It’s like a full time filter where the only online identity someone presents is as an anime girl. I think it was popularized by a company called HoloLive that has Japanese girls do this as a full time job? It’s a VERY niche culture thing.
Check out the Asahi Lina channel to see what I mean.
Do all subscribers to team subreddits follow the main sub as well though? Because I assume fans follow "their" teams' subreddit, and there's several in the 100k range.
Yes but none of them are using voice changing that makes it hard to listen to. They all speak in their natural voices or with a natural manual affect that they prefer to put on, something that computers don't seem to be able to replicate yet.
I watch Japanese vtubers quite a lot and enjoy doing so, but I couldn't personally listen to Lina as the voice sounds grating on the ears.
I feel like I am going to regret this post, but anyway...
I am a woman in tech, and the whole thing feels slimy. I found it really creepy and couldn't watch more than a couple of minutes- I couldn't tolerate the voice changer for longer than that. But the whole concept is kinda gross because (as someone else pointed out below) the streamer is most likely an adult man, not a cute asian girl. And the persona is being performed for the benefit of other adult men.
>the streamer is most likely an adult man, not a cute asian girl
I can't see why that makes it "kinda gross"; in fact, playing with identity and having the courage to do so in a whimsical way seems awesome. To have the security in oneself to put on a persona so different to the one we are in meatspace is one of the best inventiont of the 'net in my opinion. The possibilities are freeing.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
>And the persona is being performed for the benefit of other adult men.
What possible 'benefit' do they get out of it? Do we know if these "other adult men" leer at the persona? And if so, so what? So long as the person behind the persona isn't be harrassed. It's strange that this sentence is implicitly stating that something done for the benefit of adult men is wrong in itself.
> From what I have gleaned, vTuber is a virtual YouTuber. The streams use an anime model a s behaviour.
Yes, basically instead of streaming as themselves vTubers stream as a persona, usually with an anime-style virtual avatar.
> And for some reason I feel creeped out now. There is something perturbing about the saccharin persona coupled with the pseudonym.
I've not found a vTuber I enjoyed (but the main vTuber community is japanese and japanese TV / entertainment is... a lot, and not my cup of tea).
However how is "Asahi Lina" and an animated cartoon avatar creepier than psychphysic and a random picture or manga snip on a forum 15 or 20 years ago? As far as I'm concerned it's the same principle moved from the media of text and images to that of audio and video.
> However how is "Asahi Lina" and an animated cartoon avatar creepier than psychphysic and a random picture or manga snip on a forum 15 or 20 years ago?
That's a really good question and I only have a cop-out answer.
I'm not the type to get the creeps.
But the immediate thought I had and commented else where was of Pennywise.
Which is really quite alarming!
I think the core was that Asahi in my mind is quite infantilised and the realisation that the person behind the persona is quite likely to be adult man.
Nothing particularly predatory here, but there is still a feeling of a false sense of security.
I think any first reaction is always an entirely fair first reaction. Biases exist. Snap judgements exist. No point in pretending otherwise.
I think like with anything "new", life is always about disconfirming our biases. As a result, now that you're aware of this bias, have the additional time and can access System 2:
Going forward you find a way to have a less aggressive reaction to learning about a the next VTuber.
Unless this stuff goes entirely mainstream I will just avoid it.
This is the first time I've watched this kind of livestream and as well has as making my teeth itch with creepiness, not being an efficient means of conveying the topic it is boring.
I guess I'm older than the average HN user but I prefer reading to watching a video for education.
