It's odd to me that people say "do a tom scott" as if tom scott doesn't still do stuff online; he just does it less frequently in a different format, but he's still online with the Technical Difficulties
"Do a tom scott" also downplays how much research and videos that man did for the entirety of his youtube career. If i could do a tom scott, it'd be a great honour
Which makes "doing a Tom Scott" a very useful expression - it's exactly the way many online creators will go, because it's the daily grind they grow tired of, not youtubing as a whole.
As a person who is not a big steamer fan in general. I aee the tech behind vtubing as useful for anonymity and personal expression. If i ever streamed. I would probably use pngtube or vtuber tech but i wont engage with the culture or other streamers. Thats the future i see. The tech becomes ubiquitous and thus the culture dies down or becomes niche.
There's a fair amount of youtubers/streamers who don't use any kind of facecam or vtubing software, and they're still doing well for themselves. Vtubing and pngtubing seems to me like a balance between facecam-less and fleshtubers, vtubing sitting right in the middle and pngtubers sitting closer to the facecam-less side. It's really just up to what they prefer, or what fits their brand. Sometimes it even depends on the game, there's some games that I watch a variety of people play that never use any facecam (at most, a pngtuber). It all factors into the presentation of your stream/video. (hopefully that made sense)
So eh... The thing is that the tech to do the face- and body tracking in a scripted pre-filmed video has been around a lot longer than the tracking than VTubers use. Because the leap in technology that made VTubing possible wasn't the tech to do face tracking and convert that to matching movements on a (2D or 3D) model, that already existed for a good while (remember: The Lord of the Rings movies were released from in 2001 to 2003 and it only took around five years for the tech used to transform Andy Serkis into Gollum to be developed into a package that you didn't need to be a film studio to buy), but rather the tech to do that in real time. The reason why VTubing is so stream-focussed is that the original novelty of VTubers was that the model replicated the face (and sometimes body) movements of the talent in real time.
The novelty of Vtubing culture has already reached its peak. The barrier to entry has grown beyond simply having a model, and the need to diversify has become apparent. Vtuber agencies have already shattered the idol culture to reveal a true authenticity, in large part due to the efforts of Coco. God bless her. I think that as time goes on we'll continue seeing a larger shift away from Vtubing being viewed predominantly as subculture of streamers to simply being the style of presentation that it always was. Overall, the use of an avatar is an old idea. We already see various attempts to use Vtubing with the intent to appeal to audiences apart from the existing culture that surrounds it, VTheorem being an excellent example. While their growth has been slow, I think the concept holds a very promising future, particularly for education.Though I don't think that regular live streaming is capable of fulfilling such a goal when compared to more traditional styles of representation, I do believe that the idea of sparking imagination in students with art again will be a massive boon. Haven't seen that in centuries. I mean, who wouldn't appreciate an enthusiastic animated professor who exudes an immense love of education and teaching by presenting themselves in a visually and audibly appealing performances rather than tedious drawn-out lectures... or maybe a textbook that presents information in a more engaging way like a comic or manga? There's a merch idea! Kids have been drawing doodles in the margin of textbooks for ages. Maybe they were onto something?
This. I get far more entertainment from all of the indies that have dispensed with the idol BS. No these women are not kissless hugless virgins, no they do not avoid all male contact etc. The worst parts of the v tubing community aside from Twitter mongrels are obsessive parasocial Japanese idol types. Also there should be zero push to try to reach more mainstream. All you need for success is to understand your niche. The worst thing entertainers can do is try to reach an overly broad audience.
In part, I think it's better to bottleneck than go all in on being like everyone else. A lot of vtuber fans don't like normal streamers for a reason, and to go all in on a mainstream audience will suck the soul of the content.
I am kinda seeing this these days. More youtubers who use vtubing as a medium rather than an end goal. Some science videos who use it as the virtual teacher in a way.
i feel like already people are starting to use VTubing as a technology rather than a style, and i feel like that's just going to be more and more the case as more content creators enter the ecosystem while being familiar with VTubers as a normal thing, especially for people who want privacy with regards to their appearence. i mean Jaiden has a VTuber avatar so i can't imagine this train stopping. the subculture will probably remain though, if only because it's an easy source of revenue, but it might stop being VTuber-dominated.
I think it will but to a degree. I also see there being changes, recently I've seen more Vtubers especially smaller one's multi-casting on both Twitch and UA-cam, though I saw one today that exclusively streams and makes videos on UA-cam. The UA-cam audience is also, generally speaking, older than the Twitch audience. Twitch has almost exclusively 13 - 24 with a huge drop-off to higher age brackets, UA-cam on the other hand has a huge demographic, just due to it's age ranging from the teens - all the way to the 60's and 70's And the older you get the less coomerish, more respectful and more interested in things other than gaming. It's the banter and discussions that will make things more interesting.
I think the last remaining barrier might be the secrecy. I don't mean that nobody should be secretive with their identity, that's fine if they want to. But right now a vtuber, would be seen as weird if they just said their full name IMO. Whereas the example of Tom Scott as it came up, that's his real name, he could not be less secretive about who he is. A lot of regular streamers who have a nickname/online handle make no secret of their name. And more (especially older people) just straight up use their real name as their channel name and noone bats an eye. If I just open my YT sub list on the left and exclude vtubers, 5 out of the top 5 say their real name in the intro of their every video, and 3 have their channel name as that name.
@@atoucangirl From 2 sides: There will be viewers who find the secrecy to be excessive and weird, and therefore not engage. And potential creators who don't want it but feel like the entire culture requires it, and therefore they will not become vtubers.
Fauna just announced she's graduating January 3rd, likely going back to her pre-Hololive account, where subs have already been re-enabled. Yeah, change is coming.
I wonder if we're going towards a "becoming corpo to grow then graduate to continue with more freedom" phase of vtubing. Or at least where corpos can continue under different names.
@@ZippyVtuber several graduations-to-indie-reincarnations happened earlier during the year and someone described it as like a "year of the indies" instead of it being only just a year of constant loss and I agree with them in a way
very well said no reason for vtubing to disappear, using a model to stay annonymous is very useful and nice but the culture will definitely change, I mean, it already is, it's becoming more and more normal to talk about previous "lifes" of vtubers, to do irl content etc. but it still has a very niche culture right now, but I honestly like some of it, but some of it less so
Well, I can assure you if that happens, vtubers will not become more popular. Reason being, the real reason theyre popular is because of the anime girl fantasy, whether rin likes it or not. What will likely happen is, if that occurs, vtubers and streaming with 3d models altogether will simply fade away as a simple fad and the majority of current, even popular vtubers like rin will fade into obscurity and irrelevance, while others will just become normal streamers or retire altogether.
@@ceejay1476 There will always be people who, if not simply out of preference, outright have no other choice to present themselves online other than via an illustrated avatar. And we, as people, will always have the innate drive to create and share. It's human nature. So no, you are wrong, the practice will never disappear.
It's just looping back to what it was before the boom where it's just people doing stuff with avatars. It's existed for years with art and animation channels on UA-cam where they just represent themselves with a drawn avatar but vtubing just upped the tech to an avatar with face tracking
@@BisquitFarmer Yep, i've been saying from the beginning that vtubing is just the next stage of evolution from the "animated storytime" stuff that used to be a dominant trend on UA-cam. Think of how Jaiden went from that to vtubing...
I think regular streaming is actually more vulnerable than vtubing precisely because of the vtubing subculture. Streamers don't have a very well-defined set of future options - when they stop streaming, some will become more periodic content creators, but many of them are kinda just commentators and that doesn't pivot into other types of entertainment very well. Vtubers though are part of broader Otaku culture. There's a lot of cross-pollination there, and many vtubers started out in other parts of the culture, like as utau or artists. When a vtuber wants to take a step back, they can easily switch to being musicians or voice actors, and those are careers that are well-established as able to take people to retirement. That gives vtubing a stability that regular streaming doesn't have. Vtubing, particularly within a notable agency, is a great way to build a fanbase that you can then carry over into more relaxed roles in your 30s and 40s, so there's not likely to be a slump in new vtubers to replace the ones who move on. Not to mention the elephant in the room which is that a vtuber is immune to losing their youthful appearance, something IRL streamers have to contend with. There's also the differences between vtuber fanbases and streamer fanbases. Yeah, the biggest vtuber only has 4.5 million subscribers, less than a quarter of the biggest streamer, but in regular streaming, almost all the biggest streamers are male. Vtubing is dominated by female streamers, and Japanese vtubers top the global female earning charts despite only 3% of the global population having the ability to understand what they say. Vtuber audiences are older, wealthier, and far more dedicated than streamer audiences, which are primarily children who usually grow up to be embarrassed that they ever followed streamers. In terms of job security and career options, vtubing is where I'd want to be.
Counterpoint: a whole lot of the biggest streamers live in LA so that they can network and have future career options. That opens up many things that your typical vtuber wouldn't necessarily have, even if they don't become famous actors or anything. And while not common, we have cases like Vinesauce and the AVGN that show fleshtubers/streamers can still maintain a steady audience as they age. i'm a bit less confident of the idea Cover seems to have wrt growing the western "idol" audience...
@@joshthefunkdoc Agreed, The Western Idol audience is the fascination that certain young demographics have with Japanese Anime, that really isn't a trend at this point It's more of a phase because if the next generation doesn't pick it up then Japanese based Idol style will just go the way of the dodo bird. I am seeing more VTubers on UA-cam again, possibly after seeing how bad Discovery is on Twitch. They're currently small but I suspect, if they learn SEO they will grow by developing their core audience and be able to promote their content to their Casual audience as well
Sure, but you can always cherry pick things to craft a picture that leans one way or another. I think in the end there's just too much uncertainty to say with any generality how the trends will go. The points made in this comment seem too specific to survive any generalizations (i.e. changing times and social landscape could change everything and those details wouldn't necessarily survive)
@@joshthefunkdoc Counter-counterpoint: Almost every big vtuber lives in Japan, a country with excellent transport systems and an even more accessible creative industry. Foreign vtubers will struggle, but foreign vtubers are really more on the fringes of the culture to begin with.
@@yurisei6732i agree with everything that you said _except_ that final part about vtubers outside of Japan struggling. In terms of idol culture & its expectations? Absolutely. However examples such as Ironmouse, Filian, & Neurosama (to only name the most successful ones i can think of) prove that there isnt just an interest over here, but that its developing an identity of its own in the west. I genuinely dont know if there are any IRL streamers i can think of (let alone occasionally watch) that have the same type of energy or vibe as the vtubers i enjoy. Could be ignornce on my part but i dont think it is, and what i wrote stands regardless of it
Well currently the entire vtubing community is built off the back of Hololive, and a side effect of that is that the idol culture Cover traffics in is still deeply entrenched in vtubing culture as a whole. And there’s clearly still a market for that, but there’s also a market for less traditional or overtly Japanese content like most Twitch vtubers. I think both sides of the industry are going to continue growing independently, and at some point it will start becoming blatantly obvious even to outsiders that Twitch vtubers are more similar to Twitch fleshtubers than they are to “idol” vtubers. The long term consequences of that schism, especially for those caught in the middle, are impossible to predict and depend entirely on how the streamers and viewers handle it.
While it's true a lot of vtubing is being influenced by Hololive, Cover has also noticed the bottleneck problem and is trying new ways to push vtubing into the main stream too. The most obvious example would be the expansion to the west and the dodgers collab while domestically, Suisei is breaking into the bigger mainstream entertainment sphere herself. Cover is also inviting and collabing with VAs for events and different projects and spreading not just Hololive but vtubing into different spheres and aspect of things and building themselves into a brand with vtubing as it's model. The downside for Cover is that not every one of their talents are OK with this change and breaking into the main stream. We see that today with Chloe's announcement of graduation and the overall graduations this year alone. Ame, Aqua and now Chloe, sometimes this change in direction wasn't wat they initially signed up for.
@NekRulez plus cover were originally a idol corp and they made no apologises for it, but then they got popular because of that and still need to find something of a middle ground
If I could have my way my only request would be for vtubers to stay vtubers. I personally don't like it when they straddle both sides. I don't need to see shy Lily's ass, there are too many flesh tubers running around as it is
True although almost all non-JP vtubers aren't really part of the same vtubing culture, because JP vtubing culture is rooted in Japanese weeb culture, not just idol culture. That's why EN vtubers just don't scratch the same itch.
