alt Hacker NewsVTubing: How a Japanese Phenomenon Is Going Worldwide
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The last section should have been titled “Why Do People Watch It?” because I finished the article still wondering.
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.
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.
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.
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/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.
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:
*Went worldwide, half a decade ago.
The latest and greatest method of exploiting and monetizing the male loneliness epidemic.
aka digital twining
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
[dead]
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.