6 ms·

VTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide

109 points by pwim 2mo ago

krige 2mo ago
That's a bit... late to the party. I can't find when the article was published, but the phenomenon "went worldwide" several years ago by the means of COVID. These days the vtubing as an industry is in a somewhat stable state, if not a possible decline, going by viewership hours over the same period. Many big EN and JP names have already retired too.
- rmunn 2mo ago
  It quotes figures from Q1 of 2026, so it was definitely published this year.
  - flobosg 2mo ago
    According to the article metadata: "datePublished":"2026-07-16T08:18:37+09:00"
- valorzard 2mo ago
  Yeah it really hit its peak with gen 1 of Hololive English I want to say, along with the explosion of indie vtubers on twitch and stuff that followed. A lot of female content creators I followed online became vtubers. HikaruStation used to be a singer, but now she’s a whale Vtuber by the name of Bao. AmaLee (of LeeAndLie) also got famous through anime song covers, but she’s mostly a vtuber now. I think the current vtuber “market” is a lot harder to break into now than it used to be though.
- maeln 2mo ago
  For the big VTuber corporate brand, for sure. But the indie VTuber scene as exploded. It used to be fairly expensive to get in the hobby, and you needed to be technically savy or have someone be for you. Now there is a lot of free and open-source VTuber software that don't need complex setup, just a webcam. And you can easily commission a few hundred bucks an artist to get your whole character and animation. This made the barrier almost inexistent. And since showing your actual face was a big stop for a lot of people, vtubing has allowed a lot of people to get into streaming. There are thousands of <100s viewers vtuber right now.
  - krige 2mo ago
    It's not 2018 anymore, so that's not quite true. By now free models have been there forever, and indies have been using them for as long. I mean, Filian has already been using one over 4 years ago. Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms.
    - echelon 2mo ago
      > Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms. Can you expand on this? Are they not able to sell merch since they don't "own" their design? How popular are they? Have they considered buying the model from the authors?
      - ffsm8 2mo ago
        that fillian controversy gives me flashbacks.... suprisingly little of that controversy seems to have survived, even though its only been 2 years. this one is the only thing i could scrounge up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOyo1BM6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOyo1BM6Y - but always take what he says with a barrel of salt, he'S more trying to drum up drama then actually portrait things truthfully
      - krige 2mo ago
        It's a complex/murky matter with lots of allegations in every direction that's hard to summarize properly. The absolute barest bone / neutral summary is that Filian is very popular (3.2 mil subs on yt, 1.3 mil subs on twitch, although she may be retiring currently, or is doing an extensive publicity stunt as her channels and socials are wiped clean). Two years ago, the model's creator announced [0] that Good Smile is making a nendo based off his model for an unnamed vtuber, and that they were not informed beforehand, let alone credited or compensated. They were trying to contact Good Smile and said vtuber to resolve the matter. After a few days Jingo posted an extensive message [1] that the situation was resolved and the parties are cooperating, further noting, among other things, that "free to use in VRchat" does not mean "free to do anything without any credit". Note that this was not the first time Filian made merch off this model, and it was not stated clearly why Jingo took steps only at that point. Possibly because they never heard about Filian and only realized what's going on since Good Smile is a well known Japanese company. [0] https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809101855655670159 https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809101855655670159 [1] https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809811423125729396 https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809811423125729396
- andsoitis 2mo ago
  > I can't find when the article was published, but the phenomenon "went worldwide" several years ago by the means of COVID. Article cites stats from Q1 2026, so presumably this is a current view of the phenomenon.
- bluefirebrand 2mo ago
  Yeah, I was thinking that too Gawr Gura sang "take me out to the ball game" at a Dodgers game in 2024. This stuff has been super mainstream now for years
gkanai 2mo ago
The two largest vtuber agencies/companies are publicly traded in Japan. https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5253.T?term=2y https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5253.T?term=2y https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5032.T?term=2y https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5032.T?term=2y The stock prices are not great all things considered- I think that the vtuber audience needs something new/different to broaden beyond it's current market base AND I think investors would rather put money into AI related stocks than IP/vtuber related stocks.
- sph 2mo ago
  > The two largest vtuber agencies/companies are publicly traded in Japan. Which makes their popularity as organic as the explosion of the K-Pop mania.
  - KingMob 2mo ago
    I have extremely bad news for you about the authenticity of pop stars, going back at least to the 1950's.
    - sph 2mo ago