“I’ve always found it weird Vtubing is kinda like a genre instead of a method of presentation.” THANK YOU. I love the creativity Vtubing offers. As someone who is a writer and wanting to be a Vtuber, I’m excited to write lore and find artists to make my PNG. However, my biggest draw is that I don’t have to show my actual face. I get to keep my privacy. I grew up in the faceless UA-camr era and no one does that anymore. It feels like facecam or get out. So having an avatar as an option is finally letting me start perusing a childhood dream of mine. Yet it’s reduced to a niche. Instead of the streamer being in a niche because, oh, all he plays is Darkwood, he’s a niche because he has an avatar instead of the classic facecam. It’s sad and that thinking leads to folks not seeing how talented Vtubers can be. 😞
Agree, it's always good when anonymity is an option. But I don't think it's that weird for any medium to also have a bias towards a certain genre. Certain media favors certain genres. That's why you get some stories that can be told in books but have a hard time being adapted to the film screen. It's why longer books work better as TV shows rather than 2-hour films. The advantages of VTubing also coincides with the needs of Otaku culture (anime avatars, introverts who want to hide real faces, etc etc) so it's no surprise that the anime-adjacent culture continues to dominate Vtubing.
My prediction: The connotations to idol culture will die (at least in the English side of things), but Vtubers won't. They're already getting more socially "acceptable" on the Anglosphere internet.
i feel like they wont die, but will be much weaker, for me personally i almost only watch Indie VTubers so its already gone or very weak, but unless all corperations disapear it wont happen, an also the fact that VTubing is closer to Otaku culture so it will inevitably have some crossover
I feel like Indie vtubers have already changed the culture so much that they don't feel the same as corporate vtubers. Indie vtuber culture focuses on the person behind the model, their personality, and also they're usually crazier in terms of they can do/say whatever they want since they do not follow the rules of any contract. Corporate vtuber culture is more about the group interacting with each other frequently on big collabs, concerts, doing music together as a group and choreographies, big sponsored events. And there's also so much variety between vtubers already, some focus on games, some on just chatting, asmr, roleplay, singing, drawing, 3d streams etc. We already reached a point where there's sub cultures within the vtuber culture. If anything, the old culture will just share the same level of popularity with the newer ones
I agree with Rin on this one, Vtubing as a concept has tremendous potential that we can't even begin to imagine at the moment. But to get there, the community is going to have to crash their face against the wall sometimes and go through the tough times that come with the very nature of change. Vtubing is far from dead, but it needs to learn new tricks
VTubing is still a HUGELY niche intersection between Eastern & Western cultures around how content creators & idol celebrity overlap. The resaon that cultural aspect has maintained itself is that the most active adopters are largely introverted (as that's a huge advantage of the anonymity) and interested in being a part of that as a subculture, rather than merely using a Live2D model as a form identity-obscuring technology for typical content presentation. This stands out since most of the standard English-speaking Internet culture is heavily shaped by American norms infused with little bits of homogenization from European assimilation of that. China is largely walled-off from shaping the global internet while their Internet is heavily self-contained, so this has a particularly unique "feel" to it (on top of all the crazy post-2020 things impacting the tech industry still). I figure it's a lot like how using anime/game characters as user avatars on web forums was niche, before the number of "normal" people online meant it became commonplace to see everywhere. How long that takes is anyone's guess as things like LLM AI and other changes to streaming could suddenly shift any of that in unpredictable ways.
I’m a vtuber (small) and never really understood the whole debut and idol thing. I’m also from the US and only watch a few. I just use it as a medium to be like the streamers I used to watch as a kid playing games and such. So I just stream like the regular folks, but just with a model. I only found out recently folks make songs and do idol-y stuff. I was shocked!
To be clear, a good number of bigger EN vtubers come from voice acting and/or the "utaite" scene (doing song covers) - even Bao was originally just a singer, which people can't believe anymore with the direction her content has gone over the years.
It's like how SynthesizerV is advertising itself to regular musicians, which is increasing the scope of vocal synths from just the anime-adjacent Vocaloid subculture to a mainstream audience. I think it's the English speaking side in particular, but I don't know as much about what goes on in the Japanese side. I'm very conflicted about it because I'm happy to see vocal synths do well but I'm also extremely emotionally connected to the English-speaking subculture/community as it is and I'm terrified of losing that. We're very queer, neurodivergent, mentally ill, and artist-focused. The community has issues, like any community, but my experience has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's meant the world to me. It got me through my worst mental health years. But the more mainstream vocal synths become, the more I'm at risk of losing that. IDK if people feel similarly about vtubing? I'm a very casual vtuber viewer, so idk if losing a meaningful community would make sense in that context or not. But based on the discussion I've seen online, I feel kinda alone in dreading the mainstream-ification of vocal synths, so I guess it would be comforting to know if other people might be having a similar experience 😓
I feel that, while I wouldn't call vtubing a hyper fixation, slowly falling out of love with magic the gathering due to the companies decisions and policies has been a slow and sad process that I don't care to repeat
@@NightjarAvesThat's how I'm feeling after the Fauna announcement, I just like watching the girls have fun, do variety content and interact with each other. I don't mind having idol-lite aspects, and 1 or 2 big concerts a year. But I feel like it'll drive Vtubing into a direction I won't like, I like the corpos for how a group of talents interact.
I have currently been seeing more people (specially in the indie scene) that adopt this idea of Vtubing as a medium/tool moreso than a "format". There's even one particular one that blew up some months ago that didn't even intend to stream in the first place, but randomly post rant videos that would maybe be seen by 3 people...but turns out hundreds of people enjoyed that and her audience is majorly made of non-vtuber viewers and some are even lowkey vtuber haters that made an exception for her. It was quite the surprise and I do agree that lowering the barrier for entry is what is needed so that more of those "mainstream-minded" people feel compelled to watch and then throw any prejudice away up until the point of becoming regulars.
Totally agree. The whole idol culture thing is kinda a cultural clash that doesn’t resonate well outside Japanese culture where it’s already a norm. I think we to an extent thought naively that the participation of more Western audiences would help shift that norm to be a bit more healthy, I think it’s clear that hasn’t happened now. Like, I genuinely think it’s awesome that so many people get to experience their dreams being idols that never would have before. And there was a big attraction to the idol scene originally because I think although existing Western audiences were aware of the subculture they had never experienced it really so there was a sense of novelty. Now, though I think most longtime fans have experienced the enough of the idol culture that the novelty has worn off. The whole Kayfabe nature of VTubing sort compounds existing issues around parasocial relationships too, and it’s hard not to wonder after a while “is all this good for me/the talent/the community?” after a while too. I have been seeing more and more people use Live2D models as just their standard personal choice of representation online and that seems to be the future for “Vtubing”. For years the space has been dominated by the VIdol niche, and probably will be for a long while now but I think the VIdol community is going to be a distinct community in the overall space as the tech grows into just another way of doing UA-cam/Twitch/Streaming/Videos. I do think that VIdols will continue to be a thing, but I also think that it has probably peaked already as a trend. Places like Hololive will keep on plugging along but have probably expanded to their maximum extent (or have over expanded and will need to address this). The boom days are long past and I think we are starting to see a contraction as companies are refocusing their brands to be idol first and streamer second. The dumbest thing about the present VIdol industry is that it has the same issues as the regular idol industry in terms of longevity, and the whole “I want an anime girl AKB48” thing baked it into the formula. The endless new debuts kinda canabalize the existing fandom by splitting its attention constantly and meanwhile the emphasis will always be on getting newer talents and debuting them vs supporting existing talents, unless the existing talents are very valuable to the company… and even then none of them are irreplaceable. None of that is really a problem for someplace like Hololive, but for talents, aside from the anonymity, what’s the difference between that and being a regular idol?
Thanks Kyro and I do appreciate seeing Rin discussing stuff like this... An interesting clip and perspective. I'm not totally convinced, but I've been thinking about it for a bit now. There is a niche subculture and it's heavily influenced by JP culture (specifically idol culture). I'm fully into it, I love a lot of Hololive content and that their English branch has made it more accessible to me. But I think it would be cool for vtubers to do things outside of that culture. It should definitely be treated as a method of presentation - And I'd be down for more video-form content from vtubers. I just don't know if it's all that likely to change. I think vtubing is inherently niche. I'm not sure the barriers to entry can be removed as much as Rin suggests - My experience with people who aren't into it is that "??animated person?" seems to be the big barrier. Interest in that is bigger in Japan, the biggest corps are Japanese (Holo, Niji... Even Brave IIRC) and within those corps the JP side is bigger than any western-targeted branch. A lot of the small Western corps are falling apart these days. The JP influence is strong, and I think a lot of people that get into vtubing will keep following it because that's what everyone else does. We do have corps like Vshojo and Phase, and I do think have developed their own different culture from Holo/Niji - But they're still not really a mainstream thing. Then again, maybe the issue is that a lot of those western corps that are falling apart styled themselves as "Holo/Niji-lite", and not being able to pull the audience from them. Phase and Vshojo less so, and that might be why they're doing well. If we get a western corp - Or some independent streamers - that totally break from JP culture and blow up, then I can see more vtubers stepping away from the existing JP subculture. And you know what, to counter myself slightly, vtubing has changed over the years. Lately, it seems that these days Holo is stepping away from the *graduation* terminology. Debuts depend. If you're joining a corporation, whether you cut the link to the old persona entirely, or if you're 'just' getting presented to the corp's audience for the first time - I think not doing a debut is a missed opprotunity. That said, you can and should do more than just present some slides. On the other hand, if you're just starting streaming as an indie - Or you're already streaming and have decided to grab an avatar instead of a facecam (or were streaming without a representation), then yeah, I can see some skipping the debut hubub, and others trying to make a big creative stream out of it. There's one thing I do disagree with though - The idea that vtubing in it's current form is as big as it's going to get. Sometimes it looks like growth is slowing, but Hololive's selling out bigger stadiums every year, and now they're doing it outside Japan too. Gura's growth and numbers were absolutely mad and have slowed now, but I wonder if it was simply unsustainable and now more sustainable growth is taking over.
Yeah... doing Japanese thing outside of Japan isn't good idea. It's not like niche isn't here - it's just not big enough, and have different interests. It will change over time obviously.
I don't see why vtubers won't follow the same growth as anime in the West. It started as the weird asian cartoons for nerds. Then people started to recognize it as valid art and entertainment. And now it's basically mainstream, and western animators use anime inspired style. It's not the dominate form of entertainment over here, but it's not a niche subculture that only sticks to jp 'tradition.' Like it or not, that's probably the future of vtubers.
One part to point out is that there's a difference between drawing live crowds and other aspects of the entertainment business. All Japan Pro Wrestling was having its biggest live gates ever during the 90s...yet their TV ratings dropped (to the point their weekly show got moved to *midnight*) and they didn't have the presence in mainstream pop culture that they did in prior decades. The latter turned out to be the better predictor of their future, as they crashed in the 2000s and have never reached their 70s-80s heights in overall business since. Basically, you only need a small army of dedicated sickos for live events to do well, but that's not enough for a large company to be sustainable in general.
In the past when We've thought too hard about the non-indie Vtubing industry, its intersection with the infamously exploitative/parasocial idol industry, those huge official (expensive) events both online & in real life meant to bring in more people just to watch some girls play Minecraft, the blurry line between the real people & the characters they don't own any legal rights to yet are treated as one & the same by anyone with rational thought, all the "lore", we'd often end up like that one image of Mr. Krabs spiraling into a mental breakdown. Recently we started thinking of it like the relationship between a voice actor & the character they play, as opposed to a person who's online identity is 100% owned by a corpo, which has helped us a lot, but still. This is coming from somebody who's generally already bought in. We can only imagine how 'inaccessible' the current Vtubing industry must be for those who haven't.
@@kotorandcorvid4968 i think a lot of us just attribute this to the EN scene but we aren't familiar with the Japanese content-creator cliches so we don't notice it there. The impression i get is it's a thing there as well, considering how much of an initial buzz Salome drew for being a "throwback" to the pure kayfabe vtubers.
