>>100267335She's the perfect storm of advantageous qualities coming together:
>noveltyFirst AI vtuber, at least in the way Kizuna AI was the first vtuber in general. There might've been some shitdev who linked a vtuber model to an LLM before he debuted her but at this point, that's just historical pedantry. She's the first and to date only one who made it big.
>timingVedal's had "Neuro" working since 2019 and has done some private demos of her vtuber functions up until her actual debut in Dec 2022. It was the exact appropriate time to catch the AI trend taking off while also catching the very tail end of the vtuber trend's Covid momentum.
>controversyJust the right amount of controversy drove her early growth. There was the 'AI taking over human jobs' narrative that some vtubers pushed. There was her holocaust ban where every demographic could project their views on it. 4chan could call her based, twitter haters could call her a hate crime machine, twitter apologists could call her innocent because it was impossible to have human malice, etc. Once she got really rolling in 2023/2024 there was even the controversy of her topping the Twitch Top Female Streamers chart. Note that none of these controversies are that bad, just things that get people talking.
>Vedal being relatively well-adjusted and spotlight-adverseWhen Neuro's holocaust ban happened and forced Vedal to implement a filter, that's how he really stepped into the picture as an active part of her identity. If he was the typical male vtuber, the channel would've shifted the focus from Neuro to him at that point. Instead, he actively rations his appearances and keeps the streams focused on Neuro. This keeps the "no males" crowd happy and the ones who are bigger fans of him than Neuro constantly engaged because they're clamoring for him to show up more. He's also interesting enough personality-wise to drive the community culture, which helps attract other vtubers to become associated with it.
>community elementYou can be cynical and say that every Neuro-adjacent streamer is just a clout-chasing whore but even the biggest detractor cannot deny that the Neuro community made a lot of the communities it came into contact with grow massively. 1-2views became 3-4views and that is a huge point of prestige for /swarm/ among Twitch indies. Even if you're someone who hates AI on principal, you are effectively self-sabotaging if you publicly detract Neuro and are in fact heavily incentivized to pay her lip service. Check on youtube the number of indies pumping out react slop to her videos. Those videos most of the time get more views than anything else they made, which is the clearest message you can get if you're desperate to grow.
In short, Neuro is the protagonist of vtubing.
