>>28777604It depends, Japan has a deeply invested idol culture but at the same time even Japanese idol culture itself has been shifting a lot in the past 10 years or so, ask any actual idol fan. Vtuber Unicorns are stuck in like some weird fantasy 2000s idol fantasy where they think every girl should pull a Minami Minegishi, while really like half the shit in Japan does #MeToo nowadays.
Idol culture itself is more about marketing and commercializing an image than it is any particular image. If you can slap female empowerment on a soda bottle and sell it to Zoomers, it's not that different from slapping an image of female purity on a soda bottle and selling it to Otaku and salarymen.
>>28777679>>28777816>>28777880>>28777928There's two other arguments that Unicorns like to use, one is the historical argument, the
>We were here firstwhich is just pretty patently untrue. I mean, If you want to go to Kizuna Ai, that was not designed for Unicorns at all, and if we go to Livers with Niji's early ventures, those were also not aimed at Unicorns. Hololive's early ventures also weren't aimed at Unicorns, its just that unicorns latched onto Hololive and they shifted their marketing to pander to them. I've been watching vtubers since the early days and honestly Unicorns are a relatively new phenomenon, caused by the pandemic and the transplanting of a lot of toxic anime nerds onto the vtuber fanbase.
>Small vtubers need unicorns to stay aliveThis one is dangerous because its SOMEWHAT true. Small vtubers need dedicated fans to stay alive and to gain traction. Unicorns are dedicated fans. However, not all dedicated fans are unicorns. Vtubers need dedicated fans, they don't need unicorns. Furthermore, it's not a two way street - Unicorns think that because they provide something to vtubers, in the past, and "collectively" - often without paying a cent themselves, but "we, the unicorns, as a group", the vtubers now "owe" them. What are you, the Incel Mafia?
>>28778734This reminds me of a comment that Nasu made once, about how vtubers represented a new form of virtual, interactive content that was way more immersive than idols and "you can meet anime girls in real life". But the danger to that is you start putting expectations on real people like they're anime characters, and obviously, they can't live up to them. And you put these menhera girls under immense stress. Kayfabe goes both ways and you have to play careful too.
>>28779327Like I said, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting GFE. And if the Vtuber themselves agree to it, then it's fine. But the thing is it has to be a mutual agreement. Whether its Unicorns, or any other type of fan, they become toxic when they start putting requirements and expectations on the vtuber that the vtuber themselves never signed up for. A good example is, say, Mori and talking to Trash Taste. Now, I fucking hate Mori and I fucking hate Trash Taste, but I'm pretty sure at no point did Mori agree to never speak to Trash Taste. That wasn't part of her contract nor implicitly agreed to anywhere. That's just something that Unicorns made up and harassed her about.