Vtubing did not start with idol culture, it started with animal personas. Ages ago you could map your face onto less complicated animal avatars and stream that. It just got big with idols. Which still has late joiners believe you need lore and full animated intro videos and what not. The only thing I kind of want to see more in regular VTubing is the "it's a group of friends hanging out irl" collabs, but those are very expensive compared to everyone involved just streaming for that time. So something mostly a big company can afford...
The novelty appeal of having an anime rig isn't gonna bring viewers by itself anymore, vtubers just need to make sure their content is interesting/engaging like any regular content creator
vTubing is a medium, not a culture in and of itself. It has a strong connection to idol culture, but we’re already seeing it being broken out of on the western side of vTubing.
Vtubing in the west at least has almost nothing to compare with idol culture. Read into how japanese idols are actually treated and you'll realize that even the worst of the Nijisanji drama is miles better than idol corps. There's a reason idols that ended up doing JAVs would talk about how the new job treated them better tham the old.
I think there are three potential futures (based on past experience) - The "Job" - The "Celebrity" - The Hobby "Job" vtubers will shift to just using their model (or maybe in the case of customer/tech support workers, use it to protect their privacy) where a face-cam would be required. Fire me if you don't like it. "Celebrity" vtubers will be those that basically reach film/television/music stardom and will be limited to only a very (single digit) few that can keep treading water next to IRL people. Think about how Muppets work. Think about how many things that Stephen Hawking was guest starred on. I see Vtuber's "being" in shows with IRL people via telepresence machines (we have seen some uses of these in television shows, but usually as "the joke", rather than a legit guest star. "The Hobby", will be everyone else who keeps making youtube and twitch (or adult site) content and jumping through all the hoops the platform wants them to to remain on it. TikTok and Facebook/Instagram/Threads already shadowban Vtubers.
Guy who rarely gets into V-Tubers speaking here, so ignore me if my opinion sucks. Personally, the biggest thing that prevents me from getting into them (corporate ones at least) is that whole idol aspect of it. The idea of this established character that almost acts like a brand and has to do very certain things in a very certain way just really limits the potential ceiling of my interest. There are moments with some where I can feel the whole idol personality they’ve created just sorta yank on the person’s chain mid-sentence as they think “Wait, can’t say/do that, gotta stick to the brand.”. Whenever I see that sorta thing happen (which admittedly, while not uncommon, isn’t an everyday thing), chances are I’m not coming back for a second stream. Now a UA-camr or streamer having a brand or an identity isn’t inherently a bad thing. After all, one of the biggest UA-camrs ever has the nickname of “The King Of Five Nights At Freddy’s”. But with V-Tubers, especially corporate ones, that brand or identity feels less like a supplement to the talent and more like a limitation. To use Markiplier as an example, yes he’s most well known for his horror game Let’s Plays like Amnesia or FNAF, but some of my favourite videos of his involve the expression of himself as a person. Like his Poly Bridge video where he either put his engineering degree experience out for the world to see. I remember thinking “Wow! I never knew that about him!”. With a lot of corpo V-Tubers, I very rarely get that. And the reason that they don’t want the more…unstable fans to know too much about the real faces behind the talents is completely fair. I’ve seen those people. God could not save them. But as an unfortunate result, they have to stick to a manufactured personality and brand that creates a sense of detachment between me and them. I’m not watching them, I’m watching them play a character. And while I get why people like that, I prefer to see people in their truest sense. Sorry, I probably phrased this all super badly. As I said, not inherently a V-Tuber guy outside of a few I occasionally watch, like Rin.
it's surprising how much her point went over people's heads at the start. It's not like vtubers will be excluded to one corner of the internet, it'll just end up being "a way" for someone to stream, vtubing is just tubing, with a v(irtual avatar)
I always felt like UA-cam is for videos and edited content while Twitch is where people want to watch live streams so it felt odd to me that a majority of the VTubers are on UA-cam as streamers only. The only VTubes that I know who does videos would be Limealicious while streaming on twitch and soon to be Rin once her schemes go into effect. Maybe if more VTubers start doing edited content, more people will be able to watch since it's easier to watch highlights over VODs.
I believe Vtubers like Kizuna Ai and Azuma Lim did a ton of videos/edited contents, the latter even do vlogger and motorcycle content with English sub. Omaru Polka did a TV show-like series. She even went skydiving or something like that there. Squiji makes videos about designing vtuber and criticizing some designs.
Vtubers started out doing edited content such as Kizuna Ai but Nijisanji, alongside popularising Live2D over the then dominant 3D, also popularised streaming over videos. Hoshimachi Suisei back when she was an indie vtuber was more of the video uploader rather than streamer style. Leaving those behind for streams after entering Hololive (and more recently streaming less frequently as she focuses more on her music career, which was always her goal anyway. She had called herself an idol even as an indie vtuber with a model she drew and rigged uploading edited videos).
I might be the odd one out - But I find UA-cam streams are more interesting than Twitch streams in general. I can't describe it well but it feels like a clear difference to me. Maybe it's just because I don't like Twitch's website.
@@blackfirehedgehog7725 I haven't watched Twitch much admittedly so I don't have much experience in it but from what I have seen of it I also prefer UA-cam streams.
@@blackfirehedgehog7725 I used to be in the twitch only camp for streams and thought of youtube streams as weird, but over time I've grown to like the youtube streams more. A lot of that is how horrible the twitch website is. I think Twitch is being in mishandled in a way that isn't going to cause them to go out of business, but is opening the market for youtube when Twitch used to have streaming locked down.
I think a big part with having VTubing entering the main stream is just that there are still a lot of people who are anti-vtuber for no good reason. When Ironmouse broke the twitch sub record she got a bunch of hate for it, because she was a vtuber and that kind of stuff happens all the time where a lot of people will just right off a creator for using a vtuber model. I do think this is changing over time, but it's definitely still an aspect a lot of people don't jive with. That, and the "fake" anime voices for some reason...
Being real with you, even as someone who's followed vtubers for years, the extremely high-pitched voices and "airhead" gimmicks still feel fake AF to me because the only women i know who act like that or even enjoy that stuff are the anime-brained ones. As a regular at a powerlifting gym, i'm much more used to deeper-voiced and stern-faced women who want to project an image of strength and competence; not to say that's their whole personality, but they only let their guard down at all once you've been around enough to prove you're not a creep. Notice how the stereotypical ~kawaii~ vtubers attract overwhelmingly male audiences!
The way I see it, indie vtubing or streamers that happen to have a png/l2d model will, more or less, forever go strong. They may have, on average, lower budgets available for basically everything from advertising to large projects. But I do think that it's much more about presentation. Corporate or agency vtubing is where I am more skeptical and share many of Rin's views. Because it's the ultimate scheduling hell.Since the industry's main selling point is the vtuber model and the talent themselves without a clear identity as streamers, agencies kind of have to bring new talents every now and then. Which conflicts with existing talents. So those of the same agency have to be shifted around and maybe go on a little hiatus. Where every new wave only makes this problem worse. But I think we have also reached the point where the industry can't really grow as much anymore. Barring another pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. The audience and its time and money are finite resources, after all. If Gura were able to be a streamer that happens to use a Live2D model while also having the backing of holomyth though? She'd definitely be over 5 million subscribers. Probably more tbh. Like this however? Growth will hit limits and she was lucky to be among the first when the boom happened.
The thing with Holo in particular is they appear to be encouraging talents to move to Japan more and more; Bijou is a particularly striking example to me since she's very basic with the language atm. Word is they're making more of their big events mandatory for everyone, so they don't want to drown in travel costs. Also don't underestimate the impact of that Holoearth project - they've been working on that for years, nobody seems to care about it, yet they're still sinking millions into it. That's the kind of stuff that kills a company's golden age...look up what the XFL did to the WWF. Niji never seemed as invested in the western audience as Cover, considering even NijiEN's boom period was mainly fueled by the Chinese fanbase. With their EN branch on its slow death spiral, i do think there's something to the notion that the traditional Big 2 companies will have a smaller place in the overall market within a couple years or so.
I wonder how the fandom for Vtubers if it catches on even more will look. Currently it often feels like there are three camps: Quite mellow fans, incredibly sweet and supportive communities, and the most toxic fans who don't even stop to remember Vtubers are people not AI or fictional characters. So it will be really interesting to see these three camps morph and change as a wider pool of people become fans and I really hope the toxic ones get more mellow not worse
i think vtubing is headed for its own Gamergate at some point given the clash of cultures involved; many of the 4chan-type fans even now are saying they got into vtubing because gaming & anime got too woke, so there's going to be a backlash from them as the medium moves further and further into the mainstream. They hate Twitch vtubers with a passion for precisely that reason...
Gatekeeping, is good. "Becoming more accessible" is usually the beginning of the end for most niche content, and the easiest way to grow your fan base, while also losing those that originally supported you.
The people with largest sub counts on YT (which as we all know doesn't matter all that much) are by far channels that focus on content for gen Z and younger, with a few exceptions. I would guess that it's partly because kids are more impressionable, but also because that's the generations who grew up with VODs and streams being already there as a medium. I reckon in 5 to 10 years, when the generations that are currently starting to interact with online spaces and who will or are growing up in a world where vtubing is a thing, the popularity will grow that much more. Cause when you see criticisms of vtubers, it's almost always about people either misunderstanding them or thinking it's weird, and that's a stigma that's gonna go away with time.
I think Vtubing is not that ez to translate to other mediums cause its counter intuitive, why would you need a complex and rigged live2D model... For an essay type edited vids? People being doing both animated and as she mentioned PNG charcter thingy for years... The whole "point of Vtubing" is to be able to show your reactions/expresions in real time while either keeping anonimity to some degree (or cause you want to look/be associated with the anime avatar) so doing prerecorded content kinda... Doesnt need that? It can definitely be done and the whole existance and subculture of clips and edited vods speak to it, but they are born ox the live interaction But what the hell do I know? The 🅱️rince is an actual Vtuber and I am just some guy watching clips
If we're talking purely Live2D, then yeah. They can be useful, but I can see how they're limited. I saw quite a lot of 3d vtubers that did pre-edited contents though (Polka's series, AzuLim's vlogs, Kizuna Ai's vids, Squiji's design tips). And if we count NakeyJakey's video as essays (I say if, because I'm sure some people don't), then I can see how full-track 3d can be useful.
@Hell_O7 I mean its not "needed" but It can definitely be done and it does work, I for one watch some vids from "Dice Queen Di" where its mostly talking about ttrpg stuff with a 3D model, I do enjoy it and just like people show themselves in edited vids it helps convey body language, but depending on the model and how much of a "brand" you want to put into the model representing you sounds like a significant extra cost for a medium that doesn't "require it" (it does add to it of course)
The big thing with an animated model is the setting they can be put in. We're starting to see some vtubers do 3d streams that treat the model as an art asset for little segments. The problem with that is it's currently expensive for the other assets. The price will probably droop though. 3d mocap used to be millions of dollars. Now it's down to a few thousand. It's just finding enough free assets to combine together which fit the art style and spending all the time to put them together into segments. Lots of singers end up in vtubing currently, but as more people who see it as a tool to tell stories get into it that will probably change.
The mainstream audiences is a huge demographic that VTuber isn't yer penetrated as you said. VTubers has the same variety of contents types as the whole platform, and even whole different arts styles. Actually if we created a Cartesian pair of Art Styles and Content Styles that is in the domain of VTubing, we would not get full coverage of platform variety yet as of the end of 2024. So it's just that we haven't found the right combi, but we got an optimized combi and it's plateaued now. Perhaps as more and more LLM AI VTuber comes into the scene, and the advancement of humanoid robots, the "Ghost In The Shell" effect will make huge fuss in the industry, as VTuber would be possible to touch real grass in their models, not just IRL (Well, someone actually had their model over imposed in their IRL live footage now). But, really, it's only 2026 that we will see this fuss.
