason a lot of people don't really see vtubing as a community and rather an industry is because it's so shattered and split on what makes a vtuber, what is acceptable in vtubing, how purist do you have to be, etc. It's so huge and so different depending on which vtuber you watch that at this point all that really ties it together is that they all use avatars. Since a lot of them do very different things and have very different vibes. So in my mind it's a bit like saying streamer community, or video-making community, or even vlogger community. It seems a bit to big to be a part of the same community just because they use the same medium. TLDR: at this point simply using a model is (in my opinion) a bit too flimsy to say that it makes something a community since the rest can differ so much. But hey that's just a personal opinion and doesn't actually mean anything beyond a definition
@@HyattHyatt3179 I used to think the same until I started to speak with people who did more outside stuff to vtubing too. What people see from us is all very similar, and there are a few stand out opinions (mostly the stuff I mentioned in the video) that really make people think it is a more united front. BUT I don't disagree in that it's a very fragmented community, that's why I mentioned when you see past the surface level stuff, and you start to really get into it, you start noticing that a lot of it stems from people trying to push their definition onto people of what vtubing should be. Good thought! 👌
Good video. I think it's worth having discussions like these. I do believe a lot of these problems are localized and more relevant in certain spaces than others. I don't like to consider the vtuber industry one big community, because I believe it has split into many different branches, each going their own way, to the point that some vtuber spaces feel completely alien to others. However, I do not think that is a bad thing; in fact, I think it's a good thing, as it will give people more options of where they'd rather fit in without stepping on anyone's toes. Even within the vtuber industry, there are culture clashes, because I think vtubing is evolving and progressing differently in each space. For example, take EN and JP. If we look into their respective scenes, the landscape of what's relevant and what's the big talk of the town will differ. Yes, there will be places of overlap, usually concerning big corpos like Hololive. But outside of big corpos, one side may not pay attention to what's going on the other. It's the reason Fillian's award show mostly included EN vtubers, even though someone that might be more into the JP scene might want to object in saying that there should be more JP vtubers. However, if you mainly experience the EN side of the community, you won't know much about the JP scene outside of Hololive - and honestly, this applies in reverse too. If you mainly experience JP vtubing, you won't know nearly half of the big events or drama that happen in EN. Again, these two scenes have grown increasingly far apart, with more branching communities being born in them. The entire industry isn't watching every single bit of drama that happens in EN or JP, because it's less relevant depending on the space. Whenever I see people mention the big corpos, they usually mean only "Hololive, Nijisanji and VSHOJO"; even though VSPO is bigger than VSHOJO (bigger in terms of how much of a slice of the vtubing industry they take up) - but it's mainly concentrated in Japan, so most people in the EN side don't know them or how big they actually are (though this may change with the new EN branch.) The same applies with VSHOJO in Japan. VSHOJO's popularity and relevancy is mainly concentrated in EN, so in Japan, they may not know them as well, maybe besides Kson and Henya since they were already big in Japan before joining VSHOJO. Idol culture has definitely had its impact on vtubing as a whole, but that does not mean vtubing is necessarily the same as idol culture. Certainly, the vtuber industry has some roots in idol culture, but it also has roots in other things, like NicoNico, the anime industry, Japanese internet and Japanese culture. All these roots are present in many things, to the terminology we use, to the dominating art styles of vtubers themselves, to the type of songs people sing. But again, as the industry has grown and expanded, some vtubers will go their own way and forge their own comunities. Idol culture tends to be spoken as almost synonymous with vtubing, but I don't believe it should be, especially because not even in Japan that's the case. Let give the example of one Japanese vtubing community - the vtubers that often participate in the many JP events like VSaikyo or VCR. This is a huge section of the JP vtubing scene, which sees many male and female vtubers collabing, and also e-sports pro players and even Japanese streamers and youtubers. It is by far in my opinion the biggest connector between different spaces in JP vtubing, with vtubers of many kinds either competing against each other, or just having fun playing together in games like GTA or Rust. It's a place where a lot of networking happens, and these events are a big thing in the JP scene, with vtubers from multiple corpos and indies as well. But a lot of the big names in it won't be known to a lot of people in the EN side. If you don't really hang out in the JP space, you'll likely won't know who Shibuya Hal is, or Tachibana Hinano, or Kanae, or Akami Karubi, and many many more. Likewise, if you mainly hang out in this space, the EN Twitch side will feel different; not just because of the different languages spoken, but the relevant figures in the space, and the way activities are conducted in them, or even the inside jokes in them. They're basically two different worlds. They may be both under the umbrella "vtuber", but it's like comparing two different countries that may have similar roots, but ultimately having different spheres of influences. We're all humans living in society - we have that and much more in common - but with the definition you used in the video, we can come up with dozens upon dozens of reasons to call any arbitrary group of people a "community". Everyone on youtube? Everyone in a city? Everyone in a country? Everyone in the world? But it's funny that I've seen so many people equate Japanese vtubing to be the most hard-line idol kind, when in reality it's very diverse too. It really comes down to what kind of audience you build. Hell, you could even be an idol vtuber and still actively collab with guys without your fans having a problem with it, so long as you've established yourself as such - even if there are some bad apples, they will just be filtered by the overall established audience. Examples to this would be vtubers like Tokoyami Towa, Laplus Darkness, Natsuiro Matsuri, Aki Rosenthal, Astel Leda, Hoshimachi Suisei, and many more. All idols, but all have pretty healthy fandoms that do not mind male to female collabs. They may have had issues due to some fans in the past, but ultimately those fans were filtered out because these vtubers established themselves as the kind that will collab with whoever they want. It may seem like the entire community revolves around every single bit of drama that happens, but it really doesn't if you're hanging out in vtuber communities in which that is not relevant; and even if it's something big, like Nijisanji drama, I'm sure you can always find vtubers out there doing their regular content away from it - that's the advantage of a lot of corpo vtubers, as you know they'll stay away from drama that does not concern them. But I'm sure you can find many indies who also keep doing their thing in peace. If you're tired of vtuber drama, may stop watching vtuber news or drama channels. The youtube algorithm will simple give you more of what you watch, so if you stop watching it and use the function to stop youtube recommending you those channels, you'll be free from it. If you watch mainly VSPO, youtube will give you mostly VSPO and adjacent vtubers to them, like Neo-Porte, or vtubers that collab with them. If you watch ShyLily, you'll get more recommendations from her or vtubers adjacent to her. And this applies to any vtuber. Hence why I believe a lot of problems with vtubing are localized to different communities, depending on the context. Using Filian as an example again - the drama with her is entirely irrelevant to most of the vtubing industry. If you're not someone who follows the EN Twitch or Indie scene, you may hear about it from passing and then carry on with your day. If you hang out in the JP scene, you'll probably not even notice it's happening unless you try to keep tabs on the different sides of the industry or are following vtuber news or drama channels. But like I said previously, this is a good thing. It means that it is possible to stay away from things you don't like and focus on your space. Vtubing will continue to grow and expand, and with it, it will continously expand and evolve. I disagree with the notion that the "community" needs to be more accomodating to newcomers though. I think anyone coming in with genuine interest won't mind the different terminologies and such - it's part of the culture. Those will be things that will naturally assimilate as one hangs out and becomes more familiar with the space. Vtubing has its established cultures, so it feels weird for the cultures to change for the sake of others to come in. But then again, there will be communities inside the industry that will definitely change, or a new community will be born from the desire of establishing a new culture. It will become another diverging branch in the growing tree of vtubing. The vtuber industry will never be united, but like I said, that only means there will be plenty of options for people to choose where to fit in. If a person ever grows to dislike where they're in, they can always move somewhere they may like more - and that can be great when escaping drama. So in conclusion, just be wary of where you hang out. I'm sure anyone can find a place for themselves in the vtubing industry if they search long enough. And if they can't, that just means they have an opportunity to carve up a spot for a new branch to sprout and evolve. But I don't think we should expect the entire industry to change their ways like that - those are highly subjective aspects, as different people enjoy different things. Alright, that's the end of my perspective. In short, I essentially can no longer see the vtuber industry as a unified community. I think it's too vast for that at this point, so a lot of issues only really cover certain parts, and to some, certain issues might not even be issues at all. Different parts of the vtuber industry will feel completely alien to others. I mean, I've seen parts of the vtubing scene with no connections to anime or Japanese culture, where people find it weird that most people use anime avatars and use so many Japanese words. I found it crazy at first, keeping in mind the origins of vtubing you'd think that would be impossible, but it has grown THAT far.
I can only agree with a lot of the points made. There's been VTubers who've slipped on saying that their community friends told them to "milk drama for as long as they could". I won't name the streamer, but they did do a direct and considerate apology to the person they tried to build drama upon.
Hell, I've had people say that to me too. I've had marketing and industry professionals mention how, as long as drama doesn't include someone doing something genuinely illegal, it's really good for numbers and you should try to milk it. I can't stand that kind of shit, personally, but I've watched it happen in real time, tbh. Hell, a certain bunny vtuber is rather controversial to a lot of people out there, but as far as I noticed, she only really started being controversial like that after a video came out by Devin Nash saying basically the same thing. I think that stuff is all tiring. I hate the culture we've created where the only things we're allowed to see are just, terrible, forever. I miss people wanting to create just for a love of creation.
3:10 You are 100% right btw but I want to go off of this tweet. I want to say ever since the DokiBird situation and the fact that idol culture is becoming a huge problem feeding into so much toxicity the vtuber bubble has started to pop. A lot of people hate other vtubers including me because of the shit that goes on on Twitter. VTwitter is a toxic hellhole that has made me quit twice and somehow when I think I found someone nice and chill they on the inside have some of the most red flags I have ever seen. So this tweet is 100% right and I am diversifying away from Twitter. That platform has become such a cesspool I cannot believe it…
I agree with it too! It's all too toxic, everyone and their mother wants to comment on everything, but I think this might be social media as a whole.. TikTok comments are just as bad, if not worse. You should check out a video about TikTok Accountability Culture by Caroline Easom, posted just two days ago, it's another good commentary about this kind of bullshit as a whole.
I feel like VTubers are, in a way, where UA-cam was 10 or so years ago. It was still kind of edgy, 1 mill play buttons weren’t always common, and it wasn’t as established to have a job on the internet
While the community can certainly be hella toxic and that is not helping it, I don't think that's the main thing stopping it from expanding in other niches. I think that doing Virtual content being harder and even inconvenient is what gatekeeps the most people if anything; of course the fact this is still a relatively young industry which popularity just rose about 4 years ago outside of Japan is also contributing factor. And I agree that making more guides of how to or what is vtubing might help. P.S Good video btw.
@@winterdust9577 I hope it does! I think vtubing can be really inconvenient and hard to work with, and I actually wanna talk about that in a video at some point too, cus it's a really interesting thing. By design, we limit a lot of things we could create by choosing to be primarily digital creators- even more so by choosing to be 2d. BUT I think it also offers a lot of creativity that other creators just can't have in the same way, and we don't utilize it's potential enough either. 🙏
Oh no, we have our own way of using language, i guess we can't have that because it's not inclusive enough 🤷🏿♂️ As you already know, that is what culture is and there's nothing wrong with retaining it. It's open to anyone that willing to learn, understand and adapt to it. People who water it down to be more digestible and palatable to normies are the people who the gate are meant to be keeping out.
The culture we're using is one we're borrowing from Japan at the moment. If you listened well to the video, you would know that what I'm advocating for is creating our own in the English community, and pushing past boxes of other cultures to really define what we are.
Thank you! I drew and rigged it myself! :D edit: I just realized how much this sounds like when someone tells a girl their dress looks cute and they go 'thanks! it has pockets! :D'
For the last couple of years I was just a viewer of vtubers. At the beginning of 2024 I started using a model to represent myself in the content I was making. I was not aware how toxic the vtube space had become over time. Things have gotten wild out here. 😨😨
I'm so glad you mentioned the Japanese songs thing... I'm trying to make original music myself and I hate how I seem to be the only one making English OG songs!! 😭😭 And YEAH I don't like Japanese enough to only want that! ;;;;;
It's been really nice to see a few people branching out to more english stuff, like the recent Idol debuts doing not only an original english song, but three english cover songs. I think people were just a bit afraid of it before.. And maybe, a lot of people still kinda are. But keep goin for it! I for one definitely love it when I find english songs by vtubers!
There's no vtuber community but communities, aside from the big agencies, we're all just smaller communities loosely tied together, that's why it's so insular. Besides there's no real defining concept of what a vtuber is aside from using Virtual Avatars, and something so broad like that can't really be something to form a community around, especially when in some communities, that very vague definition don't even apply since face cam is normal. I accidentally deleted my first comment. sorry.
I think this is a good message. I wouldn't really pay too much heed to the whole idol culture/male collab discussion, especially on the "basket weaving forum" and Twitter. You can't change those people because talking shit is what they live for. If it wasn't vtubing they'd be posting in console war threads or find some other low hanging fruit to stir trouble over. I think you touched upon this in the video at some point, but I do think the best way to handle this sort of negativity is to just ignore that vocal minority and create the content that you want, for the audience that wants it. Trying to pander to those who have already decided they don't like you is always a wasted effort.
I loved the video❤, I appreciate the unscripted feel of the video it makes me feel like a just chatting stream lol, it helps that your model ad voice are great too👍😃 I get what you mean, I'm newer to the scene, amd i just recently got onto Twitter to support my oshi and my brother who's also a vtuber but all i see is toxic shit😭 from the outside looking in I used to think it was a magical amazing way to become an anime character and entertain others now it's turned into this cesspool, all i see are uncensored titties( nothing wrong with them but c'mon there's a limit) exorbitant amounts of drama, repetitive content (Japanese openings amd junk) lolicon arguments ect. Honestly if i wasn't so parasocial for my oshi i would've quit the community a while ago it's getting stale, honestly i hope the community will heal bc without this i just gotta go back to anime/manga as my only other hobby💀🥲 Anyway i hope you have a good day anime woman, sorry for yapping, looking forward to more.
Like we told Shizzy, there is no insular "vtubing community", but there is some culture, 2 of them. One from anime, and the other from Twitch. This "community" you speak of can be generalized to online culture or the "online community", because the issues the vtubing space has are not exclusive to it. Sure it's good to get along with people in the space, there's nothing stopping someone else from having their own smaller community completely separate from the rest of the "community".
You just don't recognize what a community is. There are sub communities, like the ASMR vtuber community, the twitch vtuber community, the hololive community, etc. But your city is still a community. It's a greater community than your neighborhood. It still exists, and it is still defined by generalized issues. These are generalized English vtuber issues.
I think enough vtubers have had enough mold issues if you know what I mean But SIGH yeah...vtubing is just a medium of content creation. I hate that we are defined by our flunks, or what other people make out to be flunks. And now that we're growing more and more, these things BLOW UP.
My personal take about communities is: "try to appeal to everybody and you will appeal to nobody". It's fine if vtubing remains niche. Something definitely needs to be done to sanitize it of some dumb drama (most of which coming from Twitter, daily reminder that 98% of things Twitter sees as problematic aren't a problem at all), but why the felt need to appeal to a wider audience? Let the Hololive Dodgers event be exceptional, let people come because they like the community and want to be part of it. There needs to be some self-improvement for the health of the community, do it for our sake, but I don't share the same anxiety to appeal to someone I don't share an interest with as you make your message sound like. I know I can be easily mistaken, my reading comprehension isn't stellar and it doesn't help that this is a second language, feel free to provide any clarification if you think I got the wrong message out of this.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 the point was that people in the community are excluding those already in the community who want to be here because of idol culture and stuff like that. I have a lot of vtuber friends who have been vtubers for multiple years now, but have been avoided, excluded, shittalked, etc, because they don't fit in with the typical definition of vtubing, and they're trying something else. The whole video was literally just to say, let people be what they want to be, so we can all grow together.
