>>108903575My schizo take. I think there's a two-fold thing with the vtuber hobby.
1. Covid and the initial wave of vtubers felt really special and unique. People had a lot of free time and many of the early vtubers were grass roots, breaking new ground, trying to find their way, many people were developing tools and skills related to model creation... it had "soul", as much as I hate trying to describe things that way.
2. After that huge rise the charm quickly plateaued as the barrier to entry fell and anyone could become a vtuber causing a massive influx of vtubers. Then there was a huge down turn in the last 2 years... hololive ramping up commercialization, graduation trains, hololive feeling "established and formulaic", micro corps constantly imploding, scams, fuck tons of drama, fleshie/OF pipeline vtubers, rise of normie streamers pushing anti-vtuber rhetoric, implosion of large corpos (nijien and vshojo), etc.
I believe this created a bump in the timeline where it captured a generation and quickly fell off. The well feels a bit poisoned for newcomers. The space is not as appealing as it once was. If you watch vtubers and you're in it, it probably doesn't seem that way but from outsiders perspective this might seem like a waste of time and money.