Wait this was before the Fauna announcement? God, you can just tell how something big is happening with VTubing. Well, change is always bound to happen
As a complete non VTuber watcher im just gonna give my 2 cents. I think people´s biggest issue in general is the anonymity. It may be a tired and obvious point. But I have discussed this with a lot of people and it just seems to me that people are a LOT more accepting to "Public" or "open" or whatever you call it Vtubers such as AmaLee. It´s a lot like how people dislike AI. It´s just uncanny to many if not most. Even in the most CGI heavy film. You still have actors. The examples are many. And I'm included here. The like 3 Vtubers I watch regularly are people I knew before they went animated. Maybe it´s just the fundamental need for a human connection, and most can´t see past the model and the hidden person? I dunno. Im just theorizing.
Maybe western people don’t see it my way, or eastern people also don’t understand my point but, I genuinely prefer“virtual UA-camrs” to focus on the basic formula for their content. Independent, entertainment, and efforts you can see. I know that’s not how they get popularized but, idk, sustainability wise, I feel like back to basic is the key. This clip reminds me of that honestly.
Honestly there’s still so much of the Western market that hasn’t been tapped into. I think it will be good for VTubers if we can get people to simply see us as UA-camrs/Internet personalities with a virtual avatar.
and thats the problem for a majority of people they simply don't like the whole model thing or it's a bunch of things.Especially on youtube and that being... 1-nothing but react content alot of the times 2- sexuelisation of the avatars 3-being loud and sometimes obnoxious depending on the person
Ibai (Spanish streamer) has filled the Camp Nou stadium with 90k fans.. several times. In Japan hololive vtubers are growing even larger, regularly breaking out of the streaming games gig: Marine is promoting SoftBank smartphones, Miko is promoting McDonalds food, Suisei is walking into the Budoukan, SEGA got Korone to be Sonic's main promoter... When will a EN-speaking streamer do something like that? Idk Rin, looking at the EN-speaking regular streaming scene as a target is aiming low. It's a scene that's is having difficulties growing compared to the way it's growing in other languages.
Btw Rin, Ironmouse is the biggest Vtuber, and she just collabed with the biggest streamer on the planet in Kai Cenat and people in his community have been hating on her
Depending on how tech and global Economies develop in the near future, we might see a shift into VR. But cute, often (not always!) oversexualized anime girls will *never* go away. That´s like thinking people will someday suddenly stop buying bread for no reason. For me personally, I like working with V-tubers (didn´t try it myself yet) because that´s where all my hobbies converge. 3D production, roleplaying, nerdy tech stuff, music, it´s all here.
I agree. Treating Live2D/3D modeling as a genre is like treating nightcore as a music genre. The technology itself is not a genre. We will keep seeing it, like it or not. Vtubing is kinda different from the technology itself. Vtubing formed in a niche streaming market for otaku fanbase. I believe the term Vtubing cannot be separated from the subculture itself. So, Vtubing CAN die, because it is more than just a technology. But would it? Probably not. I think it has its own merits.
Whenever I tell people about a Vtuber, but they don't know what a Vtuber is, I refer to them as Streamers or UA-camrs. In a way they are streamers/youtubers. Example sentences: "Oh, sometimes I watch the streamer Gawr Gura on UA-cam." "My favorite is Gawr Gura. She's a UA-camr who does a lot of streaming content."
Personally, I think vtubing is really underutilized as a storytelling medium. There are a few creators who essentially use it to create real-time cartoons, but they're niche.
Rin's view is still very skewed to the content creation side of vtubing. She still thinks that Gura's 4M+ is the biggest thing to happen in vtubing. I personally think Suisei's 100M+ song is the current peak. The metric for vtubing as a medium is constantly shifting, and more importantly, moving UPWARDS.
There's also the option to look at the Twitch numbers, where Ironmouse recently became the biggest streamer on the platform. If you consider that, then the idea may come that while Gura is not huge compared to the biggest UA-cam channels, she is doing well compared to most UA-cam *streamers*.
I kinda agree and disagree with rin, I don't think vtubers will just stop, if anything they'll just become normalised and change from being purely anime girls and a few outliers. If anything it'll be less idol culture and more like how comic cons changed from being a weird nerd thing to a mainstream trade event
Tbh it may be selfish if me but I kinda hope Vtubing doesn't make it mainstream. It's probably because I've been a fan of vtubing since the very start of Kizuna Ai, because I really enjoy the culture with kayfabe and such, I really like that aspect as it makes it such a neat thing compared to regular old streaming.
gotta be honest, this feel like the exact same way to what it was with anime, except that the actual fans didn't want it to grow that big to reach normies(?), nobody wanted to watch or support anime because ''cringe'' and ''let's bully that weeb'', until it got popular and then everyone wanted a piece of anime to get into the trend and not be left behind and make money, now a lot of people want anime but at the same time wants to control it and shame everyone who doesn't follow their view on what they wan't in anime....wich ended in a lot of the crap that is happening with anime lately, vtubers are in the part of not being mainstream because ''ahh a vtuber girl, must be a man'', ''cringe, weird horny shit'' and '' f*** PDFiles''
While I've watched a lot of clips of "idol" VTubers... well, okay, most of those clips are of Rin, the vast majority of VTubers who I watch live are pretty much just like any other streamer, and they just happen to be using a VTuber model as a form of anonymity and self-expression. The cultural shift of VTubing away from idol culture is already well underway.
All I know is I like Live 2D streamers more than Flesh streamers. It's not even about the weeb stuff. The anonymity of Live 2D gives the streamer a way to explore an identity for themselves that flesh streamers can't. It's sort of authentic in its inauthenticity.
It’s already changing and fast. Look at Hololive (and Niji before them). The EN branches of Japanese companies are being pulled into the idol (song and dance) culture and they’re losing their Western culture girls. Western culture vtubers are streamers first who have reasons for using a 2D avatar. For most the ‘graduation’, ‘debut’ and ‘oshi’ terms are leftover from their weeaboo fandoms. To me idols are tightly controlled property and trapped in a lifestyle. This is more livable to someone who grew up in the Asian cultures.
Honestly, I think if PNGtubers also count as VTubers, then why not the intermediate step? Sure, it might mean that several creators are VTubers without realizing it -- I don't know if PhantomStrider, DarkFluff, Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions, or Talebot of Tale Foundry think of themselves as VTubers or even know what one is -- but they do have digital avatars, and even though they're not rigged, they move.
That's the problem, a lot of vtuber fans don't want to see vtubing as a medium grow and expand. I get gatekeeping as a premise, but you can't let others dictate your enjoyment of a hobby. Rin just running around her card shop, full-on talking to herself, while the customers are definetly very uncomfortable. XD
Those fans are the ones who hate gaming & anime for going too ~woke~, which is part of how they got so into vtubers in the first place. Imagine the reaction if a big corpo debuts a black person as one of their talents, for instance...
i think you can have that, as long as you accept that the vtubing you love will be a smaller niche within a niche over time. My suggestion would be to prepare yourself for the possibility that the idol style will no longer be the primary method of vtubing at some point in the future, and take pleasure in smaller spaces away from the normies.
I mean, we get vtubers being nominated for the most popular streamers like Ironmouse on Twitch or Pekora consistently being in the top of female streamers on UA-cam. How much bigger do you want it to get? Also, I don't think 'becoming more accessible to the mainstream' is necessarily a good thing. Vtubing is fun precisely because it's its own subculture.
Hmmm. I mean, in absolute terms, 4 million people subscribed to someone's content is massive - I don't know if it's reasonable to ever expect the sort of lunatic success of early UA-cam (proportionally) for an individual channel. As things get more & more decentralized the "cap" is going to go down. Not that I think it would be bad for vtubing to diversify more. But it's not going to help anyone to set unrealistic expectations for what "success" looks like.
If you want more success then abandoning your unique niche is what you have to do. Which means abandoning your original fans and identity. It’s called “selling out” and the process began as soon as hololive en became so popular. There’s already a joke about “immersion breaking”. Ironmouse brings her boyfriend on stream. Bao does full rl streams. Vtubing will die. “Using virtual” avatars won’t. It sucks but. It is the way of things.
here is my thought, ok... we have live2d in games but its usually very basic. we have MOCAP in games, but always 3d. So... When are we going to get live2d mocap in games? you might say, ok, that sounds like a lot of work. but... not really? the reason why vtuber models take so long to rig is because the streamer is always the main character. they have to have the most flash outfits. in video games, you can stand to have characters who are more normal looking and less complex. and like actually not even video games! i don't know how much mocap is utilized in 3d animation anyway but imagine a whole anime or movie with vtuber actors...
I think if vtubing is gonna grow instead of backslide into obscurity THE FANS AND COMMUNITY needs to change. The community is absolutely abysmal and chock full of people that should have their right to exist in the community revoked. Earlier this year I sold off all of the stuff I managed to gather for my debut because I absolutely loathe the community...I didn't want to entertain ungrateful, entitled, downright disturbed people. I still love the medium, but the fans will be the death of it.
That's because the anti-woke 4chan/kiwifarms crowd who fell out of love with gaming/anime for those reasons are the ones who got into vtubing. The most popular form of that subculture was corporate from the get-go and built on a foundation of controlling women's behavior, so it's sadly a natural fit for them. =/
This is my thoughts exactly. Vtubing will never go away but the way for it to move forward is to just be a different method of content creation instead of its own thing in the corner. The barrier to entry was previously defined by language barrier and idol culture stuff but that’s slowly going away as the big corpos run into audience bottlenecks and stop being the key drivers of innovation in the space.
Most of the top 10 most popular VTubers on Twitch are people already tiptoe-ing their way into doing the standard Twitch influencer activities while maintaining an avatar. Mousey streamed with Kai Cenat for goodness sake. Hololive has a tremendous advantage in UA-cam subscriptions, but that doesn't distinguish between people who still actively engage with the content and pay for it, versus people who subscribed back during the COVID-19 quarantines were widespread, and just never unsubbed.
![Vtubing as a Career vs Job vs Hobby -[ a conversation about aspirations with a teacher ]-](/img/n.gif)
Vtuber D&D podcast where the models are the characters.
I enjoyed seeing PNGs models for characters while watching DnD.
While not VTuber Live2D Models i do know a channel who does do this with PNG’s of their characters
If I had the money for a model and wasn't so horrified of internet people, I'd absolutely do this.
Melissateifling
Only downside is if you spend all that money commissioning a model only for your character to die session 1, you're SOL.
It's odd to me that people say "do a tom scott" as if tom scott doesn't still do stuff online; he just does it less frequently in a different format, but he's still online with the Technical Difficulties
And lateral!! Awesome podcast
"Do a tom scott" also downplays how much research and videos that man did for the entirety of his youtube career. If i could do a tom scott, it'd be a great honour
Which makes "doing a Tom Scott" a very useful expression - it's exactly the way many online creators will go, because it's the daily grind they grow tired of, not youtubing as a whole.
WHAT, I thought they meant making science videos… Rin making science videos would be fire
He also did it for TEN FUCKING YEARS.
As a person who is not a big steamer fan in general.
I aee the tech behind vtubing as useful for anonymity and personal expression. If i ever streamed. I would probably use pngtube or vtuber tech but i wont engage with the culture or other streamers.
Thats the future i see. The tech becomes ubiquitous and thus the culture dies down or becomes niche.
That would just be the difference between a pop singer and an Idol tbh.
@@azamonraAnd both still exist. And will be.
I think it’ll be more popular with women who would want to hid their identity more
There's a fair amount of youtubers/streamers who don't use any kind of facecam or vtubing software, and they're still doing well for themselves. Vtubing and pngtubing seems to me like a balance between facecam-less and fleshtubers, vtubing sitting right in the middle and pngtubers sitting closer to the facecam-less side. It's really just up to what they prefer, or what fits their brand. Sometimes it even depends on the game, there's some games that I watch a variety of people play that never use any facecam (at most, a pngtuber). It all factors into the presentation of your stream/video. (hopefully that made sense)
So eh... The thing is that the tech to do the face- and body tracking in a scripted pre-filmed video has been around a lot longer than the tracking than VTubers use.
Because the leap in technology that made VTubing possible wasn't the tech to do face tracking and convert that to matching movements on a (2D or 3D) model, that already existed for a good while (remember: The Lord of the Rings movies were released from in 2001 to 2003 and it only took around five years for the tech used to transform Andy Serkis into Gollum to be developed into a package that you didn't need to be a film studio to buy), but rather the tech to do that in real time.