      Did I say 1950 pop stars popularity was authentic? I'm just saying the implicit question of this post's title can be simply answered with "they're so popular because of marketing, duh"
rmunn 2mo ago
The first time I encountered VTubing, I thought the point was just to hide your face, for various reasons. Being sensitive about your looks, not wanting to attract stalkers, whatever. But there's apparently a lot more to it; I was surprised.
- ta8903 2mo ago
  There's a lot of indie vtubers who do it for that reason. It's just that the biggest ones are corporate.
- ben_w 2mo ago
  If I were to make YouTube videos of the camera-to-face variety, I would cloak my face and voice both to avoid stalkers and to avoid deepfakes of each. But against the flood of videos even before all the AI-generated content churned out by people who don't care about quality, I think I will instead just not make any.
- sunaookami 2mo ago
  That's what many western VTubers don't get, they see it as an "avatar" for themselves which is not what VTubing is. It's supposed to be a completely different persona with no connection to your real identity. It completely dilluted (and I would say even ruined) VTubing in the west.
  - Dilettante_ 2mo ago
    Maybe they do get it, but are choosing to lean more into the authenticity angle. An art form, a medium, evolves when new cultures and sub-cultures take it up and add their own stuff, both the creator and the audience. Maybe from their perspective they're correctly doing it their way, instead of, as in your perspective, failing to do it your way.
    - sunaookami 2mo ago
      They do not "evolve" it, they completely misunderstand and butcher it. You can't just take a concept, do it completely different (and we are talking about 100% different) and re-use the same name. That's just disrespectful.
perching_aix 2mo ago
*Went worldwide, half a decade ago.
yieldcrv 2mo ago
lol the assumptions remind me of the late 90s and early 2000s where routine benign things such as playing an offline game with a character that didn’t look like you and a different gender was considered to mean something it didn’t, outside of the gaming community
062570864389 2mo ago
[dead]
teleforce 2mo ago
I think this can be very fun, practical amd enjoyable approach for teaching and sharing online techical contents especially presenting to the younger generations, but focusing on the non-AI generated contents. It can be a very good trade-off between the sloppy AI and the boring lectures. I can see myself doing this in the future, but why they need agents for VTubing, is it because of VTubing platform, marketing/promotion or payment? Obligatory VTuber Wikipedia entry [1]. [1] VTuber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTuber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTuber
- nemomarx 2mo ago
  Marketing and promotion, some level of organization involved (coordinating streams with collaborators etc) and merch deals, I think? Not all of them need it - plenty of full independents out there. But even some small ones group together to hire a manager and form a little "network" I think.
- usagisushi 2mo ago
  Agencies are helpful for the tech and business side, sure, but as the article mentions, the indie scene has exploded. Plenty of creators are putting out high-quality stuff entirely on their own [1]. So, nothing is stopping you from giving it a shot. People are already looking into using VTubing for education, too. [2] Moreover, these days as more people experiment with real-world integration and interactive setups, the traditional constraints of being a VTuber are really starting to disappear. [1]: https://www.moguravr.com/pq-vtuber-live-review/ https://www.moguravr.com/pq-vtuber-live-review/ (ja) [2]: https://steam-library-gov.note.jp/n/nd0907ba91174 https://steam-library-gov.note.jp/n/nd0907ba91174 (ja)
- hgoel 2mo ago
  Some VTubers treat it as a gateway into Japanese idol culture. So being part of an agency helps them with access to resources and opportunities for that sort of thing, e.g. voice acting gigs, appearances at events, planning concerts, recording studios, 3d motion tracking studios and brand sponsorships.
ledoge 2mo ago
Strange omission to talk about the general anti-AI sentiment, while not mentioning that the #3 most-watched English VTuber (Neuro-sama) is an LLM – who is actually widely accepted as a "good" use of AI by other VTubers and viewers.
- numpad0 2mo ago
  Does anyone actually believe the premise of Neuro-sama that she is an AI? The original premise was that she is a lightweight AI model livecoded on streams, but that is obviously not the case anymore.
  - Bjartr 2mo ago
    It's certainly possible someone could fake something like that for views, but I'm curious what you consider to be the tells that it's no longer an LLM behind the wheel?
    - numpad0 2mo ago
      Maybe it's LLM and human actor splitting work, but she looks too natural, too fast and too error-free to be LLM based since too long ago. Just their dictation -> thinking -> TTS loop is too fast to be LLM. Context awareness and character adherence is too perfect as well.
      - fennecfoxy 2mo ago
        Never seen Taalas? Let alone a decent sized model on a couple 4090s or similar, pretty gud t/s to churn out tts/stt/response/control model actions and emotes.
      - vanchor3 2mo ago
        For a model just sending occasional commands to other integrations, they're actually quite slow...
      - nitwit005 2mo ago
bakugo 2mo ago
The latest and greatest method of exploiting and monetizing the male loneliness epidemic.
- AlecSchueler 2mo ago
  Alternatively the male porn abuse epidemic.
- brabel 2mo ago