@@koziitwo alright, I can get behind that, basically "let people do what they want, the only glue between us is the use of virtual avatars in the end" instead of what I previously understood which was "let's be more appealing to new people so we can be big and prevalent". When people talk about gatekeeping, I often get alert. Too many times my hobbies and communities have been ruined because the people "keeping the gates" have been ostracized by outsiders with no actual interest, because they weren't interested they changed the hobby into something unrecogniseable and then everybody left because all that was fun got stripped away. This is why the term "tourist" is used (correctly at least), not to emarginate people who want to spin-off and do their own thing, but to call out "why don't you do it like in my own country?" behaviour. With that said, getekeeping can easily be very toxic as well and weigh down a community in the ways you point out. When your place of comfort isn't harmed in any way, you shouldn't go out and essentially become the tourist in another sub-community how they should do their own thing.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 yee! We need to be open to people who aren't our norm being in our space, because they do want to participate, they just don't want to do everything the exact same as everyone else, which is fine 👌
There are A LOT of guides on how to get into vtuber with free or cheap models, the issue is that people don't do any research. "Become a vtuber for free" returns at least 5 video tutorials that have all been available for a long time. "Get a free vtuber model" returns a playlist with models, and some of those same video tutorials.
out of all the vtubers i watch the only ones catering to idol culture are in a corpo. every indie were worried they might lose subs if they, for example, say they have a bf. but as nyanners and layna lazar for example showed is thats not the case. people were either happy for them or simply just didnt care. in general the vtubing community is quite similar to the cosplay community. a lot of clout chasing and backstabing, shittalking behind someones back, stuff like that. oh or as you mentioned, the *going for someones sponsorship* thats scum behaviour. good example are the BVAs. the aftermath of that event is just crazy... on the guide topic: pippa just had a stream for a few hours, talking about how to start as a vtuber as cheap as possible. it was quite interesting.
I think sometimes it's just fear that drives people, and people seeing commentary from viewers about how if their oshi had a boyfriend they'd drop them, and stuff like that. But the worst part of it like you mentioned is the shittalking, the backstabbing, etc. People just love to be so judgemental in this scene, for some reason.. 😂
@@koziitwo its a good video tho.not too negative but theres definitely some topics that need a discussion. sadly people are already going into defense mode (scrolled through the comments 😀) hope to see more of your content
I personally agree with everything you said. One thing I'd like to mention is, at least in my opinion, the people that try to enter vtubing but don't do exactly what the others do and don't try to fit into idol culture, are not tourists. They're just trying to do their own thing and have fun. However, the people that try to enter the community, just to insult fans, or the vtubers themselves, or just make really stupid hostile comments, those are the tourists.
A thing you mentioned is how growth is good for the community and stuff, and that we need to branch out? But i sadly don't think thats what keeping us from growing at this point, i think the Vtuber sub genre is kinda hitting a wall of saturation, thats why we don't see a a lot of vtubers averaging high viewership, the ones that are big remain so and a lot of newer Vtubers or Vtubers with more nieche channels are gonna struggle alot. Not that it wouldn't be nice to see, i just don't think its all that feasible. I don't think its because "tourists" dont udnerstand whats going on or have trouble finding a home in the community its because, well they're just not that interested. As for toxicity, as a viewer my knowledge is limited, but most of the ones i watch has been involved in basicly almost no drama. So that's good, lets hope that stays!! 😅
I think it's the same issue, more or less. VTubers feel like they must act like hololive and do similar content to large agencies to be viable as vtubers- realistically, we're seeing a lot of growth in things like this, vtubers creating commentary videos, doing larger scale events, or branching out into non-traditional 'vtuber' content. (Or maybe just 'old' vtuber content, if you go back to Kizuna Ai's video making era) I think the fear of being seen as 'not a real vtuber' extends into content, so people don't branch out more, and they don't create new things... And unfortunately, that ends up boring for viewers. We've seen this plenty of times with old youtubers who did the same content for 4-7 years, and started to stagnate heavily. So I think as fears about needing to fit inside of a mold ease up, people will get a little more creative with it again! Also, glad to know most people you know aren't involved in any of that stuff! There's a lot goin on all the time.. 😅
The sad thing is as much as accurate as what you're saying. A lot of people in this sphere will either downplay the problems with "Every other community has these issues" Or will just try to discredit people stating flaws. This is a good video. Honestly as harsh as this sounds, I think the community should just fall on their face and learn that way.
When you're a part of the entertainment industry, your success depends on you reaching the biggest demographic as possible. Weather that be parasocial men, whatever girls are into, Europe, America, Japan, etc... These rules don't apply to just VTubing. This goes for music artists, T.V shows, entertainment as a whole. Idol culture is stressed because typically those who are family friendly have their names carved in the "hall of fame" so to speak. I say typically because that's not always the case. Once that goes dull, someone who goes down a different path will rock the industry. It's how humans are, we are looking for the next best thing. Especially Americans but that's a whole rabbit hole in itself. Hololive did a brilliant move by featuring the MLB (Demographics) Because baseball is also well known in Japan. Anyway, the entertainment industry has always been a cesspool. Harvey Weinstine (A Hollywood movie director) forced any aspiring female actresses have sex with him. To even have a chance at being featured in his movie. At least with vtubing it's all in your hands. Unless you sign with an agency.
I'm pretty much just a tourist, I just watch clips sometimes, but one thing I do know is that if you try to make something for everyone you end up making it for no one. Gatekeeping is good if it keeps out people that want to get inside only so that they can change the thing you like and remove the parts that made you like it in the first place, because they actually hate the thing you like.
The point with that is that we're gatekeeping the people already here, because they're not acting the way a stereotypical vtuber 'should'. That's toxic, we should stop that.
@@plasmabat718 At conventions, on twitter, with discord servers, shittalking to sponsors, strings of hate messages on streams, emails, dms, etc. I have friends who get shit on plenty for not being stereotypical vtubers. I have other friends that don't get openly hated on, but are shunned from the community in terms of collabs, events, etc, even though they have 100k+ subs, just because they don't like idol culture and want to be themselves. This isn't a small thing, it's a consistent across the community, and it sucks.
@@koziitwo Sorry, like I said I'm kind of a tourist, what is a "stereotypical vtuber"? What exactly is idol culture? What are these people being attacked for doing or saying?
As someone who really only watches you and I guess pasta, I have no clue what some of stuff you reference. I mean I expect that when going into new community. But yeah the whole Vtube-sphere as a hole as a simi-outsider, it seems like it’s a place where you can’t be as much of yourself as a facecam person can be or just nothing. Like I hear a story from one of my friends who is more into vtubing that a girl got in hot shit for having a husband like wtf is that. ofc people obscure or put on an act for their content but for it to be that much of an issue… wtf, idk vtube weird
VTubing is very weird! Since I've always been in more normal content spheres, coming into vtubing was a very strange experience. I knew about idol culture already, since I was into idol anime, but, to have it applied to me without really wanting to do that, just because I was a VTuber, felt so strange. Pasta HATES it, she's always been pretty vocal against idol culture and anything surrounding the more gate-keepy parts of the community, but because of that, she's always also felt really excluded by the people IN the community, and like she doesn't belong, even though she's fully dedicated to and loves vtubing itself. It sucks! I want everyone to feel welcome in this community, I want them to be able to do what they love, and I want them to help to expand what it means to be a vtuber, and what cool stuff we can do.
My main channel is so heavily locked into stream content that it does not push videos at all, and I also hated getting people asking me for live2d guides on the channel i primarily play games on 😅
Yeah, I kinda only have my toes dipped into the VTuber community (primarily only watch Ironmouse), and can corroborate that the general public doesn’t have a good impression of VTubing. Basically, when you combine “there are a lot of minors involved in this” and “there are a lot of scantily clad VTubers doing NSFW content,” well…people jump to a certain conclusion. I work with teens and so many parents fully ban them from watching VTubers outright, even ones that keep their appearance and content clean and family friendly. And this is on top of the general public’s negative perception of anime, which many VTubers use as the style for their models. VTubing has high potential as a means to maintain a user’s privacy while having a lot of opportunity for self-expression still. But I don’t think VTubing is going to be able to shake this stigma against it fully, the same way anime can’t. And, frankly, parents’ concerns aren’t completely unfounded.
@@whatzittooyah9182 I do think that anime itself has gotten a little more recognized and a little less stigmatized in western cultures over time, buuut with the toxicity of the community itself, it basically sends us back 15 years in that progress to when people in my old school days used to make fun of anime as weird corn shiz (thanks Faye Valentine, tho she was a queen 😩)
@@koziitwoYeah, public perception of anime has improved especially due to the popularity of Dragon Ball in the West and also due to the pandemic introducing more “normies” stuck at home to it. However there are still a lot of people that think that all anime is pornographic or that all anime sexualizes children, and it’s easy to see how people can come to that conclusion, because a lot of anime like that exists, even though those are niche and are often condemned. 😵💫
@@whatzittooyah9182 Yeee, it'll always be a struggle. That's why I think the best we can do for that is just try to create more cool content and try not to let our drama get pushed as much as our wins, like the dodgers stuff. 🙏
3:41 We laugh at the people who care about what's said on twitter because it's such a tiny minority of any community that it basically doesn't affect the rest of the community.
until someone begins a hate campaign or try to dox a vtuber. The problem with twitter is that while most people let it be most of the time, there's always the risk that it'll boil over into a vtuber's normal content and at that point it's already gone to far. So while I agree that most people don't care about twitter, and that the ones who do shoudln't, it's still good to keep an eye on, so harassment and doxing can be shut down before it gets too big
It's so hard. Many people have different opinions about Vtuber, and of course, like any human being, opinions, and thoughts conflict, and there will always be an argument and sometimes even the worst-case scenario. Of course, that is probably normal for social interaction, but I think a lot of us need to be more humble and open-minded. Not everyone will agree on this, but at least try and don't expect that it will always return with kindness. Sorry for some tangent thought.
Toxicity feels like its part of many EN Vtubers content style though, I don't find cynicism, sarcasm and comparisons to others that entertaining. I am learning Japanese to go and live their so I mainly focus on those Vtubers, the vibe tends to be more positive, self affirming (they push forward with their talent) and happy with the smaller community within their space (even if only 1-5k subs) vs being concerned with how the collective is doing. I do think that many of the vtuber associations you mentioned though are common language over there like oshi and need not to be defined. Seems like EN is going through a growth phase of being handed a medium that got popularised by Japanese corporations and its trying to create its own identity with it so that they don't feel uncomfortable within it.
@@ramdan8512 more or less, yeah. A lot of people in the English community DON'T know those terms, and I've actually already made the video talking about em! Also, yeah.. unfortunately English media is all controversy forever, so a lot of English vtubers are following suit with that. 😔
@@koziitwo Thanks for the reply! One thing that came to mind is the challenge of separating role play from avatar. I feel those two are synonymous in general public which may increase the confusion as its an association on initial impression visually. Shifting that would go a long way to gaining wider appeal I think so normal content is expected from an avatar by a viewer.
Its frustrating, because expanding BEYOND the idol model is something i have seen you advocating for and i know ive advocated for, for like YEARS. When i started this thing, i was so optimistic, and seeing vtubers expand into other niches felt inevitable, but it just hasnt happened. It sucks that potential fans get turned off when they see my little digital puppet because of what our community is known for. Ive started using a model less frequently or sometimes not at all to distance myself, and that bums me out. I wont put a model on screen until after the hook, and peeps will comment 'vtuber jumpscare' (which is funny tbh, but its also a little sad its come to this!!) anyway, im preaching to the choir, well said
It is, but to be fair, I don't think I DID much to try to help people expand. Now, at least, I think I'll try to help people understand how things work and how to get into it a little more myself, and I'll start pushing more at that level, and see what happens. 🤔
I find it interesting you bring up what it means to be a VTuber, particularly when it comes to following idol culture. I've heard this from people who don't even follow this to a tee, or freak out and make call outs shittalking behind people's backs (no joke, this happened to my friend). It's some weird elitism that isn't even consistent. Screw the idol mentality. What happened to even being a content creator? I love all types of VTubers---even the idol ones. But yeah, this hard stance on giving some arbitrary definition of VTubing is ridiculous. I also hate the amount of bigoted people there are in some of these spaces, but like a lot of things I wish vtubers would just focus on the whole vtubing content, and not make it their whole online presence a passion for targetting these types of people and giving them way too much attention. We've gotten to the point where we're harming ACTUAL kindhearted people cause we think we're standing agianst something that is not harming anyone; becoming blinded by anger and a need to look good or save face on social media. I wish we had more people that are actually sensible and reasonable about these type of things. I think you'd be a good example for VTubing. I hope this video gets some sort of good reception.
Honestly, while I might “want” to disagree with you, I just can’t, you told not a word of a lie. I couldn’t tell you why each and every VTuber got into it. But man, some of this fanbase is absolutely nuts. People get ripped apart for no reason, though I will stare annoyingly at Twitter, X, or whatever. In any case, you keep doing you, and educating the base.
If anyone can help clean it up, it’s someone like you, who knows the in’s and outs, who’s been there at every level, artist, rigger, talent, etc. if anyone understands, it’s you. So I trust your opinions. Anyway, I’ll let you be, but I adore this video
the problem is when you dont gatekeep, after they get in they shame those were already there and have been doing their own niche content, be it loli, ASMR, GFE etc. that is the reason why people gatekeep. coexistence would be preferable but the newcomers have no intention of doing that, they wish to come in takeover and enforce their views on what was already there changing it and becoming the new gatekeepers. it is a zero sum game between audiences since all content creators are captured by their audience since it is their source of income directly through superchats/ donations/ subs or indirectly through CCV/ engagement they sell to sponsors. it might be different from artists who have a separate income source who do vtubing as a hobby/ side gig but that is just the nature of the beast.
Some people that have been around the entire time don't like those things either, though. It's fine for people to not enjoy things, and for people to even SAY they don't enjoy things. If it turns into harassment, that's where people need to chill, but realistically the vast majority of people that don't enjoy those things aren't going around causing a big ruckus about it, that's a vocal minority. Just let people enjoy what they enjoy, and dislike what they dislike. It's not really that hard to do.
@@koziitwo majority/ minority doesnt matter since the minority is a large enough of a number to cause a problem. its fine that they dont enjoy something, but they are actively attacking and shoving them out. for examples theres bungotaiga and hunneychu who have been facing attacks for a while time, personally i find their content displeasing but the issue is newcomers finding them so offensive they try to deplatform them rather than merely voicing their displeasure. if these newcomers are allowed to take root or tourists who only stay for a bit but influence the space it will get worse and more difficult since they will also become the new gatekeepers. pretty sure the only change that needs to happen is each audience/ content creator splitting off and fragmenting into smaller niches without interacting with another audience that is incompatible.
I've only met a handful of VTubers (you being one of them) and what I'll say is you're genuinely some of the funniest, nicest people I know. It sucks whenever the bad side of a community reflects poorly on the rest.
Learning the lingo is definitely odd for EN users having to learn JP language and vtubers inhabit certain spaces of content creation because the viewers who would watch vtubers are more concentrated in that content.
It sounds like vtubers don't understand the function of outside art. By having artists who are not aware of the movement they are making art similar to, they are able to give a lense for people inside that movement to reevaluate itself with. Something that speaks from an independant soul unchained by expectations. Sadly, artistic movements and communities are historically hostile to such purity. Humans generally want to have everyone play by the same set of rules, but not have those rules apply to themselves whem its inconvenient. Here this is manifested in people championing a rulebook very few people within the space have actual, personal history with. Often they forget how many JP talents got popular *because* they threw out the rulebook and embraced the rebellious nature of anime culture. It speaks volumes that people hold up Hololive as the gold standard while its best known members are also the most recognizeable figures in the dark, unhinged, "problematic" side of the industry. And as an outsider looking in, I can only imagine what these people do to combat the inherent cognatice dissonance one must have when faced with an culture based around defined rules of engagement being chained to an industry being supported off the back of unapologetic rule breakers.