The reason why VTubing is so stream-focussed is that the original novelty of VTubers was that the model replicated the face (and sometimes body) movements of the talent in real time.
Kyro cooked with this one. Genuinely cool to see a longer form clip that isn’t just “insert funny moment”
I completely agree the main bottle neck is the attachment to idol culture rather than normal UA-camr method
All while the OG VTuber (Kizuna Ai) only started streaming later on, and originally had pre-recorded content.
The novelty of Vtubing culture has already reached its peak. The barrier to entry has grown beyond simply having a model, and the need to diversify has become apparent.
Vtuber agencies have already shattered the idol culture to reveal a true authenticity, in large part due to the efforts of Coco. God bless her.
I think that as time goes on we'll continue seeing a larger shift away from Vtubing being viewed predominantly as subculture of streamers to simply being the style of presentation that it always was.
Overall, the use of an avatar is an old idea. We already see various attempts to use Vtubing with the intent to appeal to audiences apart from the existing culture that surrounds it, VTheorem being an excellent example. While their growth has been slow, I think the concept holds a very promising future, particularly for education.Though I don't think that regular live streaming is capable of fulfilling such a goal when compared to more traditional styles of representation, I do believe that the idea of sparking imagination in students with art again will be a massive boon. Haven't seen that in centuries.
I mean, who wouldn't appreciate an enthusiastic animated professor who exudes an immense love of education and teaching by presenting themselves in a visually and audibly appealing performances rather than tedious drawn-out lectures... or maybe a textbook that presents information in a more engaging way like a comic or manga? There's a merch idea! Kids have been drawing doodles in the margin of textbooks for ages. Maybe they were onto something?
This. I get far more entertainment from all of the indies that have dispensed with the idol BS. No these women are not kissless hugless virgins, no they do not avoid all male contact etc. The worst parts of the v tubing community aside from Twitter mongrels are obsessive parasocial Japanese idol types.
Also there should be zero push to try to reach more mainstream. All you need for success is to understand your niche. The worst thing entertainers can do is try to reach an overly broad audience.
In part, I think it's better to bottleneck than go all in on being like everyone else. A lot of vtuber fans don't like normal streamers for a reason, and to go all in on a mainstream audience will suck the soul of the content.
depending where, those two are not so different
I am kinda seeing this these days. More youtubers who use vtubing as a medium rather than an end goal. Some science videos who use it as the virtual teacher in a way.
Feels very much like the commentary channels who used a still image to represent them back in the days.
@@Bloddrakeah yes. I remember the time of JPEG commentary well
Amalee/Monarch, Takahata101, etc.
She's spitting facts, your honor 🗣
It's the tesco lady who got fired 5 times in a single day. /j
i feel like already people are starting to use VTubing as a technology rather than a style, and i feel like that's just going to be more and more the case as more content creators enter the ecosystem while being familiar with VTubers as a normal thing, especially for people who want privacy with regards to their appearence. i mean Jaiden has a VTuber avatar so i can't imagine this train stopping.
the subculture will probably remain though, if only because it's an easy source of revenue, but it might stop being VTuber-dominated.
I think it will but to a degree. I also see there being changes, recently I've seen more Vtubers especially smaller one's multi-casting on both Twitch and UA-cam, though I saw one today that exclusively streams and makes videos on UA-cam. The UA-cam audience is also, generally speaking, older than the Twitch audience. Twitch has almost exclusively 13 - 24 with a huge drop-off to higher age brackets, UA-cam on the other hand has a huge demographic, just due to it's age ranging from the teens - all the way to the 60's and 70's
And the older you get the less coomerish, more respectful and more interested in things other than gaming. It's the banter and discussions that will make things more interesting.
I think the last remaining barrier might be the secrecy. I don't mean that nobody should be secretive with their identity, that's fine if they want to. But right now a vtuber, would be seen as weird if they just said their full name IMO. Whereas the example of Tom Scott as it came up, that's his real name, he could not be less secretive about who he is.
A lot of regular streamers who have a nickname/online handle make no secret of their name. And more (especially older people) just straight up use their real name as their channel name and noone bats an eye.
If I just open my YT sub list on the left and exclude vtubers, 5 out of the top 5 say their real name in the intro of their every video, and 3 have their channel name as that name.
@@kukuc96 tbh i don't see how that's a barrier. a lot of non-vtbuers keep their names a secret too.
@@atoucangirl From 2 sides: There will be viewers who find the secrecy to be excessive and weird, and therefore not engage. And potential creators who don't want it but feel like the entire culture requires it, and therefore they will not become vtubers.
Fauna just announced she's graduating January 3rd, likely going back to her pre-Hololive account, where subs have already been re-enabled. Yeah, change is coming.
I wonder if we're going towards a "becoming corpo to grow then graduate to continue with more freedom" phase of vtubing. Or at least where corpos can continue under different names.
@@ZippyVtuberseems that way
@@ZippyVtuber several graduations-to-indie-reincarnations happened earlier during the year and someone described it as like a "year of the indies" instead of it being only just a year of constant loss and I agree with them in a way
@ true, definitely looks like it
I keep seeing people freaking out over graduating vtubers only for them to debut as an indie like a month later.
very well said
no reason for vtubing to disappear, using a model to stay annonymous is very useful and nice
but the culture will definitely change, I mean, it already is, it's becoming more and more normal to talk about previous "lifes" of vtubers, to do irl content etc.
but it still has a very niche culture right now, but I honestly like some of it, but some of it less so
Well, I can assure you if that happens, vtubers will not become more popular. Reason being, the real reason theyre popular is because of the anime girl fantasy, whether rin likes it or not. What will likely happen is, if that occurs, vtubers and streaming with 3d models altogether will simply fade away as a simple fad and the majority of current, even popular vtubers like rin will fade into obscurity and irrelevance, while others will just become normal streamers or retire altogether.
@@ceejay1476 There will always be people who, if not simply out of preference, outright have no other choice to present themselves online other than via an illustrated avatar. And we, as people, will always have the innate drive to create and share. It's human nature. So no, you are wrong, the practice will never disappear.
It's just looping back to what it was before the boom where it's just people doing stuff with avatars. It's existed for years with art and animation channels on UA-cam where they just represent themselves with a drawn avatar but vtubing just upped the tech to an avatar with face tracking
@@BisquitFarmer Yep, i've been saying from the beginning that vtubing is just the next stage of evolution from the "animated storytime" stuff that used to be a dominant trend on UA-cam. Think of how Jaiden went from that to vtubing...
I think regular streaming is actually more vulnerable than vtubing precisely because of the vtubing subculture. Streamers don't have a very well-defined set of future options - when they stop streaming, some will become more periodic content creators, but many of them are kinda just commentators and that doesn't pivot into other types of entertainment very well. Vtubers though are part of broader Otaku culture. There's a lot of cross-pollination there, and many vtubers started out in other parts of the culture, like as utau or artists. When a vtuber wants to take a step back, they can easily switch to being musicians or voice actors, and those are careers that are well-established as able to take people to retirement. That gives vtubing a stability that regular streaming doesn't have. Vtubing, particularly within a notable agency, is a great way to build a fanbase that you can then carry over into more relaxed roles in your 30s and 40s, so there's not likely to be a slump in new vtubers to replace the ones who move on. Not to mention the elephant in the room which is that a vtuber is immune to losing their youthful appearance, something IRL streamers have to contend with.
There's also the differences between vtuber fanbases and streamer fanbases. Yeah, the biggest vtuber only has 4.5 million subscribers, less than a quarter of the biggest streamer, but in regular streaming, almost all the biggest streamers are male. Vtubing is dominated by female streamers, and Japanese vtubers top the global female earning charts despite only 3% of the global population having the ability to understand what they say. Vtuber audiences are older, wealthier, and far more dedicated than streamer audiences, which are primarily children who usually grow up to be embarrassed that they ever followed streamers. In terms of job security and career options, vtubing is where I'd want to be.
Counterpoint: a whole lot of the biggest streamers live in LA so that they can network and have future career options. That opens up many things that your typical vtuber wouldn't necessarily have, even if they don't become famous actors or anything. And while not common, we have cases like Vinesauce and the AVGN that show fleshtubers/streamers can still maintain a steady audience as they age. i'm a bit less confident of the idea Cover seems to have wrt growing the western "idol" audience...
@@joshthefunkdoc Agreed, The Western Idol audience is the fascination that certain young demographics have with Japanese Anime, that really isn't a trend at this point It's more of a phase because if the next generation doesn't pick it up then Japanese based Idol style will just go the way of the dodo bird. I am seeing more VTubers on UA-cam again, possibly after seeing how bad Discovery is on Twitch. They're currently small but I suspect, if they learn SEO they will grow by developing their core audience and be able to promote their content to their Casual audience as well
Sure, but you can always cherry pick things to craft a picture that leans one way or another. I think in the end there's just too much uncertainty to say with any generality how the trends will go. The points made in this comment seem too specific to survive any generalizations (i.e. changing times and social landscape could change everything and those details wouldn't necessarily survive)
@@joshthefunkdoc Counter-counterpoint: Almost every big vtuber lives in Japan, a country with excellent transport systems and an even more accessible creative industry. Foreign vtubers will struggle, but foreign vtubers are really more on the fringes of the culture to begin with.
@@yurisei6732i agree with everything that you said _except_ that final part about vtubers outside of Japan struggling. In terms of idol culture & its expectations? Absolutely. However examples such as Ironmouse, Filian, & Neurosama (to only name the most successful ones i can think of) prove that there isnt just an interest over here, but that its developing an identity of its own in the west. I genuinely dont know if there are any IRL streamers i can think of (let alone occasionally watch) that have the same type of energy or vibe as the vtubers i enjoy. Could be ignornce on my part but i dont think it is, and what i wrote stands regardless of it
Well currently the entire vtubing community is built off the back of Hololive, and a side effect of that is that the idol culture Cover traffics in is still deeply entrenched in vtubing culture as a whole. And there’s clearly still a market for that, but there’s also a market for less traditional or overtly Japanese content like most Twitch vtubers. I think both sides of the industry are going to continue growing independently, and at some point it will start becoming blatantly obvious even to outsiders that Twitch vtubers are more similar to Twitch fleshtubers than they are to “idol” vtubers. The long term consequences of that schism, especially for those caught in the middle, are impossible to predict and depend entirely on how the streamers and viewers handle it.
While it's true a lot of vtubing is being influenced by Hololive, Cover has also noticed the bottleneck problem and is trying new ways to push vtubing into the main stream too. The most obvious example would be the expansion to the west and the dodgers collab while domestically, Suisei is breaking into the bigger mainstream entertainment sphere herself. Cover is also inviting and collabing with VAs for events and different projects and spreading not just Hololive but vtubing into different spheres and aspect of things and building themselves into a brand with vtubing as it's model.
The downside for Cover is that not every one of their talents are OK with this change and breaking into the main stream. We see that today with Chloe's announcement of graduation and the overall graduations this year alone. Ame, Aqua and now Chloe, sometimes this change in direction wasn't wat they initially signed up for.
@NekRulez plus cover were originally a idol corp and they made no apologises for it, but then they got popular because of that and still need to find something of a middle ground
If I could have my way my only request would be for vtubers to stay vtubers. I personally don't like it when they straddle both sides. I don't need to see shy Lily's ass, there are too many flesh tubers running around as it is
True although almost all non-JP vtubers aren't really part of the same vtubing culture, because JP vtubing culture is rooted in Japanese weeb culture, not just idol culture. That's why EN vtubers just don't scratch the same itch.
@@YouAreSleepyToo Hololive wasn't even originally idol-focused, they shifted sometime around 3rd gen iirc.