  Are VTubers mostly attractive looking female characters?
  - nemomarx 2mo ago
    The extreme majority, yeah. The guys doing it are less popular, although they also have a kind of "anime husband" aesthetic.
    - RobotToaster 2mo ago
      > The guys doing it are less popular I get the impression that a lot of the female characters are dudes.
      - nisegami 2mo ago
        It's quite rare for that to be the case, at least in the English speaking side of the Vtubing world. I can really only think of one example.
      - numpad0 2mo ago
        That used to be the case, but dudes through a voice changer are quite rare now.
      - hgoel 2mo ago
        This is a very tired insult/joke outsiders throw around about vtubing (though I don't get the impression that you had that intention). It's somewhat ridiculous, vtubers stream very often and voice changers tend to be pretty obvious. There are some men who use female avatars, but it isn't common. It's also kinda misogynistic, plenty of women enjoy anime culture. Many prominent artists for vtuber models are also women (and occasionally vtubers themselves). To the level that calling the model artist "mama" and the model rigger "papa" is a common trope.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
rimworld 2mo ago
aka digital twining
vehemenz 2mo ago
The last section should have been titled “Why Do People Watch It?” because I finished the article still wondering.
- ToucanLoucan 2mo ago
  I enjoy a handful of streamers for a few reasons: * I get to experience games I wouldn't normally have time for: I work full time, and as much as I love games and always make time for them, I still have a finite amount of time to make and a solid chunk of that time has to be devoted to multiplayer games, since it's a big part of how I meet my social needs. And even then, some games that are quite fun to watch for me are games I don't necessarily want to play? Like I love watching people play things like Lethal Company, but I don't have a friend-group to play with, so a streamer is great for that. Also horror games usually have really interesting worlds, but uh... I am a chicken shit LOL * It also broadens the number of games I'm exposed to quite a bit. Many a time I have tuned into a stream, watched it for awhile, and been like "okay this actually looks really good/fun/interesting" and turned off the stream to go buy it on Steam. I've just bought Claire Obscur because I initially thought it was Yet Another Damn JRPG (objective 1: go to class, final objective: kill god) but I was thoroughly incorrect, and corrected by watching some streamers and an essay on it, and I'm really excited to play it now. * Additionally, a wild third option: sometimes it's nice when working remotely to have a stream on for background noise. It hits your brain in a way that's vaguely similar to hanging out with a friend when you're both doing completely different things and just... existing together. It's completely fake of course, the streamer has no idea who I am, but it doesn't need to make sense to feel nice to my brain.
  - KingMob 2mo ago
    Not the parent, but I have the same question. Your reasons above could be said about streamers in general, but what about VTubers in particular appeals to you?
    - korse 2mo ago
      You all are beating around the bush. Some people like anime girl personas better than 3d girls. It is somewhat similar to the whole furry thing on a few levels. This creates the demand for services/content which we are now discussing. /thread
numpad0 2mo ago
The VTuber phenomenon is often framed as escape hatch for streamers who do not prefer to show faces; IMO, it couldn't have worked if audiences found it disappointing - the audiences must prefer the presenter hiding their face than prominently displaying it. I think that's more noteworthy than the person behind it opting to hide their faces.
Steve16384 2mo ago
Anyone remember Max Headroom?
- lproven 2mo ago
  With great affection. Mind you, when it launched, I was in my mid-teens and I believed the hype: I thought it really was CGI. Ah, innocence of youth...
- marking-time 2mo ago
  LOL, yeah I couldn't figure it out back then.
harrisoned 2mo ago
I'm not particularly into VTubing (not a fan of social streaming or the japanese style), but i find the tech and creativity amazing. I'm very into mocap and started building an experimental facial capture system, which overlaps a lot with the VTubing concept, but using different protocols (most VTubing models/solutions uses VMC) and more varied custom cartoon models. If you are into the tech behind mocap this community is a fun place to explore.
fennecfoxy 2mo ago
https://imgflip.com/i/ax3s0h https://imgflip.com/i/ax3s0h
freedomben 2mo ago
The olds always told me some day I would be old myself and would be baffled by what the youngs are into, I think that day has arrived. I haven't hit the "afraid" stage yet but I'm guessing that is coming. well at least my generation hasn't destroyed the world, so they weren't completely right. Yet?
- garciasn 2mo ago
  I don't understand the draw of video anything at all; I never have. I can read information 100x faster than a video can provide and I just cannot possibly understand why anyone would want to sit through a 45 minute YouTube video that would have taken 1.5 pages of text. That said, I'm not at all opposed to OTHERS getting the information in the delivery method they prefer. Great; good for you. But! I don't want to see written word be entirely replaced by video. And, before you ask: no; a transcript of the script is not what I want either.
  - cootsnuck 2mo ago