I can't even begin to understand it myself, honestly, because you're right- hell, the entire English sphere could be seen as having sparked from vtubers that don't do any of the 'traditional' accepted things. Coco being one of the main ones, but hell, also Kizuna AI, not really being a streamer at all, but a virtual content creator. It's so strange that we stick to the same customs now, when we've seen that breaking out of the mold does fantastic things for all of us.
@@koziitwo And thats before even considering that, from what I can tell, the EN VTuber scene blew up because of a porn star of all people. Thanks Projekt Melody for being the literal opposite of an idol girl.
humans have always had a terrible time with change at any point in history. quarrels, wars and colonization/ conversion have always happened and its sad to see this concept also apply to the (VIRTUAL UA-camR) space. since hololive the meaning has basically become "Virtual idol" and just like any extremist religious/cultist group they want to convert you into (ONE OF US -aliens from toy story). (i am a fan of hololive*) but its totally out of control. . . . (I DONT WANNA READ PPL*) its hard to enjoy vtubing content when the dumpster and the floor itself is on fire lmao.
UA-cam recomended me this for some reason so i'll try to bring some light over some of the points:(bible incoming) 1. - i don't think gatekeeping the comunity is bad, tourist are trying to change anime culture and for extention, vtubing. 2. - as you said, the ruling model of vtuber is the idol tipe, thats because comes from japan and most of the fans are weebs, maybe don't agree with all of the idol culture but they tolerate it 3. - unicorns are crazy but spend A LOOOT of money 4. - there is almost non advertisement of small vtubers outside twitter and a lot of us don't even use it, almost always know about indies from false. 5. - there is a general sensation of hostility always because of tribalism, but then some bullsh*t happens that enforses such tribalism (the sinking yatch for exemple). I think there is a lot to do but having the comunity sub-fragmentated is the bigger issue, first the have to unite and try to work togeter, unlikely at least, so until that changes i don see the rest can be fixed.
@@ppjose435 English Vtubing is not Japanese Vtubing. It's failing outside of Japan. The culture doesn't work in places like America. I'm not speaking on other languages and cultures, only the English space, which needs to diversify and create its OWN identity. The more it tries to copy Japan, the more it alienates people who are actually a part of the cultures it's trying to target, and the less people care about vtubing. It's like idols. I love idols, I've known about and been a part of idol culture for 15+ years. Idols fail when they hit an American market, because American culture rejects idol values. Popstars succeed, because they work within the constraints of the culture they're trying to market themselves to. I agree that the community needs to come together, but PART of the community coming together is not gatekeeping it, and understanding that we have to teach people about vtubing and be okay with them working outside the box with it once they get their hands on it. Because, part of the subculture split IS that there are vtubers who know everything, hate it, refuse to engage with it, but continue to vtube and love THAT. And that is an okay thing. It's okay for people to pick and choose what they like and dislike out of something. We cannot police what people like. We can only try to grow together and find common ground in other ways, instead of just trying to push them out.
@@koziitwo i will have to disagree with some of your point's here. some of the Vtubing culture is failing in the American market do to the idol part. but as you said popstars win and the same happens in Vtubing. there are already multiple other both companies and vtubers that does great and have different ways to go so they succeed. the "Vtubing community" will never come together. it is to large for that how ever small it is. it is to diverse for it. we can agree on many things but the problem I see is people is trying to make it into the "Vtubing community" when it is a huge amalgemation of many different communities. it is like herding cats. i think the trouble is more to find where you will fit in or find the right audience, and be accepted there.
The fandom are just a bunch of simping fanatics, unless every word you say is praise they'll start weeping and throwing tantrums. An enviroment where you silence and dismiss every dissenting thought is just inherently unhealthy.
I don't think it's as bad as that, but I think there's a lot of people that *are* that bad, and the people who aren't.. just aren't doing enough about it. We're not trying to be open and welcoming, we just sit there and complain about it. I hope to at least try to help people a little bit more.
@@koziitwo There are certainly enough of the bad ones to consistently get the same results, and at that point one might as well speak generally. I just consider myself a viewer of content, I would never call myself a fan because of the associated stigma that stems from behaviour like that.
I don't think this issue can be fixed. There's a metric ton of problems and all of them too multi-layered to discuss in a comment section. I understand your concerns and your drive to try and fix this, but I doubt you can get anywhere. The best you can do is set an example by providing good content and steering clear of drama. Use common sense, Vtubers are just entertainers just like streamers; if a streamer counts as a stage performer, a vtuber is kind of like a clown (because of the virtual avatar get-up). Entertain well, earn your pay, turn the stream off, forget about the semantics. Life's good that way. That's my 2.5 cents
You'd be very surprised the amount of bullshit vtuber politics exist behind the scenes, it's very dumb. This video isn't targeting the viewers nearly as much as it is the vtubers that exclude other vtubers for stupid reasons. Change starts from within. And vtubers I know really enjoyed hearing this!
Vtubers replaced movie stars that actually interact without the security and create odd parasocial stalkers and unique circles/environments. creator sphere/own fan interactions
the only point I would make to this is; whilst the western side should have their sphere, the issue is they take from japan to start with. the designs are Japanese (anime), so the subconscious implication is they will follow the Japanese standards, so it's more jarring when they don't. I personally believe more ground could be made if instead of using Japanese (anime) designs western vtubers or vtubers who didn't want to follow the japanese idol standard, used western cartoon designs (pumpkin potion for example), this would take away the subconscious bias of the viewer and allow for more freedom. I can't say much for behind the scenes issues but that's a streamer to streamer issue not a viewer one lmao.
I don't disagree, but even american cartoons followed along in japanese anime's footsteps and made things like avatar, which was incredible. I don't think we neeeed to use more western designs to become something more, I think we can make it work, and it would actually help to showcase to americans that japanese animation is more mature and interesting than they thought too! But, yeah, most of this is just about streamer to streamer issues, tbh, less so on the viewer side, except for forcing vtubers into specific boxes of content.
@@koziitwo I don't disagree that western animation has used anime as an inspiration, which is a good thing for sure, however the designs still have a western tinge to them, teen titans for example. I don't think the issue is western viewers think anime is for kids, i find more of them conflate it to hentai, which i would say isn't ideal but they are the people who know little about the medium. I do agree there isn't a need to go with a more western design, and it could work with the anime ones however like i said the subconscious bias will make it a lot harder as it will affect the streamers as well, as people tend to put themselves into a box, by changing the model style you change what you and others think your "box" is/should be and can more easily innovate. people will judge each other in 3 seconds of meeting and that is mostly on looks and body language, as you can't show body language unless you have a full 3D model rigged you would need to do it though the model itself, this resets the thoughts of "oh its a anime vtuber " to "oh this a new style of vtuber", This doesn't mean it can't be done without doing this or you have to do it, it's just how we see patterns in things as humans and it's harder to break a pattern then to start a new one.
still waiting for vtuber models that are like poorly drawn in ms paint, vtuber models that are low-poly like they're in ps1 or ps2, vtuber models that are on a different artstyle besides anime, etc.
@@ArjunTheRageGuy about 13 sec into my showcase of all models i've ever rigged, you can get a glimpse of the literal paint doodle that my friend captain cube made for FangGuu, that i cut and rigged for him for her birthday. ua-cam.com/video/jRdkwYSehaQ/v-deo.html There's a ton of low-poly models too, if you want some really creative vtubers, check out shindig's twitter! he posts a ton of them! x.com/shindags also, this post has an image of the pixel model I recently got from BlubbrMuffins! x.com/koziichu/status/1802784416059863148/photo/1 and check out @PowerGuygg sometime, he recently got an updated pixel model himself~
I appreciate that you made this video to discuss your opinions on the community from the inside. As a guy who doesn't use twitter and mostly follows vtubers through watching clips and youtube videos, I think that you're too worried about changing the outside perception. I don't think vtubers will die out specifically from idol culture, because traditional idols are still popular as far as I know. That being said, I think you've identified a big difference between traditional idols from the east and en vtubers. The cultural differences in taste result in a 2 audiences that overlap on vtuber models but might not with idol culture. Innovative creators like Filian and OniGiri are serving the new sections of the audience. What I'm getting at here is that you don't really need to lose the idol culture to grow vtubing. You and other creators should find your niche and do new things. Don't even worry about people who expect idol culture or normies that don't know anything about anime. Feel free to lose all the known conventions of oshimarks and model reveals. Take the parts you like and make something you want to make instead of feeling limited by other people's reactions I think overall I agree with you, and I would like to add that 'constructive action' (instead of 'constructive criticism') is that path that could actually lead to change. I appreciate discussion as a good first step but only that
So what I really want to change isn't a twitter perspective, but the fact that people like my friend PastaroniRavioli can't fit into this sphere as it is. People don't really see her as a vtuber, even though she has been for multiple years now, and rarely does any facecam content anymore - because of the perception of what a VTuber is and should be. It feels bad to be an outcast like that for so long. Even when we went to Offkai Expo together this year, I had a lot of meetings, and opportunities provided to me, for being closer to a 'traditional vtuber'... But Pasta wasn't really in the same position, even though when she goes to things like Twitchcon, she's very highly regarded. I want the traditional type of people to look outside the box, and accept that there are other ways to do this, and that the medium is vast. I want us to welcome those kind of people in, and help them out more, instead of leaving them to flounder by themselves. That's most of what I want!
TL;DR I strongly believe Kozii is wrong, vtubing is an industry not a community. First lets go over the definitions 1.a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. -We don't physically live on the internet and the characteristic it's talking about is of the person (i.e. being black/white/asian/hispanic or a spoken language) 2. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. -well we know that isn't it 'cause not many in this side of the internet have common goal (hobby, money, pushing their content career) or interests The one (1) characteristic for a community has to be the main thing everyone shares. In content creation it's content creators and content consumers, which means vtubing can not be a community. Even if we were to just say vtubers are the community, I would disagree because "we all have an anime model" isn't a characteristic of a person but of the channel's content. Content creators can have their personal community because their community is filled of people who consume their content and are interested in them. I 've seen people say "other hobbies are a community so vtubing is" but some make a living off of only content so that argument falls apart. Anime community only includes people watching anime while the production side is an industry, furry community is made up of furries, and your local community is a community because you all physically live in that area. Content creation is closer in structure to the music or anime industry as it's a form of entertainment for others to enjoy than a community. I've heard others say 'Vtuber Industry' which is probably more correct then me saying 'sphere' or that chatter saying 'scene'. The companies coined the term "Twitch Community" and "UA-cam Community" to make it sound like they care and we are just one big happy family. If you've made it this far into the comment, I would not have cared to write anything let alone this much about her using the term community if she didn't lecture the audience.
people are really anal over the title but don't actually speak on the content of the video, very interesting to me. the point wasn't to say it was a community, the point was to say that WHATEVER we are, collectively we are seen in a bad light, and we need to stop bad actors from pushing out people who are genuinely passionate about the space and want to try new things. though, a quick edit just to add this; I typically say scene, space, or industry when speaking on different parts of the community. This video is a collective talk about EVERYONE, including the hobbyists and viewers, not only the people who do it as a main form of income. When speaking on that, you can use scene or space, but I just decided to use community because it means the same thing as those two, and doesn't sound as cold and robotic.
@@koziitwo It was within the first 2 min of the video, not the title. Like I said (maybe I edited it in after you read) I wouldn't of cared if you didn't turn around and bring up the definition to say definitively it is a community. I am slowly making my way through the vid but I'll be honest, my comment took a bit to write, then rewrite, then edit about 6 times because I didn't like it and probably took longer than the vid for me to accept how it is. I'll reply to myself as I go through the vid.
I'm sure you know at this point, Ringo is in talks with Filian and Good Smile Co. and they say it's going smoothly. I can agree that up until the Dodger x Hololive collab (which seems to have happened only because Pekora is the oshi of Ohtani their top pitcher), it's been bad pr going out to the mainstream but I would chalk that up to negative news sells and people like Rev have a reach farther into the anime community. Even then, I don't think much really got outside of the sphere unless the people were terminally online but the Selen termination reached almost everyone in the content creation industry. I've never heard people saying 'if you don't conform to idol culture you're not a vtuber' but I know some people can be crazy and say some dumb stuff so I'll believe it. Just weird how the top indies wouldn't be considered a vtuber by that mindset, hell Niji who used to be the biggest corpo would not be considered a vtubing company. You tourist, Madge. If it wasn't obvious enough, this is a joke. I totally agree with more EN songs/covers, I believe the issue is the ease to ask and pay for JP songs while with EN songs the ones people care about would ask for thousands for a license and is a pain to ask for perms. Hololive also seems to be the leader in general and a lot just follow what they do, including stream content. ERB seems to be doing a lot of EN karaoke but I'm not sure if she'll be doing EN songs or covers. Now thinking, I swear someone like Watame had the first full EN song in Hololive. To push out of this bubble is very hard because going mainstream means you're now in the space of face cam streamers who have loud fans that hate anything anime. With this and the bad PR making it worse, I think the only way vtubing will push into mainstream is changing perception enough for people to check out vtubers and fall down a rabbit hole, which happened with the Dodgers x Hololive collab (some Dodgers fans checked out the girl's content). I think at this point in time, Cover Corp. is the best shot of this industry growing outside of the niche bubble. Is it possible to push into mainstream without Cover opening it up? Yes, but you have to be constantly improving your content and most importantly, be lucky that you blow up, even then Shylily and Ironmouse probably don't feel like they have broken into the mainstream yet. I think for new people wanting to be a vtuber, it's not even just the corpo vtubers making it seem like you need to go corpo but everyone pushing the fancy looking models that cost 10k+ and the artists/riggers that are affordable are harder to find. If some posts are made to where others that don't know won't get it is fine but I can see there being an issue if you're trying to grow and potential viewers would be turned away if that's most if not every post. I'd be interested if you made content about different aspects of the industry like idol culture (probably would include oshi marks in that vid) and explaining the channels who aren't vtubers but are react andy channels for vtuber content (Koe, Nagzz, Evanit0, and that one channel that starts with a 'V' which slips my mind), that way if someone who doesn't know vtubers could see that vid go check out those guys out and see if they find a vtuber they might enjoy.
The whole Nijisanji thing in the VTuber community is nuts! It was somewhat similar to the Miniladd Drama. both Riku and Craig kind of had some similarities of lying to the public, manipulation, and even said they’re doing well when they’re views and subscriptions were plummeting to the bottom. You also had some die hard fan base supporting them as well as harassing those who don’t support them. For Nijisanji they had the “Niji Defence Force” and Miniladd had “The Brain Dead Miniladd Fans.” The contrast was that Riku Tazumi was the CEO of Nijisanji and should have act more professionally and apologized to the public of what really happened, but it’s too late now. And Craig Thompson AKA Miniladd was just a regular UA-camr who used to be part of the Vanoss Crew. But went his own separate way and also talked bad about them, which he shouldn’t. He also did some really bad stuff on Snapchat, which well let’s just say he became Pablo IRL.
Interesting to hear about this from somebody who was watching it all happen, since I only really happened into the crew's general circle when pasta invited me into the Minecraft server!
lol I kind of grew up watching the Vanoss Crew, well actually more like the Crew Craft, The Hidden Masters, and Squeaker Squad, but that was back in 2010. 2011 or 2012 is when the Vanoss Crew came in. And they’ve gotten big. I don’t know if Pasta is part of the crew, I think she’s her own thing, she’s friends with Nogla who is part of the Vanoss Crew and she’s friends with KYR Sp33dy and Deluxe4 who are part of the Crew Craft, and sometimes she plays with McNasty who he’s part of the Goons. But other than that, they’re all friends with each other. I think she has her own crew of gamers. I have heard that she was part of a VTuber group called Kawa Entertainment, but I haven’t seen her play with other VTubers which is kind of strange.