“I’ve always found it weird Vtubing is kinda like a genre instead of a method of presentation.” THANK YOU. I love the creativity Vtubing offers. As someone who is a writer and wanting to be a Vtuber, I’m excited to write lore and find artists to make my PNG. However, my biggest draw is that I don’t have to show my actual face. I get to keep my privacy. I grew up in the faceless UA-camr era and no one does that anymore. It feels like facecam or get out. So having an avatar as an option is finally letting me start perusing a childhood dream of mine. Yet it’s reduced to a niche. Instead of the streamer being in a niche because, oh, all he plays is Darkwood, he’s a niche because he has an avatar instead of the classic facecam. It’s sad and that thinking leads to folks not seeing how talented Vtubers can be. 😞
Agree, it's always good when anonymity is an option. But I don't think it's that weird for any medium to also have a bias towards a certain genre. Certain media favors certain genres. That's why you get some stories that can be told in books but have a hard time being adapted to the film screen. It's why longer books work better as TV shows rather than 2-hour films.
The advantages of VTubing also coincides with the needs of Otaku culture (anime avatars, introverts who want to hide real faces, etc etc) so it's no surprise that the anime-adjacent culture continues to dominate Vtubing.
My prediction: The connotations to idol culture will die (at least in the English side of things), but Vtubers won't. They're already getting more socially "acceptable" on the Anglosphere internet.
i feel like they wont die, but will be much weaker, for me personally i almost only watch Indie VTubers so its already gone or very weak, but unless all corperations disapear it wont happen, an also the fact that VTubing is closer to Otaku culture so it will inevitably have some crossover
I feel like Indie vtubers have already changed the culture so much that they don't feel the same as corporate vtubers. Indie vtuber culture focuses on the person behind the model, their personality, and also they're usually crazier in terms of they can do/say whatever they want since they do not follow the rules of any contract. Corporate vtuber culture is more about the group interacting with each other frequently on big collabs, concerts, doing music together as a group and choreographies, big sponsored events. And there's also so much variety between vtubers already, some focus on games, some on just chatting, asmr, roleplay, singing, drawing, 3d streams etc. We already reached a point where there's sub cultures within the vtuber culture. If anything, the old culture will just share the same level of popularity with the newer ones
OMG finally, standalone Rin Penrose videogames. I love this format already, genuinley
I agree with Rin on this one, Vtubing as a concept has tremendous potential that we can't even begin to imagine at the moment.
But to get there, the community is going to have to crash their face against the wall sometimes and go through the tough times that come with the very nature of change.
Vtubing is far from dead, but it needs to learn new tricks
That deadpan stare into the camera at 4:29 is gold. The mediums may change but Rin will always be peak comedy timing
VTubing is still a HUGELY niche intersection between Eastern & Western cultures around how content creators & idol celebrity overlap. The resaon that cultural aspect has maintained itself is that the most active adopters are largely introverted (as that's a huge advantage of the anonymity) and interested in being a part of that as a subculture, rather than merely using a Live2D model as a form identity-obscuring technology for typical content presentation.
This stands out since most of the standard English-speaking Internet culture is heavily shaped by American norms infused with little bits of homogenization from European assimilation of that. China is largely walled-off from shaping the global internet while their Internet is heavily self-contained, so this has a particularly unique "feel" to it (on top of all the crazy post-2020 things impacting the tech industry still).
I figure it's a lot like how using anime/game characters as user avatars on web forums was niche, before the number of "normal" people online meant it became commonplace to see everywhere. How long that takes is anyone's guess as things like LLM AI and other changes to streaming could suddenly shift any of that in unpredictable ways.
I’m a vtuber (small) and never really understood the whole debut and idol thing. I’m also from the US and only watch a few. I just use it as a medium to be like the streamers I used to watch as a kid playing games and such. So I just stream like the regular folks, but just with a model. I only found out recently folks make songs and do idol-y stuff. I was shocked!
To be clear, a good number of bigger EN vtubers come from voice acting and/or the "utaite" scene (doing song covers) - even Bao was originally just a singer, which people can't believe anymore with the direction her content has gone over the years.
It's like how SynthesizerV is advertising itself to regular musicians, which is increasing the scope of vocal synths from just the anime-adjacent Vocaloid subculture to a mainstream audience. I think it's the English speaking side in particular, but I don't know as much about what goes on in the Japanese side. I'm very conflicted about it because I'm happy to see vocal synths do well but I'm also extremely emotionally connected to the English-speaking subculture/community as it is and I'm terrified of losing that. We're very queer, neurodivergent, mentally ill, and artist-focused. The community has issues, like any community, but my experience has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's meant the world to me. It got me through my worst mental health years. But the more mainstream vocal synths become, the more I'm at risk of losing that. IDK if people feel similarly about vtubing? I'm a very casual vtuber viewer, so idk if losing a meaningful community would make sense in that context or not. But based on the discussion I've seen online, I feel kinda alone in dreading the mainstream-ification of vocal synths, so I guess it would be comforting to know if other people might be having a similar experience 😓
Hopefully it remains, would be a shame to lose another hyperfixation of mine
another?
@@swwl5461 Yes....I would like not to elaborate further if you don't mind.
I feel that, while I wouldn't call vtubing a hyper fixation, slowly falling out of love with magic the gathering due to the companies decisions and policies has been a slow and sad process that I don't care to repeat
@@NightjarAvesThat's how I'm feeling after the Fauna announcement, I just like watching the girls have fun, do variety content and interact with each other. I don't mind having idol-lite aspects, and 1 or 2 big concerts a year. But I feel like it'll drive Vtubing into a direction I won't like, I like the corpos for how a group of talents interact.
I have currently been seeing more people (specially in the indie scene) that adopt this idea of Vtubing as a medium/tool moreso than a "format". There's even one particular one that blew up some months ago that didn't even intend to stream in the first place, but randomly post rant videos that would maybe be seen by 3 people...but turns out hundreds of people enjoyed that and her audience is majorly made of non-vtuber viewers and some are even lowkey vtuber haters that made an exception for her. It was quite the surprise and I do agree that lowering the barrier for entry is what is needed so that more of those "mainstream-minded" people feel compelled to watch and then throw any prejudice away up until the point of becoming regulars.
Totally agree. The whole idol culture thing is kinda a cultural clash that doesn’t resonate well outside Japanese culture where it’s already a norm. I think we to an extent thought naively that the participation of more Western audiences would help shift that norm to be a bit more healthy, I think it’s clear that hasn’t happened now.
Like, I genuinely think it’s awesome that so many people get to experience their dreams being idols that never would have before. And there was a big attraction to the idol scene originally because I think although existing Western audiences were aware of the subculture they had never experienced it really so there was a sense of novelty.
Now, though I think most longtime fans have experienced the enough of the idol culture that the novelty has worn off. The whole Kayfabe nature of VTubing sort compounds existing issues around parasocial relationships too, and it’s hard not to wonder after a while “is all this good for me/the talent/the community?” after a while too.
I have been seeing more and more people use Live2D models as just their standard personal choice of representation online and that seems to be the future for “Vtubing”. For years the space has been dominated by the VIdol niche, and probably will be for a long while now but I think the VIdol community is going to be a distinct community in the overall space as the tech grows into just another way of doing UA-cam/Twitch/Streaming/Videos.
I do think that VIdols will continue to be a thing, but I also think that it has probably peaked already as a trend. Places like Hololive will keep on plugging along but have probably expanded to their maximum extent (or have over expanded and will need to address this). The boom days are long past and I think we are starting to see a contraction as companies are refocusing their brands to be idol first and streamer second. The dumbest thing about the present VIdol industry is that it has the same issues as the regular idol industry in terms of longevity, and the whole “I want an anime girl AKB48” thing baked it into the formula. The endless new debuts kinda canabalize the existing fandom by splitting its attention constantly and meanwhile the emphasis will always be on getting newer talents and debuting them vs supporting existing talents, unless the existing talents are very valuable to the company… and even then none of them are irreplaceable. None of that is really a problem for someplace like Hololive, but for talents, aside from the anonymity, what’s the difference between that and being a regular idol?
Thanks Kyro and I do appreciate seeing Rin discussing stuff like this... An interesting clip and perspective. I'm not totally convinced, but I've been thinking about it for a bit now.
There is a niche subculture and it's heavily influenced by JP culture (specifically idol culture). I'm fully into it, I love a lot of Hololive content and that their English branch has made it more accessible to me. But I think it would be cool for vtubers to do things outside of that culture. It should definitely be treated as a method of presentation - And I'd be down for more video-form content from vtubers. I just don't know if it's all that likely to change.
I think vtubing is inherently niche. I'm not sure the barriers to entry can be removed as much as Rin suggests - My experience with people who aren't into it is that "??animated person?" seems to be the big barrier. Interest in that is bigger in Japan, the biggest corps are Japanese (Holo, Niji... Even Brave IIRC) and within those corps the JP side is bigger than any western-targeted branch. A lot of the small Western corps are falling apart these days. The JP influence is strong, and I think a lot of people that get into vtubing will keep following it because that's what everyone else does.
We do have corps like Vshojo and Phase, and I do think have developed their own different culture from Holo/Niji - But they're still not really a mainstream thing. Then again, maybe the issue is that a lot of those western corps that are falling apart styled themselves as "Holo/Niji-lite", and not being able to pull the audience from them. Phase and Vshojo less so, and that might be why they're doing well. If we get a western corp - Or some independent streamers - that totally break from JP culture and blow up, then I can see more vtubers stepping away from the existing JP subculture.
And you know what, to counter myself slightly, vtubing has changed over the years. Lately, it seems that these days Holo is stepping away from the *graduation* terminology. Debuts depend. If you're joining a corporation, whether you cut the link to the old persona entirely, or if you're 'just' getting presented to the corp's audience for the first time - I think not doing a debut is a missed opprotunity. That said, you can and should do more than just present some slides. On the other hand, if you're just starting streaming as an indie - Or you're already streaming and have decided to grab an avatar instead of a facecam (or were streaming without a representation), then yeah, I can see some skipping the debut hubub, and others trying to make a big creative stream out of it.
There's one thing I do disagree with though - The idea that vtubing in it's current form is as big as it's going to get. Sometimes it looks like growth is slowing, but Hololive's selling out bigger stadiums every year, and now they're doing it outside Japan too. Gura's growth and numbers were absolutely mad and have slowed now, but I wonder if it was simply unsustainable and now more sustainable growth is taking over.
Yeah... doing Japanese thing outside of Japan isn't good idea. It's not like niche isn't here - it's just not big enough, and have different interests. It will change over time obviously.
I don't see why vtubers won't follow the same growth as anime in the West. It started as the weird asian cartoons for nerds. Then people started to recognize it as valid art and entertainment. And now it's basically mainstream, and western animators use anime inspired style. It's not the dominate form of entertainment over here, but it's not a niche subculture that only sticks to jp 'tradition.'
Like it or not, that's probably the future of vtubers.
*run that back, did you say fuckin staidums??*
One part to point out is that there's a difference between drawing live crowds and other aspects of the entertainment business. All Japan Pro Wrestling was having its biggest live gates ever during the 90s...yet their TV ratings dropped (to the point their weekly show got moved to *midnight*) and they didn't have the presence in mainstream pop culture that they did in prior decades. The latter turned out to be the better predictor of their future, as they crashed in the 2000s and have never reached their 70s-80s heights in overall business since.
Basically, you only need a small army of dedicated sickos for live events to do well, but that's not enough for a large company to be sustainable in general.
In the past when We've thought too hard about the non-indie Vtubing industry, its intersection with the infamously exploitative/parasocial idol industry, those huge official (expensive) events both online & in real life meant to bring in more people just to watch some girls play Minecraft, the blurry line between the real people & the characters they don't own any legal rights to yet are treated as one & the same by anyone with rational thought, all the "lore", we'd often end up like that one image of Mr. Krabs spiraling into a mental breakdown.
Recently we started thinking of it like the relationship between a voice actor & the character they play, as opposed to a person who's online identity is 100% owned by a corpo, which has helped us a lot, but still. This is coming from somebody who's generally already bought in. We can only imagine how 'inaccessible' the current Vtubing industry must be for those who haven't.
Vtubing will change but one thing that will never change is Wartubing.
Sometimes I forget how insightful Rin is.
I'm not sure changing something unique to be just like every other boring creator on the platform is the greatest way to grow.
Most vtubers, as much as I like them, do standard streamer stuff, just with a vtuber avatar.
@@kotorandcorvid4968 i think a lot of us just attribute this to the EN scene but we aren't familiar with the Japanese content-creator cliches so we don't notice it there. The impression i get is it's a thing there as well, considering how much of an initial buzz Salome drew for being a "throwback" to the pure kayfabe vtubers.