    Interesting. I prefer video/audio for the same reason. But I watch most things on 1.5x or 1.8x speed. I'm not a particularly fast reader, so I prefer audio/video forms. Totally agree with you though about not thinking written form is inferior. I do still enjoy a good long form article. (Also I'm not including technical writing like documentation.)
    - freedomben 2mo ago
      A TTS read out of written text I find ideal. I don't have time to read nearly as much as I would like, but I can listen while doing other things, and can do it at 2x it even slower than 1x if it's dense. You can match it to your cognitive capacity which I find optimal
  - esseph 2mo ago
    > I don't understand the draw of video anything at all; I never have. I can read information 100x faster It's not about information, it's about shared para-socializing. Totally different intent.
animal531 2mo ago
Some more interesting topics around the subject that I haven't seen covered in the comments: - Hololive is huge and they definitely take a decent cut for their efforts. But why do people sign with them? The short answer is that they're a well oiled machine where people go through a sign up process where they create a test video etc. If accepted they're placed into groups (such as Hololive English) etc., but at the same time they also get to interact with all the other groups which immediately raises their popularity significantly. They also look for some other related skills, for example probably all of the English group can sing semi-professionally on a stage etc. In general your success is pretty much guaranteed once accepted, it just becomes a question of scale. - Downsides: Usually the vtuber character, name, image and all other related copyrights belong to them. If there are disagreements then you can leave depending on your contract, but you can no longer use that character in any way. For example Nimi Nightmare used to be Fauna in Hololive, but she left and restarted on her own, whereas some other really popular streamers left but never seemed to resurface. In general they also don't seem to collaborate much with vtubers outside of their space, so I'm sure there are some rules in play there.
- unsignedint 2mo ago
  > In general they also don't seem to collaborate much with vtubers outside of their space, so I'm sure there are some rules in play there. I think it's more about market dynamics than strict rules. There are clear benefits to collaborating within the same agency because it helps introduce audiences to other talents under the same umbrella. Everyone involved has a chance to grow together. Once you start collaborating outside the agency, you're inevitably splitting viewers' time, attention, and even spending across different groups. Since every fan only has so much time and money to go around, those collaborations don't always make business sense. That's not to say they never happen. If a collaboration is expected to bring in new audiences, significantly increase exposure, or otherwise benefit both sides, then it's much easier to justify. But without that kind of upside, it can end up helping another agency just as much, or even more, than your own.
khurs 2mo ago
A testament to how tech has come along, first you needed complex equipment, then Adobe released a home animator thing which needed a webcam and was paid. And now anyone with a phone https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i2hpLm9CEVU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i2hpLm9CEVU
qrush 2mo ago
In case you need a real example that's not just gaming or concerts, join me and thousands of others watching Sumo live hosted by MidnightSumo (he's not a cat) https://twitch.tv/midnightsumo https://twitch.tv/midnightsumo
post_break 2mo ago
My favorite story about Vtubing was someone explaining what Vtubing was to their older dad. And after some explaining he said "Oh! Like Tool Bear!" He's a youtuber vtuber who reviews and talks about tools.
JSR_FDED 2mo ago
If ever there was an article that needed a video or two, this is it
redsocksfan45 2mo ago
[dead]
marsven_422 2mo ago
[dead]
unsignedint 2mo ago
I'm a Vtuber myself. I'm an indie, self supported, just for fun type rather than someone trying to make a living from it. If you're genuinely interested in becoming a Vtuber, the barrier to entry is surprisingly low. You don't necessarily need to commission a custom model or a unique character design. You can use one of the VR avatar generators, which is what my avatar is based on, or even start with a modified VR avatar if its license allows it. That's actually a pretty common approach in the indie scene. As the article mentions, the market is definitely saturated, so I wouldn't go into it expecting to make a lot of money. For what it's worth, a large number of Vtubers don't even meet YouTube's monetization threshold. Personally, I think that's part of what makes the community interesting. I tend to enjoy following smaller creators more than the big agency names. One thing I'd add is that I think the article overgeneralizes the AI topic a bit and leans more toward wishful thinking. A lot of the hesitation around AI, especially at major agencies, comes from the fact that their character designs are often commissioned from well known artists. That creates a relationship between the performer and the artist, often referred to as the "Mama" or "Papa" relationship, and there can be a lot of sensitivity around how those designs are used. To be fair, those dynamics can show up in plenty of situations besides AI. If you don't have those constraints, people tend to be much more relaxed about AI. Some creators who rely heavily on fan art are naturally more opinionated about it than others, but it really varies from person to person.