I was a part of that vtuber group, actually! Part of the reason I even made this video was because of her- a lot of people in this community exclude people like her, because she used to be a facecam streamer, and because she hates idol culture. Which kinda explains why she doesn't end up talking to many other vtubers.. a lot of the ones she does talk to are also kinda on the outskirts of things. Honestly, groups like the one with Speedy and D4 have been SO much more open to new people, I've found. They're so kind and friendly, even though I just got tossed into their servers suddenly.. it was like whiplash after years of being in the kinda cold, clout-chasey vtuber community.
People don't want to be open about this, probably to avoid any potential harassment from whichever side, but since i don't give a shit: so much of this stems from Japanese vtubers appealing most strongly to 4chan among all of the major English-speaking spaces online. Even before Hololive, when /vt/ didn't exist yet, /jp/ was pretty much the only active vtuber board in EN. So, so much of the attitude around gatekeeping and fear of ~normies~ is the same kind of stuff we've seen in Gamergate (and its modern offspring such as the Sweet Baby Inc. scare), Comicsgate, etc. There's a perception that the degenerate woke west is ruining all of their beloved hobbies, and they see vtubers as one of their few remaining safe havens. This also explains the large incel presence in the scene, which fuels the whole unicorn mentality. Think about how the single biggest culture war within the Hololive fandom atm is male collabs and the existence of male vtubers in general. Honestly, i'm not sure it's possible to keep a lot of the vtuber aesthetics established by companies (extravagant debuts, forcing higher-pitched voices, maybe even the whole anime style in general) and reclaim the culture from this audience. It all comes from the wider anime subculture and was established ages before vtubers became a thing, after all. Maybe, as some other commenters suggested, we need some folks who can use non-Japanese styles in this medium and strike a chord somewhere.
Great vid. Is something i unconciously noticed but couldn't really out into words and you make a fine point. There's only a handful of facecam streamers that know of vtubers only because they either stumbled upon their videos, their community pointed it out or they were already in the know. And when you look at vtubers who they consider friends, there's mostly other vtubers with maybe one facecam streamer in the list. Best example i can give be @nagzz21 and @koefficient who are pretty deep into it by this point and have made some pretty good friends in the vtubing community. But that be it As for vtubing itself, it's not just english. Other countries have their own vtubers but they opt for english cause it's the most... I guess commonly learned language besides their native one? Hopefully, they will be able to become mainstream in their own countries and not just for english or spanish or japanese or what have you. Just be... Vtuber I'm not sure if i'm getting my point across in that last paragraph, but i guess i'm trying to say that i agree, vtubers have to break out of the mold and make themselves more mainstream before they become... I think niche is the word? English not my native language here In any case, i agree with your thoughts, maybe expand on them even and hope the industry and communities manage to make the changes required to make it in the long run
I do think the Indonesian vtuber community has gotten more of its own identity in recent years!! But yeah, there's a ton of other places and other languages that still need to find themselves and what kind of culture they want to have. Thanks for the comment, I love to hear more thoughts!!
@@koziitwo just trying to be as real and politely honest as possible. Criticism is all good long as it is constructive which is what i try to do And speaking of thoughts, have you perhaps watched zyla_gal's video on why she quit the communities? I think there might be something there you could like, expand on or give your own thoughts on
As an individual who started as a vtuber in 2021 but had to take a hiatus and is coming back to the community I kind of wonder what is worse The Vtubing community or The Cosplay Community especially with the Whole Gatekeeping aspect cause I had to deal with that in the cosplay community with certain characters being only meant for people of certain body types its where the whole fat shaming and blackfacing really made its MARK and not in a good way as a former cosplayer I left because of those reasons and that everyone thought they were better than everyone so it had elitists as well and people with superiority complex. anyway this is just my opinion I think vtubing should be an open book concept and a perspective kind of experience I personally don't think there is a right or wrong way to go about vtubing or being a vtuber as along as they aren't a shitty person, that being said there is no guide but there shouldn't have to be a guide for common courtesy or the use of common sense and RESPECT cause at the end of the day we are all content creators no matter how big of ones following, or sub count and we all start somewhere. anyway I apologize for the rant/tangent
I was a cosplayer too, and I think both felt like a very similar space. Funny thing, a lot of cosplayers that were outed as being terrible people have been found to have crawled into vtubing at some point.. so it's actually just the same toxicity sometimes, moved from one community to another 😭
Pretty much! And the problem is that people are gatekeeping passionate people that want to be involved in the community by implying they must follow Japanese customs. We need to create our own identity in the English community, not just follow what came before, so we need to allow experimentation.
The main problem with the vtubung genre is that the nost majority of them are boring as hell no true content just rumbling about shit with useless cute alteration of their voices
![[UA] NAVI vs MOUZ | BO5 | IEM Rio 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CMBYk0cbGoA/mqdefault.jpg)
Edit 2: For people here to tell me it isn't a community, this is the type of community we're talking about: 01:24
The first definition of community, a subsect of people that all are within the same space. Not the type of community where we are all likeminded individuals, but the type of community in which we all live in the same little box of internet. Again, as I directly say in the video, it's not everyone, it's just a generalized way to refer to things.
Edit: I really appreciate how well worded and interesting your perspectives are on it all! Obviously this is just my opinion on it, so it's not the end all be all, and not the only thought out there about it. I'm glad to hear what you guys think too!
Also, just to be clear, I LIKE idol culture, I've been a part of the idol space for 15+ years with idol anime and through AKB48's best years. I enjoy it. I just don't think that we should gatekeep people who don't want to create that type of content PERSONALLY, just because that's where VTubing culture grew from. We are an English speaking space, people will not always like idol culture. We need to allow people to grow into their own, without telling them they're wrong for it.
And this video comes from someone who used to be in the Homestuck community, so you know I recognize when it's bad
People keep saying it but i never understand what Homestuck means, and i get the feeling im better of for it...
that community sure was an experience...
I totally agree. I am honestly kinda surprised, at how niche vtubing is even now and especially how most of vtubing seems to still revolve around the same themes and tropes (not saying that is bad for any individual vtuber to play into). I remember the time I first fell into the rabbit hole. I immediately thought about all the potential the concept of vtubing was offering, but I have seen barely any of it being tapped into as of now.
*insert new thoughts and feelings here* yeah my thoughts and feelings have been pretty well addressed &/or I can't get them well enough into words so I'm pretending I don't have any, otherwise, I'll just keep typing and typing and have an unstructured mess*
I envy your(and others) abilit(y)(ies) to translate experiences to words so clearly. Seriously, its like you're not even real! Same goes for all the other influencers! Like, how do you all have such good-sounding, & simultaneously well-spoken & well-tuned voices? My voice is insufferable to some(myself & I reckon others too, hence why they don't wanna hang I think, and I can't blame them, I have ASD so that means I also phrase things shittily occassionally). Drama be damned, I just want confidence to say "Fuck off drama! I don't care about you cause I know what's happening & know for certain that I have 0 power in changing any of this cause I'm just one person + I'm learning X right now!".
But of course, social media being social media, gives us all the illusion of the world being much smaller than it actually is(and that there's less likeminded people out there than there are in reality + placing it on the individual to figure out wtf is going on & somehow have us process or not process it) + multiple things that we "gotta learn immediately or else we won't be ready for the oncoming apocalypse &/or singularity &/or *insert other distraction here*!"
P.S. I'm totally not human if I don't know how to do the influencer voice... jk, I got decent vocal range, but the phrasing part is where I fuck up cause I'm just too socially anxious to let myself sound potentially too "normie'ish" or "generic", like I'm some character in a book following a single train of thought like a robot... even though that's not always robotic, its just living life and spending time on one thing for the required amount of time... L my psychologist really hasn't been addressing all these issues, its like I have to be more forceful in expressing it all... or else I won't get anything done about my situation(s).
P.S.S. I'm totally a tourist for talking like a spaz/"skizo" according to some in-groups on VR Chat, namely, the Great Pug's U.S. servers... god help whoever gets in that hell hole trying to get from point A to B in learning social skills & feeling confident enough in themselves to keep using them.
You do you. 🙂👍
I think I enjoyed vtubers way more back when the content was still pre-recorded in bite sized chunks by the early generation such as Kizuna AI, Eilene, Natsumi Moe, Mirai Akari etc. It simply felt more organic and time friendly. Whereas today, hours upon hours of gaming and karaoke live-streaming by virtual talking heads that as an audience member you are somehow meant to fit into your own schedule of whatever else you are trying to get done with your own real life just to support your idol. It kinda forces you to reject FOMO altogether if you can’t multitask despite of how fond you may be towards a specific vtuber personality or you’ll get trapped in a time sink.
IMO the idol industry is quite bluntly put way too commonly a time and money consuming nothingburger if you aren’t dealing with truly independent creators instead of the corporate mandated ones, especially when the content in question is almost exclusively live-stream centric. Who has that much time to spend just to be able to watch everything? You should be able to understand how the trend can be frustrating even to those of us who aren’t vtubers. I do respect many of them. But I also have an actual life to live.
*This is why Rina and I stick to ourselves*
*We’ll never affiliate. People are nuts!*
@@RinaRetro ❤
I"ve just recently 'discovered' vtubing content but it's scary how many of the things you said are more than clearly appearend for newcomers.
Thank you for this video!
It is pretty crazy that most of it is immediately apparent
I think people have kinda tuned most of it out, or pretend to, unless they're the ones perpetuating it.. But unfortuately it's VERY clear to anyone who even glances in our general direction.
Honestly, it sounds like most communities. People straight up need to just fix themselves for their sake and the community. But it is good to talk about these things and I'm glad you are
Not wrong! But I think some are a lot more open to new people, while vtubing always feels very hostile towards those outside. That much I think can change.
@@koziitwo word, word
Something of a mentor of mine put it thus: "There is no such thing as unhealthy relationships. There are unhealthy people in relationships."
@@nevisysbryd7450 I consider an abusive relationship of any kind to be unhealthy. Mentally, physically, sexually, emotionally. That's an unhealthy relationship.
@@NefariousDreary Healthy people do not abuse each other in relationships. If they are abusing the other person, they are not healthy.
I've had a couple people I enjoyed talking to when they got started..and I think that when people enter in, they feel compelled to cater to specific genres. I know ASMR is given a lot of grief, but I have seen some of my friends do that only to hate it down the road because it attracts a very weird and inappropriate audience. But I notice some people feel like they gotta do that to grow, it seems. I just wish people would delve into the content they WANT to do instead of trying to please others, cause that's what I like the most.
I ignored idol culture, have no debut, just talk to my friends. Have fun. I exist beyond the veil, hang out with fleshtubers and disembodied voices. I watch a vtuber who talks about dungeons & dragons horror stories.
The community is horrible and the norms are horrible... they just want everyone to do the same thing over and over; heck, people don't even remember what it was like before. Kizuna Ai manifested into existence, Kaguya Luna was a drunkard who just goes on hyper rants, Nekomiya was an old man who played a cute fox girl. There wasn't any of this, shady agency stuff. You can be a vtuber with just help from your friends. You don't need to be Hololive or Vshojo or the mess that is Nijisanji. :c
i mean, some see it as a actual full time job. so the agency thing and idols makes sense
@@Chainereight There are other ways to entertain people than being an some e-idol girl though; this medium can be used for so many outlets but (most) everyone's locked up doing the same things. It's like being on youtube an expecting all youtubers to be gamers. There's all sorts of channels here. (:
There can be more types of vtubers than that, they just gotta think outta the box.
I think toxic people tend to be a loud minority. It doesn't take many people to make environments uncomfortable.
Yeah "rotten apple ruins the bunch" is such a true saying, many times have toxic people made their way into a friend group or community and rocked the boat.
REAL
My opinion is that this is a niche market being filled by people who really love that niche. Anime by and large used to be niche until shounen started getting popular(for the worst). The same can be said for Vtubers, the entire market has become saturated and stale because it's filled with people thinking they'll become breakout success. That is only for the very small majority who already had an established audience or by sheer luck.
Vtubers were a thing that came from east and shared the same core audience of anime fans. Mostly hooking the more hardcore crowd who prefer pretty girls over the boys. While they are indeed annoying and should ease up on their own desires but they're also very protective over the idea of the character and not the one behind the avatar. They're apprehensive to change but it's to make a change when majority of the larger groups are either tied to JP or Asia.
In all honesty, I'm fine with this being a niche community. Talents and fans built this community up. Let people think what they think of Vtubing, there were reasons why anime before was considered "weird". If they don't want to make an effort to learn or enjoy the medium. It's fine, everything isnt meant to be catered too. The mainstream shouldn't be the end goal of everything. Because what's the point in trying to cater to people who in all likelihood not care at all? Why try to change yourself to appease a large group of people and instead of the ones who help build you up to where you are now.
I dont disagree with your outlook on the community. Yeah change would be nice but turning away what built the medium to what it is now won't be a good idea. Unless some the corporate groups start doing things differently, it'll all remain the same.
VTubing has gotten hella toxic over the course of 4 years 😔
for reaalll
@@koziitwo Since VTubing is such a novel thing, it's actually just catching up to the rest of the world in terms of toxicity. It only seemed clean because not enough people knew about it. Now that the troublemakers have learned of its existence, they're flooding in to ruin the fun in the same way they do to all other communities.
Toxic or extremely competitive?
@@MissionSilo I don't think that a lot of people all trying to fit into the same box is honestly very competitive. It's competitive on a corporate level, but not on an indie level. It's stagnant on an indie level.. with a lot of complaining. 😂
I blame Twitter.
I hope Vtubing potential is preserved and hope that some rotten apples doesn't poison the food source.
We can allow people to do as they want without 'poisoning' anything. People can be different.
@@koziitwo I hope so.
idk much about vtubers but i hate the word community, it's fake and meaningless and the word we is only used to manipulate people and strip them of their individuality
Interesting take. I feel like I might've agreed when I was younger, but nowadays I pray for a little more cooperation and care between human beings, and a collective grouping has different needs than the individual, so it's important to differentiate them. An individual can do something, and it may or may not affect the group, but if the collective perpetuates an idea, it could harm others in the collective.
...Which, that idea might be born from the fact I live in California, which makes decisions for the entire state, but the people who live in rural areas are begging for them to stop raising the minimum wage because small businesses are dying out, and big box stores are the only thing that can survive. Or, we're having consumption limitations applied in areas where it's not needed, or etc, cus it's a statewide measure. Cali people are kinda divided between wanting to split into 3-4 separate states based on regional necessities, or sticking together under one collective banner.
Kinda similar to the vtubing community tbh. I think some want to split off and don't want to be considered as part of the collective. Except, with social groups, it's easier to split off and form your own subcommunity, and I think people do that fine. The generalized collective, like I mentioned at the start, really doesn't mean everyone. Some people don't want to be involved, and that's fine. But, this was speaking to the people who try to gatekeep things, or force definitions onto certain vtubers - cus they clearly want to strip people of their individuality, and not allow them to do or be what they want.
...So tldr, basically, we currently are a community, and it would be better if we weren't. xD
Real humans are behind there Model. Being kind and appreciative is key. Content creators work with the public, very difficult! Let's be kind to them.
...huh, why is youtube algorithm bring me here? But after watching this video i realize ........i miss early vtuber era when everything is fun with zero drama involved, thanks for reminding me girl.
i remember the good ol days...
Really good video, bringing the Vtuber community together is as difficult as to bring about world peace, people are different and many lack the most basic common sense (and I don’t even count the malicious people who only seek to attack others for sport). The less you care about others and their opinions the better, you’ll always find support amidst the rambling chaos of the internet, thick skin is a necessity.
Very true, gotta keep going even if people do try to exclude you or stuff, if you really like it. Can't just stop because some people decide they don't like you!
