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I have something to say about the way this general talks about Buffs, Debuffs, and Filters. I feel like this terminology doesn't have enough nuance to accurately capture the way this shit actually works, there aren't just one kind of Filter or Buff or Debuff. There is definitely a separation between 'hard' Filters, which permanently lower your ceiling and stop people from clicking on your stream at all, and 'soft' Filters which push away casual audiences but appeal to more dedicated fans.
In the streaming industry, there is a 'General Ceiling' set by your Hard Filters and a 'Unique Ceiling' for your Soft Filters. No streamer can even hope of touching the True Ceiling which consists of the entire stream watching demographic.
The General Ceiling is the audience you can potentially reach assuming you are able to pull the maximum number of tourists possible accounting for your Hard Filters, of which every Vtuber shares at least the 'Anime Filter' which excludes them from pulling a huge percentage of 'Flesh Only Stream Watchers' or FOSW. I cannot emphasize enough that much of a streamers success appears to be entirely predicated on their ability to simply minimize the Hard Filters which prevent casuals from discovering them at all. Gradually breaking down the 'Anime Filter' to reach more of the broader stream watching public is the simplest way for the Vtuber industry as a whole to grow. I would include among Hard Filters: Controversy Filter, Brand Filter, Gender Filter, Clickbait Filter, Content Exhaustion Filter, Algorithm Filter, Scheduling Filters, Platform Filters, Language Filters
The process of extending the maximum reach to as many tourists under the umbrella of the General Ceiling as you can, and churning them through your Soft Filters to convert them into your loyalists is what we call 'natural recline', and what we call Buff Content is tourist attracting variety content that spreads your reach farther. The more Soft Filters you put up the lower your Unique Ceiling will be but the stronger of a Floor you can build. The General Ceiling for any given streamer is getting lower all the time, because tourists Soft Filtered once are less likely to return and become repeat tourists. You can think of this as a sort of lifetime tourism limit. Among Soft Filters: Character Design, Voice, ASMR, Personality, Gaming, Singing, Coomerbaiting
In conclusion, I would argue that if you are starting out as a Vtuber, to do whatever you can to minimize your Hard Filters, as those which can be avoided are easy to dodge and there is no good reason not to at least try and avoid them, and to consider how you want to approach your Soft Filters and where you want to set your Floor, which is the actual most important metric for you as a streamer. The grind does in fact work, and if you want success you need to have staple content delivered consistently to filter through your tourists efficiently, so that you don't just lose them from disinterest before you even have the chance to transform them in real followers.