109 points by pwim 2mo ago

krige 2mo ago

That's a bit... late to the party. I can't find when the article was published, but the phenomenon "went worldwide" several years ago by the means of COVID. These days the vtubing as an industry is in a somewhat stable state, if not a possible decline, going by viewership hours over the same period. Many big EN and JP names have already retired too.

rmunn 2mo ago
It quotes figures from Q1 of 2026, so it was definitely published this year.
- flobosg 2mo ago
  According to the article metadata: "datePublished":"2026-07-16T08:18:37+09:00"
valorzard 2mo ago
Yeah it really hit its peak with gen 1 of Hololive English I want to say, along with the explosion of indie vtubers on twitch and stuff that followed. A lot of female content creators I followed online became vtubers. HikaruStation used to be a singer, but now she’s a whale Vtuber by the name of Bao. AmaLee (of LeeAndLie) also got famous through anime song covers, but she’s mostly a vtuber now. I think the current vtuber “market” is a lot harder to break into now than it used to be though.
maeln 2mo ago
For the big VTuber corporate brand, for sure. But the indie VTuber scene as exploded. It used to be fairly expensive to get in the hobby, and you needed to be technically savy or have someone be for you. Now there is a lot of free and open-source VTuber software that don't need complex setup, just a webcam. And you can easily commission a few hundred bucks an artist to get your whole character and animation. This made the barrier almost inexistent. And since showing your actual face was a big stop for a lot of people, vtubing has allowed a lot of people to get into streaming. There are thousands of <100s viewers vtuber right now.
- krige 2mo ago
  It's not 2018 anymore, so that's not quite true. By now free models have been there forever, and indies have been using them for as long. I mean, Filian has already been using one over 4 years ago. Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms.
  - echelon 2mo ago
    > Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms. Can you expand on this? Are they not able to sell merch since they don't "own" their design? How popular are they? Have they considered buying the model from the authors?
    - ffsm8 2mo ago
      that fillian controversy gives me flashbacks.... suprisingly little of that controversy seems to have survived, even though its only been 2 years. this one is the only thing i could scrounge up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOyo1BM6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOyo1BM6Y - but always take what he says with a barrel of salt, he'S more trying to drum up drama then actually portrait things truthfully
    - krige 2mo ago
      It's a complex/murky matter with lots of allegations in every direction that's hard to summarize properly. The absolute barest bone / neutral summary is that Filian is very popular (3.2 mil subs on yt, 1.3 mil subs on twitch, although she may be retiring currently, or is doing an extensive publicity stunt as her channels and socials are wiped clean). Two years ago, the model's creator announced [0] that Good Smile is making a nendo based off his model for an unnamed vtuber, and that they were not informed beforehand, let alone credited or compensated. They were trying to contact Good Smile and said vtuber to resolve the matter. After a few days Jingo posted an extensive message [1] that the situation was resolved and the parties are cooperating, further noting, among other things, that "free to use in VRchat" does not mean "free to do anything without any credit". Note that this was not the first time Filian made merch off this model, and it was not stated clearly why Jingo took steps only at that point. Possibly because they never heard about Filian and only realized what's going on since Good Smile is a well known Japanese company. [0] https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809101855655670159 https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809101855655670159 [1] https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809811423125729396 https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809811423125729396
andsoitis 2mo ago
> I can't find when the article was published, but the phenomenon "went worldwide" several years ago by the means of COVID. Article cites stats from Q1 2026, so presumably this is a current view of the phenomenon.
bluefirebrand 2mo ago
Yeah, I was thinking that too Gawr Gura sang "take me out to the ball game" at a Dodgers game in 2024. This stuff has been super mainstream now for years

gkanai 2mo ago

The two largest vtuber agencies/companies are publicly traded in Japan. https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5253.T?term=2y https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5253.T?term=2y https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5032.T?term=2y https://finance.yahoo.co.jp/quote/5032.T?term=2y The stock prices are not great all things considered- I think that the vtuber audience needs something new/different to broaden beyond it's current market base AND I think investors would rather put money into AI related stocks than IP/vtuber related stocks.

sph 2mo ago
> The two largest vtuber agencies/companies are publicly traded in Japan. Which makes their popularity as organic as the explosion of the K-Pop mania.
- KingMob 2mo ago
  I have extremely bad news for you about the authenticity of pop stars, going back at least to the 1950's.
  - sph 2mo ago
    Did I say 1950 pop stars popularity was authentic? I'm just saying the implicit question of this post's title can be simply answered with "they're so popular because of marketing, duh"

rmunn 2mo ago

The first time I encountered VTubing, I thought the point was just to hide your face, for various reasons. Being sensitive about your looks, not wanting to attract stalkers, whatever. But there's apparently a lot more to it; I was surprised.