Heyy Radio!! fancy seeing you here lol
@@SalamanderSupreme hahaha no way, a wild Lizard appeared 🤣
The problem is social media, hence why I abstain from it. Drama exists because people perpetuate it due to their meaningless lives needing some kind of purpose. Even this video perpetuates this cycle, *even if well-intentioned.
@@redguard1607 Literally every video on UA-cam is something put on social media. This is a social site just as much as the next is. The things I'm talking about here are just as present if not more present on this site as the next one- since a lot of the stuff I'm talking about here is stuff I've seen constantly perpetuated across sites like UA-cam, in the comments of streams from agency friends or indie, of all sizes.
@@koziitwo That's fair-I was merely remarking upon an unescapable irony. The Internet is effectively owned by Google, whose hegemonic structure pushes the tyranny of the majority against the individual. I wish you luck in attempting to find a voice on this platform whose algorithm is designed nullify your existence.
I really love this video. It makes me so frustrated seeing how much potential we have with vtubing and how things people can do with it. I wanna see some weird stuff
YEAH! GET WEIRD!
Hololive used to do weird stuff back around 2020, actually - that was what made me a fan back then! Kiryu Coco taking advantage of the medium to get away with lewder shit than Twitch allows, Haachama's whole psychological-horror storyline...that spirit's been gone for a while now, but it was there once upon a time.
Same deal with NijiEN, actually (e.g. Pomu's interactive dating-sim stream that went in *interesting* places). The corpo environment just isn't conducive to keeping up that kind of creativity in the long run, so we need more off-the-beaten path weirdos to break into the medium imo
Great to hear active vtubers saying this.
vtubing is a medium that has been mistakened as a formula for all vtubers to use, which is why people have such a hyperspesific view of vtubers even though vtubing itself is just an art form
Individuals can't change anything. Only two ones can:
1. Platforms
2. Big corpos.
First ones correcting rules, second ones forming bubble.
In Japan Niji are strongest, but in the west Hololive has power to change vtubing position in media. They have resources and will to do that
I love the way you addressed this, Kozii. Definitely good to distance yourself from the toxicity, while also wanting positive change to happen. It can be hard not to comment on certain things in the vtubing sphere at times.
The Vtubing community and idol culture surrounding it is really intimidating and scary. Ive thought about trying Vtubing for fun but never act on it mostly because I'm male and its mostly a female dominated space and what few male Vtubers I do know of always seem to be controversial figures do to things they say or do. Forgive me if my comment is trialing off subject.
nah Holostars, Janken, William the alchemist, Roy chiato, Heavenly, there's a lot of good male vtubers you just need to find for them
Id recommend checking out Legal Mindset. Hes lawtuber who has recently got into Vtubing and has talked about some of the same stuff.
I always appreciate your perspective Kozii. I was surprised when you said this was unscripted because it was extremely cogent and polished. I'm looking forward to seeing more videos on this channel!
@@heathpwsa Unscripted, but I definitely had to rerecord a few segments that I felt were way too rambling 😂 thank god for editing lmao
Yall remember the days when Evie bot/clever bot was the peak of virtual content?
Omg or back when everyone played that one AI game with the couple fighting and tried to not get kicked out 😂
@@koziitwo DDUUUUUDE FACADE! I miss that game
I've considered getting myself a vtuber avatar, but i don't know where to start with getting art commissioned or who to go to for rigging.
But also, i know male vtubers generally aren't as popular and my stream usually only gets around 40 viewers, so it might be too expensive for my small stream.
I actually plan on doing videos about male vtubers, about big vs small streamers, and about getting started for cheap, ironically, so hopefully some of those help out! 🙏
@@koziitwo
I'll look forward to it
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I think that vtubing has fundamental aspects in its essence that are controversial to the general public. The aesthetic of vtubing, that it borrows from anime, already gatekeeps a sizable demographic as is, but it also gatekeeps a lot of anime fans that are not into kayfabe. For this reason, many people that are drawn to vtubing see themselves as social misfits, and pariahs (to varying degrees). Which is reaffirmed on twitter and other social media platforms. (Even long before the controversies with nijisanji and kizuna ai). Because of this, we have always been cognizant that the public perception of vtubing has been poor, this is the reason why gatekeeping bad actors from the community is necessary. However, we also don't want to conform to mainstream societal values we want maintain our distinct identity. Because for us, the priority is not growth, but protecting the last vestige of community that society allows us to have.
@@bxq207 Good addition! But unfortunately, a lot of what I'm talking about also is gatekeeping the people already in the community, who have already been a part of other anime circles for years, who just don't like certain bits and pieces. In the end, anyone can dislike certain aspects of it, and we can't just shun them because they aren't into certain things, or tell them they're not real vtubers for their preferences. Because we ARE usually the outcasts, because we're used to being the ones shunned by others, I think we should offer the understanding and kindness we'd want to have from others.
The thing is, what is defined as a "bad actor"? In particular, if 4chan heavily influences the opinions in the vtuber community? They themselves are bad actors and try to gatekeep what they see as a "bad actor".
@@koziitwo Nah, I'd gatekeep. ¬‿¬
I've been thinking a lot over the past month or so about finally starting to do some sort of online content creation (an idea I've actually been bouncing around and procrastinating on for like 10 years but whatever), and I've been looking into the idea of doing it as a vtuber. And honestly if I do, my take is basically that I'm just gonna be doing my own thing. I don't care what other people in the space say or think vtubers are supposed to be and what they should or shouldn't do. I don't care what any individuals or groups say the rules or requirements of being a vtuber are. I don't care what the culture is and whether I fit with it or not or where the community is shifting and if I'm following or not.
I mean look at it this way, I have no delusions about "making it" by any means. Sure, it'd be cool to pay my bills off of it, but it's probably just going to be a hobby for me. And hobbies are supposed to be fun. So I'm gonna try to do what I find fun, first and foremost. I just wanna make neat stuff that hopefully a few cool people will find and get some enjoyment out of. And if I ever get hit with a "you're not a real vtuber" or some similar nonsense I'm just gonna be like "oh no!...anyway, new video tomorrow"
BTW just found this channel today and think I'm getting sucked into binging all your videos. The topics look really interesting and if you couldn't tell vtubing is something that's been on my mind a lot lately.
@@KrispyToast-YT Yeah! That's basically the perfect way to think of things these days. Just do what you want, don't let anyone's opinions influence you, and become the type of content creator you think is the most interesting. 👌
Also thank you so much! 🥺🙏
Good video!
And very true!
While I might not feel connected too the community or idol activities, onlookers will still assume I break up via Twitlonger and have a King Cover, while covetting girls that look like they are 11.
Same with my flag, people will assume I am hyper sexual and I attack viciously. People will always have an image.
And the current image of VTubers suck! (Within EN)
A community is only perceived by its outliers (except from within). So the only way to change it is become an outlier and we can only do that in spots we havent been before!
Agreed! I'm looking forward to the future of further innovation and creativity. While there's already established purpose and ideas through the idol culture, there's no reason as to why one must stick to those, as one can also do something entirely different. There's bound to be backlash with going against any current though, but there's also supporters out there who didn't know they needed your work in their lives.
There will always be people who just can't stand the idea of change in their space. There will also always be people that just.. prefer the way Japanese vtuber culture is, and honestly, that's fine!
But we'll keep progressing anyway, I hope, and hopefully the English sphere will create our own culture that's defined more by cool content than it is by.. well, currently, drama 😂
As somebody who's been in the community since before the pandemic (not saying that to be elitist, I just feel old lol) all the drama is really sad to see. I remember how innocent and exciting VTubers were as a concept and seeing it blow up and become mainstream, but it quickly became a minefield of drama and has made it harder for me to consider doing vtuber collabs on my main channel, because I'm paranoid I'll interact with somebody who gets into a big controversy, I just want to break out of my shell and interact with people who share the same kind of passion I have for this industry.
I feel this so hard 😔🙏
@@koziitwo I applaud what you're doing and trying to achieve with your channel. I too strive to make videos that provoke thoughts or discussions within vtuber viewers. I think a video on idol culture within the vtuber community and how it's affected the fans' view/expectations on what it means to be a vtuber would be interesting. I don't think I could personally do that topic as much justice as you probably could.
Maybe do some interviews with ex-corporate vtubers or vtubers who stopped pursuing the "idol lifestyle" and pivoted elsewhere. Wouldn't be easy to find people for that but you could at least interview ex-vtuber or ex-fleshtuber creators for another video idea. I think the way people change their approach to content creation can speak volumes on the industry as a whole. Either way, there's much to be said about the past, present, and future of VTubing.
This is just being nitpicky, and having an opinion for the sake of it. If you don't care about definitions, just ignore this. It has nothing to do with the rest of the video.
The reason a lot of people don't really see vtubing as a community and rather an industry is because it's so shattered and split on what makes a vtuber, what is acceptable in vtubing, how purist do you have to be, etc.
It's so huge and so different depending on which vtuber you watch that at this point all that really ties it together is that they all use avatars. Since a lot of them do very different things and have very different vibes.
So in my mind it's a bit like saying streamer community, or video-making community, or even vlogger community. It seems a bit to big to be a part of the same community just because they use the same medium.
TLDR: at this point simply using a model is (in my opinion) a bit too flimsy to say that it makes something a community since the rest can differ so much. But hey that's just a personal opinion and doesn't actually mean anything beyond a definition
@@HyattHyatt3179 I used to think the same until I started to speak with people who did more outside stuff to vtubing too. What people see from us is all very similar, and there are a few stand out opinions (mostly the stuff I mentioned in the video) that really make people think it is a more united front. BUT I don't disagree in that it's a very fragmented community, that's why I mentioned when you see past the surface level stuff, and you start to really get into it, you start noticing that a lot of it stems from people trying to push their definition onto people of what vtubing should be. Good thought! 👌
Good video. I think it's worth having discussions like these.
I do believe a lot of these problems are localized and more relevant in certain spaces than others. I don't like to consider the vtuber industry one big community, because I believe it has split into many different branches, each going their own way, to the point that some vtuber spaces feel completely alien to others. However, I do not think that is a bad thing; in fact, I think it's a good thing, as it will give people more options of where they'd rather fit in without stepping on anyone's toes. Even within the vtuber industry, there are culture clashes, because I think vtubing is evolving and progressing differently in each space.
For example, take EN and JP. If we look into their respective scenes, the landscape of what's relevant and what's the big talk of the town will differ. Yes, there will be places of overlap, usually concerning big corpos like Hololive. But outside of big corpos, one side may not pay attention to what's going on the other. It's the reason Fillian's award show mostly included EN vtubers, even though someone that might be more into the JP scene might want to object in saying that there should be more JP vtubers. However, if you mainly experience the EN side of the community, you won't know much about the JP scene outside of Hololive - and honestly, this applies in reverse too. If you mainly experience JP vtubing, you won't know nearly half of the big events or drama that happen in EN. Again, these two scenes have grown increasingly far apart, with more branching communities being born in them. The entire industry isn't watching every single bit of drama that happens in EN or JP, because it's less relevant depending on the space. Whenever I see people mention the big corpos, they usually mean only "Hololive, Nijisanji and VSHOJO"; even though VSPO is bigger than VSHOJO (bigger in terms of how much of a slice of the vtubing industry they take up) - but it's mainly concentrated in Japan, so most people in the EN side don't know them or how big they actually are (though this may change with the new EN branch.) The same applies with VSHOJO in Japan. VSHOJO's popularity and relevancy is mainly concentrated in EN, so in Japan, they may not know them as well, maybe besides Kson and Henya since they were already big in Japan before joining VSHOJO.
Idol culture has definitely had its impact on vtubing as a whole, but that does not mean vtubing is necessarily the same as idol culture. Certainly, the vtuber industry has some roots in idol culture, but it also has roots in other things, like NicoNico, the anime industry, Japanese internet and Japanese culture. All these roots are present in many things, to the terminology we use, to the dominating art styles of vtubers themselves, to the type of songs people sing. But again, as the industry has grown and expanded, some vtubers will go their own way and forge their own comunities. Idol culture tends to be spoken as almost synonymous with vtubing, but I don't believe it should be, especially because not even in Japan that's the case.
Let give the example of one Japanese vtubing community - the vtubers that often participate in the many JP events like VSaikyo or VCR. This is a huge section of the JP vtubing scene, which sees many male and female vtubers collabing, and also e-sports pro players and even Japanese streamers and youtubers. It is by far in my opinion the biggest connector between different spaces in JP vtubing, with vtubers of many kinds either competing against each other, or just having fun playing together in games like GTA or Rust. It's a place where a lot of networking happens, and these events are a big thing in the JP scene, with vtubers from multiple corpos and indies as well. But a lot of the big names in it won't be known to a lot of people in the EN side. If you don't really hang out in the JP space, you'll likely won't know who Shibuya Hal is, or Tachibana Hinano, or Kanae, or Akami Karubi, and many many more. Likewise, if you mainly hang out in this space, the EN Twitch side will feel different; not just because of the different languages spoken, but the relevant figures in the space, and the way activities are conducted in them, or even the inside jokes in them. They're basically two different worlds. They may be both under the umbrella "vtuber", but it's like comparing two different countries that may have similar roots, but ultimately having different spheres of influences. We're all humans living in society - we have that and much more in common - but with the definition you used in the video, we can come up with dozens upon dozens of reasons to call any arbitrary group of people a "community". Everyone on youtube? Everyone in a city? Everyone in a country? Everyone in the world?
But it's funny that I've seen so many people equate Japanese vtubing to be the most hard-line idol kind, when in reality it's very diverse too. It really comes down to what kind of audience you build. Hell, you could even be an idol vtuber and still actively collab with guys without your fans having a problem with it, so long as you've established yourself as such - even if there are some bad apples, they will just be filtered by the overall established audience. Examples to this would be vtubers like Tokoyami Towa, Laplus Darkness, Natsuiro Matsuri, Aki Rosenthal, Astel Leda, Hoshimachi Suisei, and many more. All idols, but all have pretty healthy fandoms that do not mind male to female collabs. They may have had issues due to some fans in the past, but ultimately those fans were filtered out because these vtubers established themselves as the kind that will collab with whoever they want.
It may seem like the entire community revolves around every single bit of drama that happens, but it really doesn't if you're hanging out in vtuber communities in which that is not relevant; and even if it's something big, like Nijisanji drama, I'm sure you can always find vtubers out there doing their regular content away from it - that's the advantage of a lot of corpo vtubers, as you know they'll stay away from drama that does not concern them. But I'm sure you can find many indies who also keep doing their thing in peace. If you're tired of vtuber drama, may stop watching vtuber news or drama channels. The youtube algorithm will simple give you more of what you watch, so if you stop watching it and use the function to stop youtube recommending you those channels, you'll be free from it. If you watch mainly VSPO, youtube will give you mostly VSPO and adjacent vtubers to them, like Neo-Porte, or vtubers that collab with them. If you watch ShyLily, you'll get more recommendations from her or vtubers adjacent to her. And this applies to any vtuber. Hence why I believe a lot of problems with vtubing are localized to different communities, depending on the context. Using Filian as an example again - the drama with her is entirely irrelevant to most of the vtubing industry. If you're not someone who follows the EN Twitch or Indie scene, you may hear about it from passing and then carry on with your day. If you hang out in the JP scene, you'll probably not even notice it's happening unless you try to keep tabs on the different sides of the industry or are following vtuber news or drama channels.
But like I said previously, this is a good thing. It means that it is possible to stay away from things you don't like and focus on your space.
