>>16522328That you keep misconstruing audience attachment for 'love-life' is the root of this issue. If "entertainment" alone brought viewers then Matsuri's numbers should not have such a huge discrepancy when she again started taking up the same games as many other holos. She's not any less animated or interesting when she's playing Pokemon or Ark than many other holos, and yet her viewers don't return. Why? Because her viewers became disconnected from her as a streamer from the endless APEX streams, her numbers suffered even when she switched away from them. They simply weren't invested in her in-game failures or successes any longer, even if the setting was more interesting. Because they felt no strong connection to her.
It's not that there is no way for a vtuber to collab 'safely' with males. But because most male streamers have as their strong suit the fact that they are very relatable and similar to their audience, if not handled correctly it can quickly become a situation where the audience is thinking "why am I here?" Any assurance, game advice, or help in-game, the vtuber can receive from the male collab partner. Any emotional support, he can better provide as a friend/coworker/fellow in the same line of work. None of this requires any sort of serious relationship. But then the effect becomes akin to watching a streamer dual-stream on Twitch/YT, but only responding to one chat. For the other chat, it's like they're on the other side of a two-way mirror, looking in, with no way to interact. So at this point, you have to ask, what is the audience getting out of this? Just to watch (ironically)? That defeats the whole point of streaming as an interactive relationship.
But like I said, there are ways to avoid this. For one, Selen dodges this issue regularly because she makes sure to involve her chat often even during collabs, playing off them to provide more material to prod on her collab partners. But most vtubers are so preoccupied with their partners that it's like their audience basically vanishes - which is fine when it's someone which their audience watches as well, but if it's someone their audience has no attachment to or, worse, threatens their position, as above, then people are going to lose attachment.
