>>51461377End of COVID winnowed out a bunch of the audience but there was definitely a huge dip (throughout the hobby, not just HoloEN) when it became apparent most western chuubas just cannot help but make it obvious how much they dislike their fans. HoloEN gets a lot of traction on the catalog with the constant breaks and atm farming but it’s a plague on the whole hobby. NijiEN has been running full-tilt on scaring off all but the most buck-broken paypigs for almost a year now. If you pay attention you’ll notice barely a week goes by without some indie or small corpo going off on her fans. EN streaming culture is just extremely toxic and it was eventually going to get its stink on vtubing. Like I’ll put myself as an example - I started with Myth in 2020, dropped them when it was obvious they were taking their audience for granted and tried out NijiEN. NijiEN called me a parasocial incel fuck (who should keep donating though!) so I dropped them for small corpos. Small corpos imploded in drama and mass graduations, so I picked up an indie and promptly got permabanned off her discord server for not stating my pronouns. Fuck this hobby, right?
Now compare this to a JOP who started with Pekora in 2020. Chances are he still watches Pekora on the same time slot, with the same style of content (with improving production values at that), without ever being antagonized or distracted by a scandal. And Pekora’s bigger than ever! She didn’t go anywhere, much the opposite, and on top of her numbers she has a huge 4+ year bank of streaming and community culture built up around her.
My point is, consistency is rewarded, and EN’s toxic e-girl/e-boy culture pushes and emphasizes the opposite of consistency and respect for the audience. In fact for however much EN chuubas rant against parasocials, I can say with confidence that EN vtubing is being pushed to a place where the only people sticking around are the most lonely and desperate parasocial simps, the guys (girls I guess in the case of homos) who will put up with anything and keep donating, no matter how bad it gets. If you look at it from that point of view it’s no wonder EN vtubing is in the gutter while JP vtubing keeps inclining.
