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By (You), I mean the average EN watcher, a /vt/ user, whether you came from /jp/, started out here, or came from some other place. (You) who has a certain understanding of how "idol culture" is like, with all its pros and cons, along with the assumption that the people running the show in the vtuber scene understand it too. But for one reason or another the landscape in which you engrossed yourself in appears to want nothing to do with you. Your opinion is the minority, at least compared to that of the vocal Twitter/Reddit/Youtube Comments crowd. To them your opinions seem wholely despicable. You're seen as an incel, a mysoginist, a traditionalist to a fault for not wanting the aspects of this hobby you enjoy to change. Why are you against the girls interacting with men? Why do you feel so entitled to how the girls behave, etc. etc. And these corporations listen. They see the charts and figures and realize what makes them the most money is to kowtow to these people. They saw Luxiem, they studied their success. In the end, the financially responsible thing to do is to break tradition. They're not gonna listen to you, they look at your post and think "wait, this post came from that 4chan forum, the one that supports all those mass shootings and is full of incels, right? Why should we listen to them when Twitter is overwhelmingly positive towards boys and girls collabing?" That's why Ame said the things she said. She (perhaps correctly) recognized that the people against this idea are a minority, that they should just grow up and improve themselves. It's all too easy to claim the target audience changed, but I'd argue it's been that way since Omega (supposedly) put forth the idea of starting an EN branch to begin with. Naturally, a bunch of older Vtuber fans expressed interest and many of them even stayed to continue to engage in EN content, but it also drew in people considered to be the real target audience. That is to say, people who are into livestreamers, Twitch users, people who immerse themselves in the microcommunities of individual streamers with their own drama and slices of life. People who definitely aren't into virtual idols and therefore have little to no understanding on how things work. I would post that Degredation of a Fanbase picture but I personally disagree with some of the claims it makes. I DO think that these newfags genuinely enjoy the content. I DO think they have an actual passion for modern EN Vtubers and the culture that's come out of it.They'd have to, because it was designed to appeal to them from the start. Because in the end, you were never the target audience. EN Vtubing isn't idol culture anymore because it never was. It's an idol-adjacent hodgepodge of Twitch-style culture mixed with Anime, Discord and Reddit/Twitter sentiment. I'm not going to say goodbye like I'm leaving this place. But I feel like many people here are going to slowly wither away, bit by bit, to other subcultures or entirely different hobbies. Hopefully things will go better for you there.
>TLDR
Blogpost mixed with criticism of the landscape. Probably not worth your time to read.
And it goes without saying but yes, there are many independent EN Vtubers that absolutely do try their hardest to respect the culture. I suggest you go explore, and if you've really run out of options, there's always the entire juggernaut of the JP side. Good luck.