ta8903 2mo ago
There's a lot of indie vtubers who do it for that reason. It's just that the biggest ones are corporate.
ben_w 2mo ago
If I were to make YouTube videos of the camera-to-face variety, I would cloak my face and voice both to avoid stalkers and to avoid deepfakes of each. But against the flood of videos even before all the AI-generated content churned out by people who don't care about quality, I think I will instead just not make any.
sunaookami 2mo ago
That's what many western VTubers don't get, they see it as an "avatar" for themselves which is not what VTubing is. It's supposed to be a completely different persona with no connection to your real identity. It completely dilluted (and I would say even ruined) VTubing in the west.
- Dilettante_ 2mo ago
  Maybe they do get it, but are choosing to lean more into the authenticity angle. An art form, a medium, evolves when new cultures and sub-cultures take it up and add their own stuff, both the creator and the audience. Maybe from their perspective they're correctly doing it their way, instead of, as in your perspective, failing to do it your way.
  - sunaookami 2mo ago
    They do not "evolve" it, they completely misunderstand and butcher it. You can't just take a concept, do it completely different (and we are talking about 100% different) and re-use the same name. That's just disrespectful.

perching_aix 2mo ago

*Went worldwide, half a decade ago.

yieldcrv 2mo ago

lol the assumptions remind me of the late 90s and early 2000s where routine benign things such as playing an offline game with a character that didn’t look like you and a different gender was considered to mean something it didn’t, outside of the gaming community

062570864389 2mo ago

[dead]

teleforce 2mo ago

I think this can be very fun, practical amd enjoyable approach for teaching and sharing online techical contents especially presenting to the younger generations, but focusing on the non-AI generated contents. It can be a very good trade-off between the sloppy AI and the boring lectures. I can see myself doing this in the future, but why they need agents for VTubing, is it because of VTubing platform, marketing/promotion or payment? Obligatory VTuber Wikipedia entry [1]. [1] VTuber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTuber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTuber

nemomarx 2mo ago
Marketing and promotion, some level of organization involved (coordinating streams with collaborators etc) and merch deals, I think? Not all of them need it - plenty of full independents out there. But even some small ones group together to hire a manager and form a little "network" I think.
usagisushi 2mo ago
Agencies are helpful for the tech and business side, sure, but as the article mentions, the indie scene has exploded. Plenty of creators are putting out high-quality stuff entirely on their own [1]. So, nothing is stopping you from giving it a shot. People are already looking into using VTubing for education, too. [2] Moreover, these days as more people experiment with real-world integration and interactive setups, the traditional constraints of being a VTuber are really starting to disappear. [1]: https://www.moguravr.com/pq-vtuber-live-review/ https://www.moguravr.com/pq-vtuber-live-review/ (ja) [2]: https://steam-library-gov.note.jp/n/nd0907ba91174 https://steam-library-gov.note.jp/n/nd0907ba91174 (ja)
hgoel 2mo ago
Some VTubers treat it as a gateway into Japanese idol culture. So being part of an agency helps them with access to resources and opportunities for that sort of thing, e.g. voice acting gigs, appearances at events, planning concerts, recording studios, 3d motion tracking studios and brand sponsorships.

ledoge 2mo ago

Strange omission to talk about the general anti-AI sentiment, while not mentioning that the #3 most-watched English VTuber (Neuro-sama) is an LLM – who is actually widely accepted as a "good" use of AI by other VTubers and viewers.

numpad0 2mo ago
Does anyone actually believe the premise of Neuro-sama that she is an AI? The original premise was that she is a lightweight AI model livecoded on streams, but that is obviously not the case anymore.
- Bjartr 2mo ago
  It's certainly possible someone could fake something like that for views, but I'm curious what you consider to be the tells that it's no longer an LLM behind the wheel?
  - numpad0 2mo ago
    Maybe it's LLM and human actor splitting work, but she looks too natural, too fast and too error-free to be LLM based since too long ago. Just their dictation -> thinking -> TTS loop is too fast to be LLM. Context awareness and character adherence is too perfect as well.
    - fennecfoxy 2mo ago
      Never seen Taalas? Let alone a decent sized model on a couple 4090s or similar, pretty gud t/s to churn out tts/stt/response/control model actions and emotes.
    - vanchor3 2mo ago
      For a model just sending occasional commands to other integrations, they're actually quite slow...
    - nitwit005 2mo ago

bakugo 2mo ago

The latest and greatest method of exploiting and monetizing the male loneliness epidemic.