Vtubing will continue to grow and expand, and with it, it will continously expand and evolve. I disagree with the notion that the "community" needs to be more accomodating to newcomers though. I think anyone coming in with genuine interest won't mind the different terminologies and such - it's part of the culture. Those will be things that will naturally assimilate as one hangs out and becomes more familiar with the space. Vtubing has its established cultures, so it feels weird for the cultures to change for the sake of others to come in. But then again, there will be communities inside the industry that will definitely change, or a new community will be born from the desire of establishing a new culture. It will become another diverging branch in the growing tree of vtubing. The vtuber industry will never be united, but like I said, that only means there will be plenty of options for people to choose where to fit in. If a person ever grows to dislike where they're in, they can always move somewhere they may like more - and that can be great when escaping drama. So in conclusion, just be wary of where you hang out. I'm sure anyone can find a place for themselves in the vtubing industry if they search long enough. And if they can't, that just means they have an opportunity to carve up a spot for a new branch to sprout and evolve. But I don't think we should expect the entire industry to change their ways like that - those are highly subjective aspects, as different people enjoy different things.
Alright, that's the end of my perspective. In short, I essentially can no longer see the vtuber industry as a unified community. I think it's too vast for that at this point, so a lot of issues only really cover certain parts, and to some, certain issues might not even be issues at all. Different parts of the vtuber industry will feel completely alien to others. I mean, I've seen parts of the vtubing scene with no connections to anime or Japanese culture, where people find it weird that most people use anime avatars and use so many Japanese words. I found it crazy at first, keeping in mind the origins of vtubing you'd think that would be impossible, but it has grown THAT far.
I can only agree with a lot of the points made.
There's been VTubers who've slipped on saying that their community friends told them to "milk drama for as long as they could". I won't name the streamer, but they did do a direct and considerate apology to the person they tried to build drama upon.
Hell, I've had people say that to me too. I've had marketing and industry professionals mention how, as long as drama doesn't include someone doing something genuinely illegal, it's really good for numbers and you should try to milk it.
I can't stand that kind of shit, personally, but I've watched it happen in real time, tbh. Hell, a certain bunny vtuber is rather controversial to a lot of people out there, but as far as I noticed, she only really started being controversial like that after a video came out by Devin Nash saying basically the same thing.
I think that stuff is all tiring. I hate the culture we've created where the only things we're allowed to see are just, terrible, forever. I miss people wanting to create just for a love of creation.
3:10 You are 100% right btw but I want to go off of this tweet. I want to say ever since the DokiBird situation and the fact that idol culture is becoming a huge problem feeding into so much toxicity the vtuber bubble has started to pop. A lot of people hate other vtubers including me because of the shit that goes on on Twitter. VTwitter is a toxic hellhole that has made me quit twice and somehow when I think I found someone nice and chill they on the inside have some of the most red flags I have ever seen. So this tweet is 100% right and I am diversifying away from Twitter. That platform has become such a cesspool I cannot believe it…
I agree with it too! It's all too toxic, everyone and their mother wants to comment on everything, but I think this might be social media as a whole.. TikTok comments are just as bad, if not worse. You should check out a video about TikTok Accountability Culture by Caroline Easom, posted just two days ago, it's another good commentary about this kind of bullshit as a whole.
I feel like VTubers are, in a way, where UA-cam was 10 or so years ago. It was still kind of edgy, 1 mill play buttons weren’t always common, and it wasn’t as established to have a job on the internet
100% agreed, down to the machinima style content agencies!!
While the community can certainly be hella toxic and that is not helping it, I don't think that's the main thing stopping it from expanding in other niches. I think that doing Virtual content being harder and even inconvenient is what gatekeeps the most people if anything; of course the fact this is still a relatively young industry which popularity just rose about 4 years ago outside of Japan is also contributing factor. And I agree that making more guides of how to or what is vtubing might help.
P.S Good video btw.
@@winterdust9577 I hope it does! I think vtubing can be really inconvenient and hard to work with, and I actually wanna talk about that in a video at some point too, cus it's a really interesting thing. By design, we limit a lot of things we could create by choosing to be primarily digital creators- even more so by choosing to be 2d. BUT I think it also offers a lot of creativity that other creators just can't have in the same way, and we don't utilize it's potential enough either. 🙏
Love the passion to make a change, hopefully it starts with you!
If you were listening, you pickup on the fact she has already started.
Oh no, we have our own way of using language, i guess we can't have that because it's not inclusive enough 🤷🏿♂️
As you already know, that is what culture is and there's nothing wrong with retaining it. It's open to anyone that willing to learn, understand and adapt to it. People who water it down to be more digestible and palatable to normies are the people who the gate are meant to be keeping out.
The culture we're using is one we're borrowing from Japan at the moment. If you listened well to the video, you would know that what I'm advocating for is creating our own in the English community, and pushing past boxes of other cultures to really define what we are.
@@koziitwoAlright, alright, I got a bit combative there 🫢
Good that someone is speaking up
Thank you! I drew and rigged it myself! :D
edit: I just realized how much this sounds like when someone tells a girl their dress looks cute and they go 'thanks! it has pockets! :D'
For the last couple of years I was just a viewer of vtubers. At the beginning of 2024 I started using a model to represent myself in the content I was making. I was not aware how toxic the vtube space had become over time. Things have gotten wild out here. 😨😨
I'm so glad you mentioned the Japanese songs thing... I'm trying to make original music myself and I hate how I seem to be the only one making English OG songs!! 😭😭
And YEAH I don't like Japanese enough to only want that! ;;;;;
It's been really nice to see a few people branching out to more english stuff, like the recent Idol debuts doing not only an original english song, but three english cover songs. I think people were just a bit afraid of it before.. And maybe, a lot of people still kinda are. But keep goin for it! I for one definitely love it when I find english songs by vtubers!
@@koziitwo YESS I hope more people will /// I feel so alone out here!!! ; _ ;
There's no vtuber community but communities, aside from the big agencies, we're all just smaller communities loosely tied together, that's why it's so insular. Besides there's no real defining concept of what a vtuber is aside from using Virtual Avatars, and something so broad like that can't really be something to form a community around, especially when in some communities, that very vague definition don't even apply since face cam is normal.
I accidentally deleted my first comment. sorry.
This visual novel has really good graphics!
I think this is a good message. I wouldn't really pay too much heed to the whole idol culture/male collab discussion, especially on the "basket weaving forum" and Twitter. You can't change those people because talking shit is what they live for. If it wasn't vtubing they'd be posting in console war threads or find some other low hanging fruit to stir trouble over. I think you touched upon this in the video at some point, but I do think the best way to handle this sort of negativity is to just ignore that vocal minority and create the content that you want, for the audience that wants it. Trying to pander to those who have already decided they don't like you is always a wasted effort.
I loved the video❤, I appreciate the unscripted feel of the video it makes me feel like a just chatting stream lol, it helps that your model ad voice are great too👍😃
I get what you mean, I'm newer to the scene, amd i just recently got onto Twitter to support my oshi and my brother who's also a vtuber but all i see is toxic shit😭 from the outside looking in I used to think it was a magical amazing way to become an anime character and entertain others now it's turned into this cesspool, all i see are uncensored titties( nothing wrong with them but c'mon there's a limit) exorbitant amounts of drama, repetitive content (Japanese openings amd junk) lolicon arguments ect. Honestly if i wasn't so parasocial for my oshi i would've quit the community a while ago it's getting stale, honestly i hope the community will heal bc without this i just gotta go back to anime/manga as my only other hobby💀🥲
Anyway i hope you have a good day anime woman, sorry for yapping, looking forward to more.
Like we told Shizzy, there is no insular "vtubing community", but there is some culture, 2 of them. One from anime, and the other from Twitch. This "community" you speak of can be generalized to online culture or the "online community", because the issues the vtubing space has are not exclusive to it. Sure it's good to get along with people in the space, there's nothing stopping someone else from having their own smaller community completely separate from the rest of the "community".
You just don't recognize what a community is. There are sub communities, like the ASMR vtuber community, the twitch vtuber community, the hololive community, etc.
But your city is still a community. It's a greater community than your neighborhood. It still exists, and it is still defined by generalized issues. These are generalized English vtuber issues.
@@koziitwo If that's how you see it, cool ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think enough vtubers have had enough mold issues if you know what I mean
But SIGH yeah...vtubing is just a medium of content creation. I hate that we are defined by our flunks, or what other people make out to be flunks. And now that we're growing more and more, these things BLOW UP.
Kozii 2nd Channel. I’m so ready for this commentary
My personal take about communities is: "try to appeal to everybody and you will appeal to nobody".
It's fine if vtubing remains niche. Something definitely needs to be done to sanitize it of some dumb drama (most of which coming from Twitter, daily reminder that 98% of things Twitter sees as problematic aren't a problem at all), but why the felt need to appeal to a wider audience? Let the Hololive Dodgers event be exceptional, let people come because they like the community and want to be part of it. There needs to be some self-improvement for the health of the community, do it for our sake, but I don't share the same anxiety to appeal to someone I don't share an interest with as you make your message sound like.
I know I can be easily mistaken, my reading comprehension isn't stellar and it doesn't help that this is a second language, feel free to provide any clarification if you think I got the wrong message out of this.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 the point was that people in the community are excluding those already in the community who want to be here because of idol culture and stuff like that. I have a lot of vtuber friends who have been vtubers for multiple years now, but have been avoided, excluded, shittalked, etc, because they don't fit in with the typical definition of vtubing, and they're trying something else. The whole video was literally just to say, let people be what they want to be, so we can all grow together.
@@koziitwo alright, I can get behind that, basically "let people do what they want, the only glue between us is the use of virtual avatars in the end" instead of what I previously understood which was "let's be more appealing to new people so we can be big and prevalent".
When people talk about gatekeeping, I often get alert. Too many times my hobbies and communities have been ruined because the people "keeping the gates" have been ostracized by outsiders with no actual interest, because they weren't interested they changed the hobby into something unrecogniseable and then everybody left because all that was fun got stripped away. This is why the term "tourist" is used (correctly at least), not to emarginate people who want to spin-off and do their own thing, but to call out "why don't you do it like in my own country?" behaviour.
With that said, getekeeping can easily be very toxic as well and weigh down a community in the ways you point out. When your place of comfort isn't harmed in any way, you shouldn't go out and essentially become the tourist in another sub-community how they should do their own thing.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 yee! We need to be open to people who aren't our norm being in our space, because they do want to participate, they just don't want to do everything the exact same as everyone else, which is fine 👌
There are A LOT of guides on how to get into vtuber with free or cheap models, the issue is that people don't do any research.
"Become a vtuber for free" returns at least 5 video tutorials that have all been available for a long time.
"Get a free vtuber model" returns a playlist with models, and some of those same video tutorials.
I've seen them, none of them actually have the information that I plan to provide!
out of all the vtubers i watch the only ones catering to idol culture are in a corpo. every indie were worried they might lose subs if they, for example, say they have a bf. but as nyanners and layna lazar for example showed is thats not the case. people were either happy for them or simply just didnt care.
in general the vtubing community is quite similar to the cosplay community. a lot of clout chasing and backstabing, shittalking behind someones back, stuff like that. oh or as you mentioned, the *going for someones sponsorship* thats scum behaviour. good example are the BVAs. the aftermath of that event is just crazy...
on the guide topic: pippa just had a stream for a few hours, talking about how to start as a vtuber as cheap as possible. it was quite interesting.
I think sometimes it's just fear that drives people, and people seeing commentary from viewers about how if their oshi had a boyfriend they'd drop them, and stuff like that. But the worst part of it like you mentioned is the shittalking, the backstabbing, etc. People just love to be so judgemental in this scene, for some reason.. 😂
@@koziitwo its a good video tho.not too negative but theres definitely some topics that need a discussion. sadly people are already going into defense mode (scrolled through the comments 😀)
hope to see more of your content
I personally agree with everything you said.
One thing I'd like to mention is, at least in my opinion, the people that try to enter vtubing but don't do exactly what the others do and don't try to fit into idol culture, are not tourists. They're just trying to do their own thing and have fun.
However, the people that try to enter the community, just to insult fans, or the vtubers themselves, or just make really stupid hostile comments, those are the tourists.
TRUE! 👏
A thing you mentioned is how growth is good for the community and stuff, and that we need to branch out? But i sadly don't think thats what keeping us from growing at this point, i think the Vtuber sub genre is kinda hitting a wall of saturation, thats why we don't see a a lot of vtubers averaging high viewership, the ones that are big remain so and a lot of newer Vtubers or Vtubers with more nieche channels are gonna struggle alot. Not that it wouldn't be nice to see, i just don't think its all that feasible. I don't think its because "tourists" dont udnerstand whats going on or have trouble finding a home in the community its because, well they're just not that interested.
As for toxicity, as a viewer my knowledge is limited, but most of the ones i watch has been involved in basicly almost no drama. So that's good, lets hope that stays!! 😅
I think it's the same issue, more or less. VTubers feel like they must act like hololive and do similar content to large agencies to be viable as vtubers- realistically, we're seeing a lot of growth in things like this, vtubers creating commentary videos, doing larger scale events, or branching out into non-traditional 'vtuber' content. (Or maybe just 'old' vtuber content, if you go back to Kizuna Ai's video making era)
I think the fear of being seen as 'not a real vtuber' extends into content, so people don't branch out more, and they don't create new things... And unfortunately, that ends up boring for viewers. We've seen this plenty of times with old youtubers who did the same content for 4-7 years, and started to stagnate heavily. So I think as fears about needing to fit inside of a mold ease up, people will get a little more creative with it again!
Also, glad to know most people you know aren't involved in any of that stuff! There's a lot goin on all the time.. 😅
The sad thing is as much as accurate as what you're saying. A lot of people in this sphere will either downplay the problems with "Every other community has these issues" Or will just try to discredit people stating flaws. This is a good video. Honestly as harsh as this sounds, I think the community should just fall on their face and learn that way.
honestly, not a bad sentiment. Sometimes falling is what it takes to grow.
Just found you, and your model is so beautiful
Really great take!
When you're a part of the entertainment industry, your success depends on you reaching the biggest demographic as possible. Weather that be parasocial men, whatever girls are into, Europe, America, Japan, etc...
These rules don't apply to just VTubing. This goes for music artists, T.V shows, entertainment as a whole.
Idol culture is stressed because typically those who are family friendly have their names carved in the "hall of fame" so to speak. I say typically because that's not always the case. Once that goes dull, someone who goes down a different path will rock the industry. It's how humans are, we are looking for the next best thing. Especially Americans but that's a whole rabbit hole in itself.
Hololive did a brilliant move by featuring the MLB (Demographics) Because baseball is also well known in Japan.
Anyway, the entertainment industry has always been a cesspool. Harvey Weinstine (A Hollywood movie director) forced any aspiring female actresses have sex with him. To even have a chance at being featured in his movie. At least with vtubing it's all in your hands. Unless you sign with an agency.
I'm pretty much just a tourist, I just watch clips sometimes, but one thing I do know is that if you try to make something for everyone you end up making it for no one.
Gatekeeping is good if it keeps out people that want to get inside only so that they can change the thing you like and remove the parts that made you like it in the first place, because they actually hate the thing you like.
The point with that is that we're gatekeeping the people already here, because they're not acting the way a stereotypical vtuber 'should'. That's toxic, we should stop that.
@@koziitwo What behaviors are specifically being gatekept? And what methods are people using to do that? Just being dickheads on twitter?
@@plasmabat718 At conventions, on twitter, with discord servers, shittalking to sponsors, strings of hate messages on streams, emails, dms, etc. I have friends who get shit on plenty for not being stereotypical vtubers. I have other friends that don't get openly hated on, but are shunned from the community in terms of collabs, events, etc, even though they have 100k+ subs, just because they don't like idol culture and want to be themselves. This isn't a small thing, it's a consistent across the community, and it sucks.
@@koziitwo Sorry, like I said I'm kind of a tourist, what is a "stereotypical vtuber"? What exactly is idol culture? What are these people being attacked for doing or saying?
