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Like having been a dumb teenager for most of my life I also used to buy into the "it's just a drawing" rhethoric, but then I slowly but surely went to realize that's gross and super fucked up, had an existential crisis about it, and went on to try never touching that stuff again and unfollowing several vtubers that were into that shit. Some were easy, like Pikamee and Matsuri, since they were so creepy, vocal and proud of it, that I was already disgusted even before my epiphany, and I wasn't involved with them enough to really feel bad. But then there's Marine, who used to be one of my favorites, which made things hard. As horny as she is, she wasn't as gross and vocal as the two, but that's just a really lame excuse. Part of me says that whatever, no one's perfect, and she's not that different from what I was back then, so if we're both gross I can just enjoy her content while hoping she improves herself. But the more reasonable-sounding part of my brain reminds me she's not a very young adult like me, she's in her late 20s to early 30s, which makes things infinitely more fucked up, especially since there's clips around how she used to (maybe still does?) stare at elementary schoolers, real children, not drawings... It's complicated because I know she's literally a pedo, and yet my brain still tries, badly, to make arguments to defend her, and even though I know I must avoid her and move on, I would be lying if I don't still watch, and enjoy, some of her clips or streams every now and then, kind of like a super-guilty pleasure. With how many other vtubers I don't follow who also turned out to be like that and with the somewhat unrelated note of how many mangakas (some of which I loved) also went through a similar path, it makes me fearful. Fearful that it's just a question of time before someone whose content I previously adored, turns out to be a pedo, or somehow else another type of awful person, and fearful that I will be too attached to move on, supporting these terrible people even though I should know better. It makes me fearful that there will come a day I will be unable to consume any kind of content without feeling guily about it. I've been trying my best to just instead follow more wholesome vtubers that openly show disgust to that kind of stuff, but even then... It doesn't feel like enough, like even if they don't turn out to be pedos, it doesn't immidiatelly mean they won't do some other equally fucked up shit. Even Subaru, the most cheerful and wholesome girl in Hololive, still made me deeply worried when she was watching Stains;Gate and playing Persona 4, with all the transphobic shit in both of these, and even if she didn't say anything malicious in the end, I was still preparing for the worst. It's like there's this voice in the back of my head telling that, statistically, most people are awful in some way and it's inevitable that they'll fuck up royally sooner than later, and the best I can do is give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's out of ignorance rather than malice, but having been both in the past it doesn't give my mind much rest...