Vtubing did not start with idol culture, it started with animal personas. Ages ago you could map your face onto less complicated animal avatars and stream that. It just got big with idols. Which still has late joiners believe you need lore and full animated intro videos and what not.
The only thing I kind of want to see more in regular VTubing is the "it's a group of friends hanging out irl" collabs, but those are very expensive compared to everyone involved just streaming for that time. So something mostly a big company can afford...
The novelty appeal of having an anime rig isn't gonna bring viewers by itself anymore, vtubers just need to make sure their content is interesting/engaging like any regular content creator
Also trends tend to work in a circular way, things explode, become stale and then become nostalgic and then evolve and becomes stale again.
Most of VTubing is just "LMAO. A girl this cute shouldn't be saying something this unhinged."
vTubing is a medium, not a culture in and of itself.
It has a strong connection to idol culture, but we’re already seeing it being broken out of on the western side of vTubing.
Vtubing in the west at least has almost nothing to compare with idol culture. Read into how japanese idols are actually treated and you'll realize that even the worst of the Nijisanji drama is miles better than idol corps.
There's a reason idols that ended up doing JAVs would talk about how the new job treated them better tham the old.
I think there are three potential futures (based on past experience)
- The "Job"
- The "Celebrity"
- The Hobby
"Job" vtubers will shift to just using their model (or maybe in the case of customer/tech support workers, use it to protect their privacy) where a face-cam would be required. Fire me if you don't like it.
"Celebrity" vtubers will be those that basically reach film/television/music stardom and will be limited to only a very (single digit) few that can keep treading water next to IRL people. Think about how Muppets work. Think about how many things that Stephen Hawking was guest starred on. I see Vtuber's "being" in shows with IRL people via telepresence machines (we have seen some uses of these in television shows, but usually as "the joke", rather than a legit guest star.
"The Hobby", will be everyone else who keeps making youtube and twitch (or adult site) content and jumping through all the hoops the platform wants them to to remain on it. TikTok and Facebook/Instagram/Threads already shadowban Vtubers.
love rin clips
Reminder that Rin is a UA-camr first and foremost, and then a streamer, and then a VTuber
Yeah rin raised a good point here ,I agree with her
Clickbait into calm reasonable conversation my oshi
Ironmouse was the most subscribed to channel on Twitch temporally and is still one of the biggest channels on the platform.
Guy who rarely gets into V-Tubers speaking here, so ignore me if my opinion sucks.
Personally, the biggest thing that prevents me from getting into them (corporate ones at least) is that whole idol aspect of it. The idea of this established character that almost acts like a brand and has to do very certain things in a very certain way just really limits the potential ceiling of my interest. There are moments with some where I can feel the whole idol personality they’ve created just sorta yank on the person’s chain mid-sentence as they think “Wait, can’t say/do that, gotta stick to the brand.”. Whenever I see that sorta thing happen (which admittedly, while not uncommon, isn’t an everyday thing), chances are I’m not coming back for a second stream.
Now a UA-camr or streamer having a brand or an identity isn’t inherently a bad thing. After all, one of the biggest UA-camrs ever has the nickname of “The King Of Five Nights At Freddy’s”. But with V-Tubers, especially corporate ones, that brand or identity feels less like a supplement to the talent and more like a limitation. To use Markiplier as an example, yes he’s most well known for his horror game Let’s Plays like Amnesia or FNAF, but some of my favourite videos of his involve the expression of himself as a person. Like his Poly Bridge video where he either put his engineering degree experience out for the world to see. I remember thinking “Wow! I never knew that about him!”. With a lot of corpo V-Tubers, I very rarely get that. And the reason that they don’t want the more…unstable fans to know too much about the real faces behind the talents is completely fair. I’ve seen those people. God could not save them. But as an unfortunate result, they have to stick to a manufactured personality and brand that creates a sense of detachment between me and them. I’m not watching them, I’m watching them play a character. And while I get why people like that, I prefer to see people in their truest sense.
Sorry, I probably phrased this all super badly. As I said, not inherently a V-Tuber guy outside of a few I occasionally watch, like Rin.
it's surprising how much her point went over people's heads at the start.
It's not like vtubers will be excluded to one corner of the internet, it'll just end up being "a way" for someone to stream, vtubing is just tubing, with a v(irtual avatar)
Yippee for 5 minute clip
Vtubing is interactive anime. It will not die.
I hope Vtubing never ends, I need this in my life.
Always appreciate Rin`s real talk
I always felt like UA-cam is for videos and edited content while Twitch is where people want to watch live streams so it felt odd to me that a majority of the VTubers are on UA-cam as streamers only. The only VTubes that I know who does videos would be Limealicious while streaming on twitch and soon to be Rin once her schemes go into effect. Maybe if more VTubers start doing edited content, more people will be able to watch since it's easier to watch highlights over VODs.
I believe Vtubers like Kizuna Ai and Azuma Lim did a ton of videos/edited contents, the latter even do vlogger and motorcycle content with English sub.
Omaru Polka did a TV show-like series. She even went skydiving or something like that there.
Squiji makes videos about designing vtuber and criticizing some designs.
Vtubers started out doing edited content such as Kizuna Ai but Nijisanji, alongside popularising Live2D over the then dominant 3D, also popularised streaming over videos.
Hoshimachi Suisei back when she was an indie vtuber was more of the video uploader rather than streamer style. Leaving those behind for streams after entering Hololive (and more recently streaming less frequently as she focuses more on her music career, which was always her goal anyway. She had called herself an idol even as an indie vtuber with a model she drew and rigged uploading edited videos).
I might be the odd one out - But I find UA-cam streams are more interesting than Twitch streams in general. I can't describe it well but it feels like a clear difference to me. Maybe it's just because I don't like Twitch's website.
@@blackfirehedgehog7725 I haven't watched Twitch much admittedly so I don't have much experience in it but from what I have seen of it I also prefer UA-cam streams.
@@blackfirehedgehog7725 I used to be in the twitch only camp for streams and thought of youtube streams as weird, but over time I've grown to like the youtube streams more. A lot of that is how horrible the twitch website is. I think Twitch is being in mishandled in a way that isn't going to cause them to go out of business, but is opening the market for youtube when Twitch used to have streaming locked down.
I think a big part with having VTubing entering the main stream is just that there are still a lot of people who are anti-vtuber for no good reason. When Ironmouse broke the twitch sub record she got a bunch of hate for it, because she was a vtuber and that kind of stuff happens all the time where a lot of people will just right off a creator for using a vtuber model. I do think this is changing over time, but it's definitely still an aspect a lot of people don't jive with. That, and the "fake" anime voices for some reason...
Being real with you, even as someone who's followed vtubers for years, the extremely high-pitched voices and "airhead" gimmicks still feel fake AF to me because the only women i know who act like that or even enjoy that stuff are the anime-brained ones. As a regular at a powerlifting gym, i'm much more used to deeper-voiced and stern-faced women who want to project an image of strength and competence; not to say that's their whole personality, but they only let their guard down at all once you've been around enough to prove you're not a creep. Notice how the stereotypical ~kawaii~ vtubers attract overwhelmingly male audiences!
The way I see it, indie vtubing or streamers that happen to have a png/l2d model will, more or less, forever go strong. They may have, on average, lower budgets available for basically everything from advertising to large projects. But I do think that it's much more about presentation.
Corporate or agency vtubing is where I am more skeptical and share many of Rin's views. Because it's the ultimate scheduling hell.Since the industry's main selling point is the vtuber model and the talent themselves without a clear identity as streamers, agencies kind of have to bring new talents every now and then. Which conflicts with existing talents. So those of the same agency have to be shifted around and maybe go on a little hiatus. Where every new wave only makes this problem worse. But I think we have also reached the point where the industry can't really grow as much anymore. Barring another pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. The audience and its time and money are finite resources, after all.
If Gura were able to be a streamer that happens to use a Live2D model while also having the backing of holomyth though? She'd definitely be over 5 million subscribers. Probably more tbh. Like this however? Growth will hit limits and she was lucky to be among the first when the boom happened.
The thing with Holo in particular is they appear to be encouraging talents to move to Japan more and more; Bijou is a particularly striking example to me since she's very basic with the language atm. Word is they're making more of their big events mandatory for everyone, so they don't want to drown in travel costs. Also don't underestimate the impact of that Holoearth project - they've been working on that for years, nobody seems to care about it, yet they're still sinking millions into it. That's the kind of stuff that kills a company's golden age...look up what the XFL did to the WWF.
Niji never seemed as invested in the western audience as Cover, considering even NijiEN's boom period was mainly fueled by the Chinese fanbase. With their EN branch on its slow death spiral, i do think there's something to the notion that the traditional Big 2 companies will have a smaller place in the overall market within a couple years or so.
I wonder how the fandom for Vtubers if it catches on even more will look. Currently it often feels like there are three camps: Quite mellow fans, incredibly sweet and supportive communities, and the most toxic fans who don't even stop to remember Vtubers are people not AI or fictional characters. So it will be really interesting to see these three camps morph and change as a wider pool of people become fans and I really hope the toxic ones get more mellow not worse
i think vtubing is headed for its own Gamergate at some point given the clash of cultures involved; many of the 4chan-type fans even now are saying they got into vtubing because gaming & anime got too woke, so there's going to be a backlash from them as the medium moves further and further into the mainstream. They hate Twitch vtubers with a passion for precisely that reason...
Gatekeeping, is good. "Becoming more accessible" is usually the beginning of the end for most niche content, and the easiest way to grow your fan base, while also losing those that originally supported you.
"We had the big boom in 2020"
So what you're saying is... we need another pandemic /j
Damn right before fauna too
The people with largest sub counts on YT (which as we all know doesn't matter all that much) are by far channels that focus on content for gen Z and younger, with a few exceptions. I would guess that it's partly because kids are more impressionable, but also because that's the generations who grew up with VODs and streams being already there as a medium. I reckon in 5 to 10 years, when the generations that are currently starting to interact with online spaces and who will or are growing up in a world where vtubing is a thing, the popularity will grow that much more. Cause when you see criticisms of vtubers, it's almost always about people either misunderstanding them or thinking it's weird, and that's a stigma that's gonna go away with time.
I think Vtubing is not that ez to translate to other mediums cause its counter intuitive, why would you need a complex and rigged live2D model... For an essay type edited vids? People being doing both animated and as she mentioned PNG charcter thingy for years... The whole "point of Vtubing" is to be able to show your reactions/expresions in real time while either keeping anonimity to some degree (or cause you want to look/be associated with the anime avatar) so doing prerecorded content kinda... Doesnt need that?
It can definitely be done and the whole existance and subculture of clips and edited vods speak to it, but they are born ox the live interaction
But what the hell do I know? The 🅱️rince is an actual Vtuber and I am just some guy watching clips
If we're talking purely Live2D, then yeah. They can be useful, but I can see how they're limited.
I saw quite a lot of 3d vtubers that did pre-edited contents though (Polka's series, AzuLim's vlogs, Kizuna Ai's vids, Squiji's design tips).
And if we count NakeyJakey's video as essays (I say if, because I'm sure some people don't), then I can see how full-track 3d can be useful.
@Hell_O7 I mean its not "needed" but It can definitely be done and it does work, I for one watch some vids from "Dice Queen Di" where its mostly talking about ttrpg stuff with a 3D model, I do enjoy it and just like people show themselves in edited vids it helps convey body language, but depending on the model and how much of a "brand" you want to put into the model representing you sounds like a significant extra cost for a medium that doesn't "require it" (it does add to it of course)
The big thing with an animated model is the setting they can be put in. We're starting to see some vtubers do 3d streams that treat the model as an art asset for little segments. The problem with that is it's currently expensive for the other assets. The price will probably droop though. 3d mocap used to be millions of dollars. Now it's down to a few thousand. It's just finding enough free assets to combine together which fit the art style and spending all the time to put them together into segments. Lots of singers end up in vtubing currently, but as more people who see it as a tool to tell stories get into it that will probably change.
Hot take: Strong Bad has always been a VTuber and we just didn't notice because UA-cam didn't exist yet.