I'm gonna have to make a whole video about idol culture itself to answer that one I'm afraid 😂
As someone who really only watches you and I guess pasta, I have no clue what some of stuff you reference. I mean I expect that when going into new community. But yeah the whole Vtube-sphere as a hole as a simi-outsider, it seems like it’s a place where you can’t be as much of yourself as a facecam person can be or just nothing. Like I hear a story from one of my friends who is more into vtubing that a girl got in hot shit for having a husband like wtf is that. ofc people obscure or put on an act for their content but for it to be that much of an issue… wtf, idk vtube weird
VTubing is very weird! Since I've always been in more normal content spheres, coming into vtubing was a very strange experience. I knew about idol culture already, since I was into idol anime, but, to have it applied to me without really wanting to do that, just because I was a VTuber, felt so strange. Pasta HATES it, she's always been pretty vocal against idol culture and anything surrounding the more gate-keepy parts of the community, but because of that, she's always also felt really excluded by the people IN the community, and like she doesn't belong, even though she's fully dedicated to and loves vtubing itself.
It sucks! I want everyone to feel welcome in this community, I want them to be able to do what they love, and I want them to help to expand what it means to be a vtuber, and what cool stuff we can do.
Your model is cute and has some very good mouth tracking!
I noticed this is your second channel. Is there a reason behind making a second YT channel?
My main channel is so heavily locked into stream content that it does not push videos at all, and I also hated getting people asking me for live2d guides on the channel i primarily play games on 😅
Yeah, I kinda only have my toes dipped into the VTuber community (primarily only watch Ironmouse), and can corroborate that the general public doesn’t have a good impression of VTubing. Basically, when you combine “there are a lot of minors involved in this” and “there are a lot of scantily clad VTubers doing NSFW content,” well…people jump to a certain conclusion. I work with teens and so many parents fully ban them from watching VTubers outright, even ones that keep their appearance and content clean and family friendly. And this is on top of the general public’s negative perception of anime, which many VTubers use as the style for their models. VTubing has high potential as a means to maintain a user’s privacy while having a lot of opportunity for self-expression still. But I don’t think VTubing is going to be able to shake this stigma against it fully, the same way anime can’t. And, frankly, parents’ concerns aren’t completely unfounded.
@@whatzittooyah9182 I do think that anime itself has gotten a little more recognized and a little less stigmatized in western cultures over time, buuut with the toxicity of the community itself, it basically sends us back 15 years in that progress to when people in my old school days used to make fun of anime as weird corn shiz (thanks Faye Valentine, tho she was a queen 😩)
@@koziitwoYeah, public perception of anime has improved especially due to the popularity of Dragon Ball in the West and also due to the pandemic introducing more “normies” stuck at home to it. However there are still a lot of people that think that all anime is pornographic or that all anime sexualizes children, and it’s easy to see how people can come to that conclusion, because a lot of anime like that exists, even though those are niche and are often condemned. 😵💫
@@whatzittooyah9182 Yeee, it'll always be a struggle. That's why I think the best we can do for that is just try to create more cool content and try not to let our drama get pushed as much as our wins, like the dodgers stuff. 🙏
Kozii going off stronk
3:41 We laugh at the people who care about what's said on twitter because it's such a tiny minority of any community that it basically doesn't affect the rest of the community.
Not wrong!
until someone begins a hate campaign or try to dox a vtuber. The problem with twitter is that while most people let it be most of the time, there's always the risk that it'll boil over into a vtuber's normal content and at that point it's already gone to far.
So while I agree that most people don't care about twitter, and that the ones who do shoudln't, it's still good to keep an eye on, so harassment and doxing can be shut down before it gets too big
It's so hard. Many people have different opinions about Vtuber, and of course, like any human being, opinions, and thoughts conflict, and there will always be an argument and sometimes even the worst-case scenario. Of course, that is probably normal for social interaction, but I think a lot of us need to be more humble and open-minded. Not everyone will agree on this, but at least try and don't expect that it will always return with kindness. Sorry for some tangent thought.
Amen to all of this 🙏🏻
Toxicity feels like its part of many EN Vtubers content style though, I don't find cynicism, sarcasm and comparisons to others that entertaining.
I am learning Japanese to go and live their so I mainly focus on those Vtubers, the vibe tends to be more positive, self affirming (they push forward with their talent) and happy with the smaller community within their space (even if only 1-5k subs) vs being concerned with how the collective is doing. I do think that many of the vtuber associations you mentioned though are common language over there like oshi and need not to be defined.
Seems like EN is going through a growth phase of being handed a medium that got popularised by Japanese corporations and its trying to create its own identity with it so that they don't feel uncomfortable within it.
@@ramdan8512 more or less, yeah. A lot of people in the English community DON'T know those terms, and I've actually already made the video talking about em! Also, yeah.. unfortunately English media is all controversy forever, so a lot of English vtubers are following suit with that. 😔
@@koziitwo Thanks for the reply!
One thing that came to mind is the challenge of separating role play from avatar. I feel those two are synonymous in general public which may increase the confusion as its an association on initial impression visually.
Shifting that would go a long way to gaining wider appeal I think so normal content is expected from an avatar by a viewer.
I want to become AB tuber. Because I hate the way I look and I would never put my face face out there. Because I know I'll be made fun of.
Its frustrating, because expanding BEYOND the idol model is something i have seen you advocating for and i know ive advocated for, for like YEARS. When i started this thing, i was so optimistic, and seeing vtubers expand into other niches felt inevitable, but it just hasnt happened. It sucks that potential fans get turned off when they see my little digital puppet because of what our community is known for. Ive started using a model less frequently or sometimes not at all to distance myself, and that bums me out. I wont put a model on screen until after the hook, and peeps will comment 'vtuber jumpscare' (which is funny tbh, but its also a little sad its come to this!!) anyway, im preaching to the choir, well said
It is, but to be fair, I don't think I DID much to try to help people expand. Now, at least, I think I'll try to help people understand how things work and how to get into it a little more myself, and I'll start pushing more at that level, and see what happens. 🤔
@@koziitwo i'm so excited for your under the bleachers arc
I like your ears. Cool things 👍
I find it interesting you bring up what it means to be a VTuber, particularly when it comes to following idol culture. I've heard this from people who don't even follow this to a tee, or freak out and make call outs shittalking behind people's backs (no joke, this happened to my friend). It's some weird elitism that isn't even consistent. Screw the idol mentality. What happened to even being a content creator? I love all types of VTubers---even the idol ones. But yeah, this hard stance on giving some arbitrary definition of VTubing is ridiculous.
I also hate the amount of bigoted people there are in some of these spaces, but like a lot of things I wish vtubers would just focus on the whole vtubing content, and not make it their whole online presence a passion for targetting these types of people and giving them way too much attention. We've gotten to the point where we're harming ACTUAL kindhearted people cause we think we're standing agianst something that is not harming anyone; becoming blinded by anger and a need to look good or save face on social media.
I wish we had more people that are actually sensible and reasonable about these type of things. I think you'd be a good example for VTubing. I hope this video gets some sort of good reception.
Honestly, while I might “want” to disagree with you, I just can’t, you told not a word of a lie. I couldn’t tell you why each and every VTuber got into it. But man, some of this fanbase is absolutely nuts. People get ripped apart for no reason, though I will stare annoyingly at Twitter, X, or whatever. In any case, you keep doing you, and educating the base.
@@moose6667 I love vtubers and vtubing in general, it's just such a toxic space right now. But, hopefully it'll get better!
If anyone can help clean it up, it’s someone like you, who knows the in’s and outs, who’s been there at every level, artist, rigger, talent, etc. if anyone understands, it’s you. So I trust your opinions. Anyway, I’ll let you be, but I adore this video
the problem is when you dont gatekeep, after they get in they shame those were already there and have been doing their own niche content, be it loli, ASMR, GFE etc. that is the reason why people gatekeep.
coexistence would be preferable but the newcomers have no intention of doing that, they wish to come in takeover and enforce their views on what was already there changing it and becoming the new gatekeepers. it is a zero sum game between audiences since all content creators are captured by their audience since it is their source of income directly through superchats/ donations/ subs or indirectly through CCV/ engagement they sell to sponsors.
it might be different from artists who have a separate income source who do vtubing as a hobby/ side gig but that is just the nature of the beast.
Some people that have been around the entire time don't like those things either, though. It's fine for people to not enjoy things, and for people to even SAY they don't enjoy things. If it turns into harassment, that's where people need to chill, but realistically the vast majority of people that don't enjoy those things aren't going around causing a big ruckus about it, that's a vocal minority.
Just let people enjoy what they enjoy, and dislike what they dislike. It's not really that hard to do.
@@koziitwo majority/ minority doesnt matter since the minority is a large enough of a number to cause a problem. its fine that they dont enjoy something, but they are actively attacking and shoving them out.
for examples theres bungotaiga and hunneychu who have been facing attacks for a while time, personally i find their content displeasing but the issue is newcomers finding them so offensive they try to deplatform them rather than merely voicing their displeasure.
if these newcomers are allowed to take root or tourists who only stay for a bit but influence the space it will get worse and more difficult since they will also become the new gatekeepers.
pretty sure the only change that needs to happen is each audience/ content creator splitting off and fragmenting into smaller niches without interacting with another audience that is incompatible.
even shut-ins like me can appreciate the lack of schizos when I rarely go outside
I've only met a handful of VTubers (you being one of them) and what I'll say is you're genuinely some of the funniest, nicest people I know. It sucks whenever the bad side of a community reflects poorly on the rest.
Learning the lingo is definitely odd for EN users having to learn JP language and vtubers inhabit certain spaces of content creation because the viewers who would watch vtubers are more concentrated in that content.
It sounds like vtubers don't understand the function of outside art. By having artists who are not aware of the movement they are making art similar to, they are able to give a lense for people inside that movement to reevaluate itself with. Something that speaks from an independant soul unchained by expectations.
Sadly, artistic movements and communities are historically hostile to such purity. Humans generally want to have everyone play by the same set of rules, but not have those rules apply to themselves whem its inconvenient. Here this is manifested in people championing a rulebook very few people within the space have actual, personal history with. Often they forget how many JP talents got popular *because* they threw out the rulebook and embraced the rebellious nature of anime culture. It speaks volumes that people hold up Hololive as the gold standard while its best known members are also the most recognizeable figures in the dark, unhinged, "problematic" side of the industry.
And as an outsider looking in, I can only imagine what these people do to combat the inherent cognatice dissonance one must have when faced with an culture based around defined rules of engagement being chained to an industry being supported off the back of unapologetic rule breakers.
I can't even begin to understand it myself, honestly, because you're right- hell, the entire English sphere could be seen as having sparked from vtubers that don't do any of the 'traditional' accepted things. Coco being one of the main ones, but hell, also Kizuna AI, not really being a streamer at all, but a virtual content creator. It's so strange that we stick to the same customs now, when we've seen that breaking out of the mold does fantastic things for all of us.
@@koziitwo And thats before even considering that, from what I can tell, the EN VTuber scene blew up because of a porn star of all people. Thanks Projekt Melody for being the literal opposite of an idol girl.
OMG IM SO MAD.... idk who you are but i like the video title cuz its true lmao
humans have always had a terrible time with change at any point in history. quarrels, wars and colonization/ conversion have always happened and its sad to see this concept also apply to the (VIRTUAL UA-camR) space. since hololive the meaning has basically become "Virtual idol" and just like any extremist religious/cultist group they want to convert you into (ONE OF US -aliens from toy story). (i am a fan of hololive*) but its totally out of control.
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(I DONT WANNA READ PPL*)
its hard to enjoy vtubing content when the dumpster and the floor itself is on fire lmao.
UA-cam recomended me this for some reason so i'll try to bring some light over some of the points:(bible incoming)
1. - i don't think gatekeeping the comunity is bad, tourist are trying to change anime culture and for extention, vtubing.
2. - as you said, the ruling model of vtuber is the idol tipe, thats because comes from japan and most of the fans are weebs, maybe don't agree with all of the idol culture but they tolerate it
3. - unicorns are crazy but spend A LOOOT of money
4. - there is almost non advertisement of small vtubers outside twitter and a lot of us don't even use it, almost always know about indies from false.
5. - there is a general sensation of hostility always because of tribalism, but then some bullsh*t happens that enforses such tribalism (the sinking yatch for exemple).
I think there is a lot to do but having the comunity sub-fragmentated is the bigger issue, first the have to unite and try to work togeter, unlikely at least, so until that changes i don see the rest can be fixed.
@@ppjose435 English Vtubing is not Japanese Vtubing. It's failing outside of Japan. The culture doesn't work in places like America. I'm not speaking on other languages and cultures, only the English space, which needs to diversify and create its OWN identity. The more it tries to copy Japan, the more it alienates people who are actually a part of the cultures it's trying to target, and the less people care about vtubing.
It's like idols. I love idols, I've known about and been a part of idol culture for 15+ years. Idols fail when they hit an American market, because American culture rejects idol values. Popstars succeed, because they work within the constraints of the culture they're trying to market themselves to.
I agree that the community needs to come together, but PART of the community coming together is not gatekeeping it, and understanding that we have to teach people about vtubing and be okay with them working outside the box with it once they get their hands on it. Because, part of the subculture split IS that there are vtubers who know everything, hate it, refuse to engage with it, but continue to vtube and love THAT. And that is an okay thing. It's okay for people to pick and choose what they like and dislike out of something. We cannot police what people like. We can only try to grow together and find common ground in other ways, instead of just trying to push them out.
@@koziitwo i will have to disagree with some of your point's here. some of the Vtubing culture is failing in the American market do to the idol part. but as you said popstars win and the same happens in Vtubing. there are already multiple other both companies and vtubers that does great and have different ways to go so they succeed.
the "Vtubing community" will never come together. it is to large for that how ever small it is. it is to diverse for it. we can agree on many things but the problem I see is people is trying to make it into the "Vtubing community" when it is a huge amalgemation of many different communities. it is like herding cats.
i think the trouble is more to find where you will fit in or find the right audience, and be accepted there.
Fellow light mode user 🙌🏾
LET'S GOOOOO 🙌
The fandom are just a bunch of simping fanatics, unless every word you say is praise they'll start weeping and throwing tantrums. An enviroment where you silence and dismiss every dissenting thought is just inherently unhealthy.
I don't think it's as bad as that, but I think there's a lot of people that *are* that bad, and the people who aren't.. just aren't doing enough about it. We're not trying to be open and welcoming, we just sit there and complain about it.
I hope to at least try to help people a little bit more.
@@koziitwo There are certainly enough of the bad ones to consistently get the same results, and at that point one might as well speak generally. I just consider myself a viewer of content, I would never call myself a fan because of the associated stigma that stems from behaviour like that.
I don't think this issue can be fixed. There's a metric ton of problems and all of them too multi-layered to discuss in a comment section. I understand your concerns and your drive to try and fix this, but I doubt you can get anywhere.
The best you can do is set an example by providing good content and steering clear of drama. Use common sense, Vtubers are just entertainers just like streamers; if a streamer counts as a stage performer, a vtuber is kind of like a clown (because of the virtual avatar get-up). Entertain well, earn your pay, turn the stream off, forget about the semantics. Life's good that way.
That's my 2.5 cents
You'd be very surprised the amount of bullshit vtuber politics exist behind the scenes, it's very dumb. This video isn't targeting the viewers nearly as much as it is the vtubers that exclude other vtubers for stupid reasons. Change starts from within. And vtubers I know really enjoyed hearing this!
Vtubers replaced movie stars that actually interact without the security and create odd parasocial stalkers and unique circles/environments. creator sphere/own fan interactions
I believe this is what they call ladder kicked but i only ever watched you so im non the wise
I really liked this video, Kozii. You addressed a lot of information in a and then drew a point I can agree with strongly.
the only point I would make to this is;
whilst the western side should have their sphere, the issue is they take from japan to start with.
the designs are Japanese (anime), so the subconscious implication is they will follow the Japanese standards, so it's more jarring when they don't. I personally believe more ground could be made if instead of using Japanese (anime) designs western vtubers or vtubers who didn't want to follow the japanese idol standard, used western cartoon designs (pumpkin potion for example), this would take away the subconscious bias of the viewer and allow for more freedom. I can't say much for behind the scenes issues but that's a streamer to streamer issue not a viewer one lmao.