AlecSchueler 2mo ago
Alternatively the male porn abuse epidemic.
brabel 2mo ago
Are VTubers mostly attractive looking female characters?
- nemomarx 2mo ago
  The extreme majority, yeah. The guys doing it are less popular, although they also have a kind of "anime husband" aesthetic.
  - RobotToaster 2mo ago
    > The guys doing it are less popular I get the impression that a lot of the female characters are dudes.
    - nisegami 2mo ago
      It's quite rare for that to be the case, at least in the English speaking side of the Vtubing world. I can really only think of one example.
    - numpad0 2mo ago
      That used to be the case, but dudes through a voice changer are quite rare now.
    - hgoel 2mo ago
      This is a very tired insult/joke outsiders throw around about vtubing (though I don't get the impression that you had that intention). It's somewhat ridiculous, vtubers stream very often and voice changers tend to be pretty obvious. There are some men who use female avatars, but it isn't common. It's also kinda misogynistic, plenty of women enjoy anime culture. Many prominent artists for vtuber models are also women (and occasionally vtubers themselves). To the level that calling the model artist "mama" and the model rigger "papa" is a common trope.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

rimworld 2mo ago

aka digital twining

vehemenz 2mo ago

The last section should have been titled “Why Do People Watch It?” because I finished the article still wondering.

ToucanLoucan 2mo ago
I enjoy a handful of streamers for a few reasons: * I get to experience games I wouldn't normally have time for: I work full time, and as much as I love games and always make time for them, I still have a finite amount of time to make and a solid chunk of that time has to be devoted to multiplayer games, since it's a big part of how I meet my social needs. And even then, some games that are quite fun to watch for me are games I don't necessarily want to play? Like I love watching people play things like Lethal Company, but I don't have a friend-group to play with, so a streamer is great for that. Also horror games usually have really interesting worlds, but uh... I am a chicken shit LOL * It also broadens the number of games I'm exposed to quite a bit. Many a time I have tuned into a stream, watched it for awhile, and been like "okay this actually looks really good/fun/interesting" and turned off the stream to go buy it on Steam. I've just bought Claire Obscur because I initially thought it was Yet Another Damn JRPG (objective 1: go to class, final objective: kill god) but I was thoroughly incorrect, and corrected by watching some streamers and an essay on it, and I'm really excited to play it now. * Additionally, a wild third option: sometimes it's nice when working remotely to have a stream on for background noise. It hits your brain in a way that's vaguely similar to hanging out with a friend when you're both doing completely different things and just... existing together. It's completely fake of course, the streamer has no idea who I am, but it doesn't need to make sense to feel nice to my brain.
- KingMob 2mo ago
  Not the parent, but I have the same question. Your reasons above could be said about streamers in general, but what about VTubers in particular appeals to you?
  - korse 2mo ago
    You all are beating around the bush. Some people like anime girl personas better than 3d girls. It is somewhat similar to the whole furry thing on a few levels. This creates the demand for services/content which we are now discussing. /thread

numpad0 2mo ago

The VTuber phenomenon is often framed as escape hatch for streamers who do not prefer to show faces; IMO, it couldn't have worked if audiences found it disappointing - the audiences must prefer the presenter hiding their face than prominently displaying it. I think that's more noteworthy than the person behind it opting to hide their faces.

Steve16384 2mo ago

Anyone remember Max Headroom?

lproven 2mo ago
With great affection. Mind you, when it launched, I was in my mid-teens and I believed the hype: I thought it really was CGI. Ah, innocence of youth...
marking-time 2mo ago
LOL, yeah I couldn't figure it out back then.

harrisoned 2mo ago

I'm not particularly into VTubing (not a fan of social streaming or the japanese style), but i find the tech and creativity amazing. I'm very into mocap and started building an experimental facial capture system, which overlaps a lot with the VTubing concept, but using different protocols (most VTubing models/solutions uses VMC) and more varied custom cartoon models. If you are into the tech behind mocap this community is a fun place to explore.

fennecfoxy 2mo ago

https://imgflip.com/i/ax3s0h https://imgflip.com/i/ax3s0h

freedomben 2mo ago

The olds always told me some day I would be old myself and would be baffled by what the youngs are into, I think that day has arrived. I haven't hit the "afraid" stage yet but I'm guessing that is coming. well at least my generation hasn't destroyed the world, so they weren't completely right. Yet?

