Not sure this is the right com, but it feels closest. Just saw the announcement that the Hololive Vtuber Coco is leaving. She didn't give a reason, but people are assuming it has to do with the antis she's been hounded by since referring to Taiwan as Taiwan when going over analytics in a stream. I'm sad to see her go, she was never my favorite but I liked some of her stuff and she's a big part of hololive. However, I just do not get the insane level of hatred towards China and communism these reddit weebs are just spilling everywhere. Do they honestly think Xi has a list like "1. genocide 2. bully Vtuber"? I am just so tired of the sinophobia in internet cultures. I'm tired of reactionary weebs. I'm tired of people saying they "don't want political shows/games/streamers/whatever" but want to just spread the most fascist takes possible. Sorry if this is barely comprehensible. I'm tired, sad, and angry. I love anime and Vtubers, but why are so many of the people who watch it just so incredibly awful?
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It's just people being parasocial and getting attached to media personalities, like how people get upset when a late night talk show host quits or when a podcast or youtube channel breaks up. They get used to hanging out with their fake friends and when that gets taken away it's like they're 8 and their best friend is moving away.
With vtubers you also have them retiring their personas entirely which adds a sense of finality which you don't otherwise really get unless someone dies
I think part of it is that unlike normal celebrity, entertainer or whatever, when a vtuber calling it quit, the character their fan like so much just basically die, no more content, online presence or anything at all, gone forever.
Vtubers are kind of an emotional crutch for a lot of people, someone easy to hang out with and get to know without having to really jump through the hoops of a real relationship. If someone is a shut-in or hasn't left their house in the last year, or just doesn't have a lot going on in their life, this can be their main sort of interaction. This is not very good, but I honestly prefer they obsess over Vtubers than become the worst kind of incel. I am not at all trying to be insulting(and am in fact calling myself out) when I say that 2 of the most popular Vtubers, Watame and Pekora, are both trained as kindergarten teachers and this explains why their fans like them. So yeah, it's like a friend is just kinda leaving for forever. Yes, they need more real friends.
I guess the ephemeral nature of vtubers is also somewhat unusual in the Western content creator paradigm where people typically never log off- I can think of a bunch of content creators who have been pumping out stuff and cultivating their audiences for over a decade now and in some cases since before the first Obama administration.
People usually don't go away unless they literally fucking die or get cancelled REALLY hard
Yeah. Once they log off, that's it.