Another boom can happen, but it will take a lot of effort and opportunities.
The mainstream audiences is a huge demographic that VTuber isn't yer penetrated as you said. VTubers has the same variety of contents types as the whole platform, and even whole different arts styles. Actually if we created a Cartesian pair of Art Styles and Content Styles that is in the domain of VTubing, we would not get full coverage of platform variety yet as of the end of 2024. So it's just that we haven't found the right combi, but we got an optimized combi and it's plateaued now.
Perhaps as more and more LLM AI VTuber comes into the scene, and the advancement of humanoid robots, the "Ghost In The Shell" effect will make huge fuss in the industry, as VTuber would be possible to touch real grass in their models, not just IRL (Well, someone actually had their model over imposed in their IRL live footage now). But, really, it's only 2026 that we will see this fuss.
They cooked here
Wait this was before the Fauna announcement? God, you can just tell how something big is happening with VTubing.
Well, change is always bound to happen
I don't think vtubing or any niche hobby will ever truly be accessable to the mainstream audiences.
I never really got into streamers until I got into vtubers.
Even then, the people I watch as not-vtubers are primarily making videos.
It's not a phase rinmom
As a complete non VTuber watcher im just gonna give my 2 cents. I think people´s biggest issue in general is the anonymity. It may be a tired and obvious point. But I have discussed this with a lot of people and it just seems to me that people are a LOT more accepting to "Public" or "open" or whatever you call it Vtubers such as AmaLee. It´s a lot like how people dislike AI. It´s just uncanny to many if not most. Even in the most CGI heavy film. You still have actors. The examples are many.
And I'm included here. The like 3 Vtubers I watch regularly are people I knew before they went animated. Maybe it´s just the fundamental need for a human connection, and most can´t see past the model and the hidden person? I dunno. Im just theorizing.
Did something happen in 2020 that influenced vtubing and how every consumes content?
REAL and possibly true
Maybe western people don’t see it my way, or eastern people also don’t understand my point but, I genuinely prefer“virtual UA-camrs” to focus on the basic formula for their content. Independent, entertainment, and efforts you can see. I know that’s not how they get popularized but, idk, sustainability wise, I feel like back to basic is the key. This clip reminds me of that honestly.
Honestly there’s still so much of the Western market that hasn’t been tapped into. I think it will be good for VTubers if we can get people to simply see us as UA-camrs/Internet personalities with a virtual avatar.
and thats the problem for a majority of people they simply don't like the whole model thing or it's a bunch of things.Especially on youtube and that being...
1-nothing but react content alot of the times
2- sexuelisation of the avatars
3-being loud and sometimes obnoxious depending on the person
Ibai (Spanish streamer) has filled the Camp Nou stadium with 90k fans.. several times. In Japan hololive vtubers are growing even larger, regularly breaking out of the streaming games gig: Marine is promoting SoftBank smartphones, Miko is promoting McDonalds food, Suisei is walking into the Budoukan, SEGA got Korone to be Sonic's main promoter...
When will a EN-speaking streamer do something like that?
Idk Rin, looking at the EN-speaking regular streaming scene as a target is aiming low.
It's a scene that's is having difficulties growing compared to the way it's growing in other languages.
I will miss some of the meta and culture but it’s probably for the best that it becomes a tool not a subculture
Btw Rin, Ironmouse is the biggest Vtuber, and she just collabed with the biggest streamer on the planet in Kai Cenat and people in his community have been hating on her
Depending on how tech and global Economies develop in the near future, we might see a shift into VR. But cute, often (not always!) oversexualized anime girls will *never* go away.
That´s like thinking people will someday suddenly stop buying bread for no reason.
For me personally, I like working with V-tubers (didn´t try it myself yet) because that´s where all my hobbies converge. 3D production, roleplaying, nerdy tech stuff, music, it´s all here.
2:47 CookieSwirlC
There is a closer cealing for idol focused vtubers but people are already doing other stuff with the vtuber tech independently.
I agree.
Treating Live2D/3D modeling as a genre is like treating nightcore as a music genre.
The technology itself is not a genre. We will keep seeing it, like it or not.
Vtubing is kinda different from the technology itself. Vtubing formed in a niche streaming market for otaku fanbase. I believe the term Vtubing cannot be separated from the subculture itself. So, Vtubing CAN die, because it is more than just a technology.
But would it? Probably not. I think it has its own merits.
This vtuber streams on her job in a game lol
Real
Whenever I tell people about a Vtuber, but they don't know what a Vtuber is, I refer to them as Streamers or UA-camrs. In a way they are streamers/youtubers.
Example sentences:
"Oh, sometimes I watch the streamer Gawr Gura on UA-cam."
"My favorite is Gawr Gura. She's a UA-camr who does a lot of streaming content."
Personally, I think vtubing is really underutilized as a storytelling medium. There are a few creators who essentially use it to create real-time cartoons, but they're niche.
I'm a z-tier vtuber. I never did a debut, lol
Rin's view is still very skewed to the content creation side of vtubing. She still thinks that Gura's 4M+ is the biggest thing to happen in vtubing. I personally think Suisei's 100M+ song is the current peak. The metric for vtubing as a medium is constantly shifting, and more importantly, moving UPWARDS.
How niche can a Vtuber be if she gets to sing Take Me Out To The Ballgame for a stadium full of people? I still can’t believe THAT happened.
how many people in that stadium do you think knew, or cared, or care now, who gura is? be serious.
There's also the option to look at the Twitch numbers, where Ironmouse recently became the biggest streamer on the platform.
If you consider that, then the idea may come that while Gura is not huge compared to the biggest UA-cam channels, she is doing well compared to most UA-cam *streamers*.
@@dingusuhum Well they definitely all saw the queue, and so must have wondered at least about it.
@@dingusuhum given the line I was in for the special tickets, a lot of them
I kinda agree and disagree with rin, I don't think vtubers will just stop, if anything they'll just become normalised and change from being purely anime girls and a few outliers. If anything it'll be less idol culture and more like how comic cons changed from being a weird nerd thing to a mainstream trade event
Tbh it may be selfish if me but I kinda hope Vtubing doesn't make it mainstream. It's probably because I've been a fan of vtubing since the very start of Kizuna Ai, because I really enjoy the culture with kayfabe and such, I really like that aspect as it makes it such a neat thing compared to regular old streaming.
gotta be honest, this feel like the exact same way to what it was with anime, except that the actual fans didn't want it to grow that big to reach normies(?), nobody wanted to watch or support anime because ''cringe'' and ''let's bully that weeb'', until it got popular and then everyone wanted a piece of anime to get into the trend and not be left behind and make money, now a lot of people want anime but at the same time wants to control it and shame everyone who doesn't follow their view on what they wan't in anime....wich ended in a lot of the crap that is happening with anime lately, vtubers are in the part of not being mainstream because ''ahh a vtuber girl, must be a man'', ''cringe, weird horny shit'' and '' f*** PDFiles''
While I've watched a lot of clips of "idol" VTubers... well, okay, most of those clips are of Rin, the vast majority of VTubers who I watch live are pretty much just like any other streamer, and they just happen to be using a VTuber model as a form of anonymity and self-expression. The cultural shift of VTubing away from idol culture is already well underway.
All I know is I like Live 2D streamers more than Flesh streamers. It's not even about the weeb stuff. The anonymity of Live 2D gives the streamer a way to explore an identity for themselves that flesh streamers can't. It's sort of authentic in its inauthenticity.
It’s already changing and fast. Look at Hololive (and Niji before them). The EN branches of Japanese companies are being pulled into the idol (song and dance) culture and they’re losing their Western culture girls. Western culture vtubers are streamers first who have reasons for using a 2D avatar. For most the ‘graduation’, ‘debut’ and ‘oshi’ terms are leftover from their weeaboo fandoms. To me idols are tightly controlled property and trapped in a lifestyle. This is more livable to someone who grew up in the Asian cultures.
Honestly, I think if PNGtubers also count as VTubers, then why not the intermediate step? Sure, it might mean that several creators are VTubers without realizing it -- I don't know if PhantomStrider, DarkFluff, Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions, or Talebot of Tale Foundry think of themselves as VTubers or even know what one is -- but they do have digital avatars, and even though they're not rigged, they move.
vtubers are like animation to me. it's less of a genre and more of a medium to do youtube stuff
That's the problem, a lot of vtuber fans don't want to see vtubing as a medium grow and expand. I get gatekeeping as a premise, but you can't let others dictate your enjoyment of a hobby.
Rin just running around her card shop, full-on talking to herself, while the customers are definetly very uncomfortable. XD
Those fans are the ones who hate gaming & anime for going too ~woke~, which is part of how they got so into vtubers in the first place. Imagine the reaction if a big corpo debuts a black person as one of their talents, for instance...
They already debuted vanta and sana@@joshthefunkdoc
Onwards to 9 More Years of VTubing ~
I want vtubing to be as niche and small and tight nit as possible
i think you can have that, as long as you accept that the vtubing you love will be a smaller niche within a niche over time. My suggestion would be to prepare yourself for the possibility that the idol style will no longer be the primary method of vtubing at some point in the future, and take pleasure in smaller spaces away from the normies.
I mean, we get vtubers being nominated for the most popular streamers like Ironmouse on Twitch or Pekora consistently being in the top of female streamers on UA-cam. How much bigger do you want it to get?
Also, I don't think 'becoming more accessible to the mainstream' is necessarily a good thing. Vtubing is fun precisely because it's its own subculture.
Hmmm. I mean, in absolute terms, 4 million people subscribed to someone's content is massive - I don't know if it's reasonable to ever expect the sort of lunatic success of early UA-cam (proportionally) for an individual channel. As things get more & more decentralized the "cap" is going to go down.
Not that I think it would be bad for vtubing to diversify more. But it's not going to help anyone to set unrealistic expectations for what "success" looks like.
If you want more success then abandoning your unique niche is what you have to do. Which means abandoning your original fans and identity.
It’s called “selling out” and the process began as soon as hololive en became so popular.
There’s already a joke about “immersion breaking”. Ironmouse brings her boyfriend on stream. Bao does full rl streams.
Vtubing will die. “Using virtual” avatars won’t. It sucks but. It is the way of things.
here is my thought, ok... we have live2d in games but its usually very basic. we have MOCAP in games, but always 3d. So... When are we going to get live2d mocap in games? you might say, ok, that sounds like a lot of work. but... not really? the reason why vtuber models take so long to rig is because the streamer is always the main character. they have to have the most flash outfits. in video games, you can stand to have characters who are more normal looking and less complex.
and like actually not even video games! i don't know how much mocap is utilized in 3d animation anyway but imagine a whole anime or movie with vtuber actors...
when do you think this whole vtchuber phase will be over? are you just gonna do a tom scott
I think if vtubing is gonna grow instead of backslide into obscurity THE FANS AND COMMUNITY needs to change. The community is absolutely abysmal and chock full of people that should have their right to exist in the community revoked. Earlier this year I sold off all of the stuff I managed to gather for my debut because I absolutely loathe the community...I didn't want to entertain ungrateful, entitled, downright disturbed people. I still love the medium, but the fans will be the death of it.
That's because the anti-woke 4chan/kiwifarms crowd who fell out of love with gaming/anime for those reasons are the ones who got into vtubing. The most popular form of that subculture was corporate from the get-go and built on a foundation of controlling women's behavior, so it's sadly a natural fit for them. =/
This is my thoughts exactly. Vtubing will never go away but the way for it to move forward is to just be a different method of content creation instead of its own thing in the corner. The barrier to entry was previously defined by language barrier and idol culture stuff but that’s slowly going away as the big corpos run into audience bottlenecks and stop being the key drivers of innovation in the space.
But HOW to become mainstream is the problem. I'm too stupid to think of anything. ^_^
Most of the top 10 most popular VTubers on Twitch are people already tiptoe-ing their way into doing the standard Twitch influencer activities while maintaining an avatar. Mousey streamed with Kai Cenat for goodness sake.
Hololive has a tremendous advantage in UA-cam subscriptions, but that doesn't distinguish between people who still actively engage with the content and pay for it, versus people who subscribed back during the COVID-19 quarantines were widespread, and just never unsubbed.