Quoted By:
What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Mori Calliope. I went to her YouTube channel, bought a membership, and watched her streams. I suffered a great deal in the process. The humor was dreadful; the personality was terrible. As I watched, I noticed that every time she gave praise to someone, the VTuber instead offered "big ups." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Calliope's mind is so governed by cliches and wiggerisms that she has no other style of streaming.
But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now watch only Mori Calliope, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than watching nothing at all? If Mori was what it took to make them pick up streaming, wasn't that a good thing?
It is not. Mori Calliope will not even lead our children on to Ninomae Ina'nis or Takanashi Kiara. It will not lead them to Hoshimachi Suisei or Tsunomaki Watame or Ookami Mio.
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by Connor "CDawgVA" Colquhoun. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are watching Mori Calliope at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to watch Trash Taste." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you watch "Mori Calliope" you are, in fact, trained to watch Trash Taste.