garciasn 2mo ago
I don't understand the draw of video anything at all; I never have. I can read information 100x faster than a video can provide and I just cannot possibly understand why anyone would want to sit through a 45 minute YouTube video that would have taken 1.5 pages of text. That said, I'm not at all opposed to OTHERS getting the information in the delivery method they prefer. Great; good for you. But! I don't want to see written word be entirely replaced by video. And, before you ask: no; a transcript of the script is not what I want either.
- cootsnuck 2mo ago
  Interesting. I prefer video/audio for the same reason. But I watch most things on 1.5x or 1.8x speed. I'm not a particularly fast reader, so I prefer audio/video forms. Totally agree with you though about not thinking written form is inferior. I do still enjoy a good long form article. (Also I'm not including technical writing like documentation.)
  - freedomben 2mo ago
    A TTS read out of written text I find ideal. I don't have time to read nearly as much as I would like, but I can listen while doing other things, and can do it at 2x it even slower than 1x if it's dense. You can match it to your cognitive capacity which I find optimal
- esseph 2mo ago
  > I don't understand the draw of video anything at all; I never have. I can read information 100x faster It's not about information, it's about shared para-socializing. Totally different intent.

animal531 2mo ago

Some more interesting topics around the subject that I haven't seen covered in the comments: - Hololive is huge and they definitely take a decent cut for their efforts. But why do people sign with them? The short answer is that they're a well oiled machine where people go through a sign up process where they create a test video etc. If accepted they're placed into groups (such as Hololive English) etc., but at the same time they also get to interact with all the other groups which immediately raises their popularity significantly. They also look for some other related skills, for example probably all of the English group can sing semi-professionally on a stage etc. In general your success is pretty much guaranteed once accepted, it just becomes a question of scale. - Downsides: Usually the vtuber character, name, image and all other related copyrights belong to them. If there are disagreements then you can leave depending on your contract, but you can no longer use that character in any way. For example Nimi Nightmare used to be Fauna in Hololive, but she left and restarted on her own, whereas some other really popular streamers left but never seemed to resurface. In general they also don't seem to collaborate much with vtubers outside of their space, so I'm sure there are some rules in play there.

unsignedint 2mo ago
> In general they also don't seem to collaborate much with vtubers outside of their space, so I'm sure there are some rules in play there. I think it's more about market dynamics than strict rules. There are clear benefits to collaborating within the same agency because it helps introduce audiences to other talents under the same umbrella. Everyone involved has a chance to grow together. Once you start collaborating outside the agency, you're inevitably splitting viewers' time, attention, and even spending across different groups. Since every fan only has so much time and money to go around, those collaborations don't always make business sense. That's not to say they never happen. If a collaboration is expected to bring in new audiences, significantly increase exposure, or otherwise benefit both sides, then it's much easier to justify. But without that kind of upside, it can end up helping another agency just as much, or even more, than your own.

khurs 2mo ago

A testament to how tech has come along, first you needed complex equipment, then Adobe released a home animator thing which needed a webcam and was paid. And now anyone with a phone https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i2hpLm9CEVU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i2hpLm9CEVU

qrush 2mo ago

In case you need a real example that's not just gaming or concerts, join me and thousands of others watching Sumo live hosted by MidnightSumo (he's not a cat) https://twitch.tv/midnightsumo https://twitch.tv/midnightsumo

post_break 2mo ago

My favorite story about Vtubing was someone explaining what Vtubing was to their older dad. And after some explaining he said "Oh! Like Tool Bear!" He's a youtuber vtuber who reviews and talks about tools.

JSR_FDED 2mo ago

If ever there was an article that needed a video or two, this is it

redsocksfan45 2mo ago

[dead]

marsven_422 2mo ago

[dead]

unsignedint 2mo ago

I'm a Vtuber myself. I'm an indie, self supported, just for fun type rather than someone trying to make a living from it. If you're genuinely interested in becoming a Vtuber, the barrier to entry is surprisingly low. You don't necessarily need to commission a custom model or a unique character design. You can use one of the VR avatar generators, which is what my avatar is based on, or even start with a modified VR avatar if its license allows it. That's actually a pretty common approach in the indie scene. As the article mentions, the market is definitely saturated, so I wouldn't go into it expecting to make a lot of money. For what it's worth, a large number of Vtubers don't even meet YouTube's monetization threshold. Personally, I think that's part of what makes the community interesting. I tend to enjoy following smaller creators more than the big agency names. One thing I'd add is that I think the article overgeneralizes the AI topic a bit and leans more toward wishful thinking. A lot of the hesitation around AI, especially at major agencies, comes from the fact that their character designs are often commissioned from well known artists. That creates a relationship between the performer and the artist, often referred to as the "Mama" or "Papa" relationship, and there can be a lot of sensitivity around how those designs are used. To be fair, those dynamics can show up in plenty of situations besides AI. If you don't have those constraints, people tend to be much more relaxed about AI. Some creators who rely heavily on fan art are naturally more opinionated about it than others, but it really varies from person to person.