I don't disagree, but even american cartoons followed along in japanese anime's footsteps and made things like avatar, which was incredible. I don't think we neeeed to use more western designs to become something more, I think we can make it work, and it would actually help to showcase to americans that japanese animation is more mature and interesting than they thought too!
But, yeah, most of this is just about streamer to streamer issues, tbh, less so on the viewer side, except for forcing vtubers into specific boxes of content.
@@koziitwo I don't disagree that western animation has used anime as an inspiration, which is a good thing for sure, however the designs still have a western tinge to them, teen titans for example.
I don't think the issue is western viewers think anime is for kids, i find more of them conflate it to hentai, which i would say isn't ideal but they are the people who know little about the medium.
I do agree there isn't a need to go with a more western design, and it could work with the anime ones however like i said the subconscious bias will make it a lot harder as it will affect the streamers as well, as people tend to put themselves into a box, by changing the model style you change what you and others think your "box" is/should be and can more easily innovate.
people will judge each other in 3 seconds of meeting and that is mostly on looks and body language, as you can't show body language unless you have a full 3D model rigged you would need to do it though the model itself, this resets the thoughts of "oh its a anime vtuber " to "oh this a new style of vtuber", This doesn't mean it can't be done without doing this or you have to do it, it's just how we see patterns in things as humans and it's harder to break a pattern then to start a new one.
still waiting for vtuber models that are like poorly drawn in ms paint, vtuber models that are low-poly like they're in ps1 or ps2, vtuber models that are on a different artstyle besides anime, etc.
@@ArjunTheRageGuy about 13 sec into my showcase of all models i've ever rigged, you can get a glimpse of the literal paint doodle that my friend captain cube made for FangGuu, that i cut and rigged for him for her birthday.
ua-cam.com/video/jRdkwYSehaQ/v-deo.html
There's a ton of low-poly models too, if you want some really creative vtubers, check out shindig's twitter! he posts a ton of them! x.com/shindags
also, this post has an image of the pixel model I recently got from BlubbrMuffins!
x.com/koziichu/status/1802784416059863148/photo/1
and check out @PowerGuygg sometime, he recently got an updated pixel model himself~
@@koziitwo ok thanks
ANOTHER GREAT VIDEO
I appreciate that you made this video to discuss your opinions on the community from the inside. As a guy who doesn't use twitter and mostly follows vtubers through watching clips and youtube videos, I think that you're too worried about changing the outside perception. I don't think vtubers will die out specifically from idol culture, because traditional idols are still popular as far as I know.
That being said, I think you've identified a big difference between traditional idols from the east and en vtubers. The cultural differences in taste result in a 2 audiences that overlap on vtuber models but might not with idol culture. Innovative creators like Filian and OniGiri are serving the new sections of the audience. What I'm getting at here is that you don't really need to lose the idol culture to grow vtubing. You and other creators should find your niche and do new things. Don't even worry about people who expect idol culture or normies that don't know anything about anime. Feel free to lose all the known conventions of oshimarks and model reveals. Take the parts you like and make something you want to make instead of feeling limited by other people's reactions
I think overall I agree with you, and I would like to add that 'constructive action' (instead of 'constructive criticism') is that path that could actually lead to change. I appreciate discussion as a good first step but only that
So what I really want to change isn't a twitter perspective, but the fact that people like my friend PastaroniRavioli can't fit into this sphere as it is. People don't really see her as a vtuber, even though she has been for multiple years now, and rarely does any facecam content anymore - because of the perception of what a VTuber is and should be.
It feels bad to be an outcast like that for so long. Even when we went to Offkai Expo together this year, I had a lot of meetings, and opportunities provided to me, for being closer to a 'traditional vtuber'... But Pasta wasn't really in the same position, even though when she goes to things like Twitchcon, she's very highly regarded.
I want the traditional type of people to look outside the box, and accept that there are other ways to do this, and that the medium is vast. I want us to welcome those kind of people in, and help them out more, instead of leaving them to flounder by themselves. That's most of what I want!
TL;DR I strongly believe Kozii is wrong, vtubing is an industry not a community.
First lets go over the definitions
1.a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
-We don't physically live on the internet and the characteristic it's talking about is of the person (i.e. being black/white/asian/hispanic or a spoken language)
2. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.
-well we know that isn't it 'cause not many in this side of the internet have common goal (hobby, money, pushing their content career) or interests
The one (1) characteristic for a community has to be the main thing everyone shares. In content creation it's content creators and content consumers, which means vtubing can not be a community. Even if we were to just say vtubers are the community, I would disagree because "we all have an anime model" isn't a characteristic of a person but of the channel's content. Content creators can have their personal community because their community is filled of people who consume their content and are interested in them.
I 've seen people say "other hobbies are a community so vtubing is" but some make a living off of only content so that argument falls apart.
Anime community only includes people watching anime while the production side is an industry, furry community is made up of furries, and your local community is a community because you all physically live in that area.
Content creation is closer in structure to the music or anime industry as it's a form of entertainment for others to enjoy than a community. I've heard others say 'Vtuber Industry' which is probably more correct then me saying 'sphere' or that chatter saying 'scene'.
The companies coined the term "Twitch Community" and "UA-cam Community" to make it sound like they care and we are just one big happy family.
If you've made it this far into the comment, I would not have cared to write anything let alone this much about her using the term community if she didn't lecture the audience.
people are really anal over the title but don't actually speak on the content of the video, very interesting to me.
the point wasn't to say it was a community, the point was to say that WHATEVER we are, collectively we are seen in a bad light, and we need to stop bad actors from pushing out people who are genuinely passionate about the space and want to try new things.
though, a quick edit just to add this;
I typically say scene, space, or industry when speaking on different parts of the community. This video is a collective talk about EVERYONE, including the hobbyists and viewers, not only the people who do it as a main form of income. When speaking on that, you can use scene or space, but I just decided to use community because it means the same thing as those two, and doesn't sound as cold and robotic.
@@koziitwo It was within the first 2 min of the video, not the title. Like I said (maybe I edited it in after you read) I wouldn't of cared if you didn't turn around and bring up the definition to say definitively it is a community.
I am slowly making my way through the vid but I'll be honest, my comment took a bit to write, then rewrite, then edit about 6 times because I didn't like it and probably took longer than the vid for me to accept how it is. I'll reply to myself as I go through the vid.
I'm sure you know at this point, Ringo is in talks with Filian and Good Smile Co. and they say it's going smoothly.
I can agree that up until the Dodger x Hololive collab (which seems to have happened only because Pekora is the oshi of Ohtani their top pitcher), it's been bad pr going out to the mainstream but I would chalk that up to negative news sells and people like Rev have a reach farther into the anime community. Even then, I don't think much really got outside of the sphere unless the people were terminally online but the Selen termination reached almost everyone in the content creation industry.
I've never heard people saying 'if you don't conform to idol culture you're not a vtuber' but I know some people can be crazy and say some dumb stuff so I'll believe it. Just weird how the top indies wouldn't be considered a vtuber by that mindset, hell Niji who used to be the biggest corpo would not be considered a vtubing company.
You tourist, Madge. If it wasn't obvious enough, this is a joke.
I totally agree with more EN songs/covers, I believe the issue is the ease to ask and pay for JP songs while with EN songs the ones people care about would ask for thousands for a license and is a pain to ask for perms. Hololive also seems to be the leader in general and a lot just follow what they do, including stream content. ERB seems to be doing a lot of EN karaoke but I'm not sure if she'll be doing EN songs or covers. Now thinking, I swear someone like Watame had the first full EN song in Hololive.
To push out of this bubble is very hard because going mainstream means you're now in the space of face cam streamers who have loud fans that hate anything anime. With this and the bad PR making it worse, I think the only way vtubing will push into mainstream is changing perception enough for people to check out vtubers and fall down a rabbit hole, which happened with the Dodgers x Hololive collab (some Dodgers fans checked out the girl's content). I think at this point in time, Cover Corp. is the best shot of this industry growing outside of the niche bubble.
Is it possible to push into mainstream without Cover opening it up? Yes, but you have to be constantly improving your content and most importantly, be lucky that you blow up, even then Shylily and Ironmouse probably don't feel like they have broken into the mainstream yet.
I think for new people wanting to be a vtuber, it's not even just the corpo vtubers making it seem like you need to go corpo but everyone pushing the fancy looking models that cost 10k+ and the artists/riggers that are affordable are harder to find.
If some posts are made to where others that don't know won't get it is fine but I can see there being an issue if you're trying to grow and potential viewers would be turned away if that's most if not every post.
I'd be interested if you made content about different aspects of the industry like idol culture (probably would include oshi marks in that vid) and explaining the channels who aren't vtubers but are react andy channels for vtuber content (Koe, Nagzz, Evanit0, and that one channel that starts with a 'V' which slips my mind), that way if someone who doesn't know vtubers could see that vid go check out those guys out and see if they find a vtuber they might enjoy.
The whole Nijisanji thing in the VTuber community is nuts! It was somewhat similar to the Miniladd Drama. both Riku and Craig kind of had some similarities of lying to the public, manipulation, and even said they’re doing well when they’re views and subscriptions were plummeting to the bottom. You also had some die hard fan base supporting them as well as harassing those who don’t support them. For Nijisanji they had the “Niji Defence Force” and Miniladd had “The Brain Dead Miniladd Fans.”
The contrast was that Riku Tazumi was the CEO of Nijisanji and should have act more professionally and apologized to the public of what really happened, but it’s too late now. And Craig Thompson AKA Miniladd was just a regular UA-camr who used to be part of the Vanoss Crew. But went his own separate way and also talked bad about them, which he shouldn’t. He also did some really bad stuff on Snapchat, which well let’s just say he became Pablo IRL.
Interesting to hear about this from somebody who was watching it all happen, since I only really happened into the crew's general circle when pasta invited me into the Minecraft server!
lol I kind of grew up watching the Vanoss Crew, well actually more like the Crew Craft, The Hidden Masters, and Squeaker Squad, but that was back in 2010. 2011 or 2012 is when the Vanoss Crew came in. And they’ve gotten big. I don’t know if Pasta is part of the crew, I think she’s her own thing, she’s friends with Nogla who is part of the Vanoss Crew and she’s friends with KYR Sp33dy and Deluxe4 who are part of the Crew Craft, and sometimes she plays with McNasty who he’s part of the Goons. But other than that, they’re all friends with each other. I think she has her own crew of gamers. I have heard that she was part of a VTuber group called Kawa Entertainment, but I haven’t seen her play with other VTubers which is kind of strange.
I was a part of that vtuber group, actually! Part of the reason I even made this video was because of her- a lot of people in this community exclude people like her, because she used to be a facecam streamer, and because she hates idol culture. Which kinda explains why she doesn't end up talking to many other vtubers.. a lot of the ones she does talk to are also kinda on the outskirts of things.
Honestly, groups like the one with Speedy and D4 have been SO much more open to new people, I've found. They're so kind and friendly, even though I just got tossed into their servers suddenly.. it was like whiplash after years of being in the kinda cold, clout-chasey vtuber community.
What's the main channel?
It's @Koziichu !
People don't want to be open about this, probably to avoid any potential harassment from whichever side, but since i don't give a shit: so much of this stems from Japanese vtubers appealing most strongly to 4chan among all of the major English-speaking spaces online. Even before Hololive, when /vt/ didn't exist yet, /jp/ was pretty much the only active vtuber board in EN.
So, so much of the attitude around gatekeeping and fear of ~normies~ is the same kind of stuff we've seen in Gamergate (and its modern offspring such as the Sweet Baby Inc. scare), Comicsgate, etc. There's a perception that the degenerate woke west is ruining all of their beloved hobbies, and they see vtubers as one of their few remaining safe havens.
This also explains the large incel presence in the scene, which fuels the whole unicorn mentality. Think about how the single biggest culture war within the Hololive fandom atm is male collabs and the existence of male vtubers in general.
Honestly, i'm not sure it's possible to keep a lot of the vtuber aesthetics established by companies (extravagant debuts, forcing higher-pitched voices, maybe even the whole anime style in general) and reclaim the culture from this audience. It all comes from the wider anime subculture and was established ages before vtubers became a thing, after all. Maybe, as some other commenters suggested, we need some folks who can use non-Japanese styles in this medium and strike a chord somewhere.
UwU i want to be a vtuber one day
do your best!
Idol culture is creepy and sorta negative, too.
Great vid. Is something i unconciously noticed but couldn't really out into words and you make a fine point. There's only a handful of facecam streamers that know of vtubers only because they either stumbled upon their videos, their community pointed it out or they were already in the know. And when you look at vtubers who they consider friends, there's mostly other vtubers with maybe one facecam streamer in the list. Best example i can give be @nagzz21 and @koefficient who are pretty deep into it by this point and have made some pretty good friends in the vtubing community. But that be it
As for vtubing itself, it's not just english. Other countries have their own vtubers but they opt for english cause it's the most... I guess commonly learned language besides their native one? Hopefully, they will be able to become mainstream in their own countries and not just for english or spanish or japanese or what have you. Just be... Vtuber
I'm not sure if i'm getting my point across in that last paragraph, but i guess i'm trying to say that i agree, vtubers have to break out of the mold and make themselves more mainstream before they become... I think niche is the word? English not my native language here
In any case, i agree with your thoughts, maybe expand on them even and hope the industry and communities manage to make the changes required to make it in the long run
I do think the Indonesian vtuber community has gotten more of its own identity in recent years!! But yeah, there's a ton of other places and other languages that still need to find themselves and what kind of culture they want to have. Thanks for the comment, I love to hear more thoughts!!
@@koziitwo just trying to be as real and politely honest as possible. Criticism is all good long as it is constructive which is what i try to do
And speaking of thoughts, have you perhaps watched zyla_gal's video on why she quit the communities? I think there might be something there you could like, expand on or give your own thoughts on
@@spadaken Ooh, no, I'll check it out, thanks for the recommendation!! 🙏
Vtubing needs to go back to vtubing 🙏
yall are starting to figure this out now?
nah, i just wasn't making commentary videos til this last week, or i would've done this 2 years ago 😂
@@koziitwo make that 4
As an individual who started as a vtuber in 2021 but had to take a hiatus and is coming back to the community I kind of wonder what is worse The Vtubing community or The Cosplay Community especially with the Whole Gatekeeping aspect cause I had to deal with that in the cosplay community with certain characters being only meant for people of certain body types its where the whole fat shaming and blackfacing really made its MARK and not in a good way as a former cosplayer I left because of those reasons and that everyone thought they were better than everyone so it had elitists as well and people with superiority complex.
anyway this is just my opinion I think vtubing should be an open book concept and a perspective kind of experience I personally don't think there is a right or wrong way to go about vtubing or being a vtuber as along as they aren't a shitty person, that being said there is no guide but there shouldn't have to be a guide for common courtesy or the use of common sense and RESPECT cause at the end of the day we are all content creators no matter how big of ones following, or sub count and we all start somewhere.
anyway I apologize for the rant/tangent
I was a cosplayer too, and I think both felt like a very similar space. Funny thing, a lot of cosplayers that were outed as being terrible people have been found to have crawled into vtubing at some point.. so it's actually just the same toxicity sometimes, moved from one community to another 😭
Sounds like you're just complaining about gatekeeping. Edit: oh you are, oh well it's important to keep up standards
Pretty much! And the problem is that people are gatekeeping passionate people that want to be involved in the community by implying they must follow Japanese customs. We need to create our own identity in the English community, not just follow what came before, so we need to allow experimentation.
VTwitter is ass
The main problem with the vtubung genre is that the nost majority of them are boring as hell no true content just rumbling about shit with useless cute alteration of their voices
just wait til i do my 'vtubers are boring' video, cus tbh, true 😂