>>193748>>193752You say that, but Hololive was already inclining before March hit and sent the unprepared people into a lockdown.
February was when only Asia was dealing with it, and Italy at the very end of the month. But they already started inclining. I think Gen 4 really hit the ground running in terms of getting fan engagement going, especially in places like /hlg/, where they're bonded to Gen 4 especially.
The plague only really led to Hololive booming in May, with a small niche scene developing outside of /jp/ in March. There were hints of it before, like after the Miko clip in May of 2019, but the Western Boom had it's start in April and May.
If I'm doing my history reps right, the first domino in the chain was the release of a video in mid-May called "Hololive in a Nutshell," by Chronakai. That caught on in the hobbyist scene, and started a buildup of clippers who would expand the small clip network, helping future newfags find older content in the coming months. This is also around the time Cover took control of the subreddit, which would prove vital down the line. A month later, a compilation maker called kabukibuki made the video "The 'Perfect' Guide to Hololive," which helped provide context to clipfags, even if there was a lot of flawed and/or surface knowledge.
A week later, around the Fourth of July, when the Plague started it's second round in the states, the clip series of Korone playing Doom 2016 started, which drew interest of the hardcore DOOM fans. They were receptive to it after the at-the-time recent trend of "DOOM interacting with cutesy stuff like Animal Crossing." Hololive interest in the west started taking off then.
The next links in the chain came in the first week of August. Korone played Banjo Kazooie, and Coco started her first shitpost review. Korone's stream got noticed (as a side effect of her NND antis organizing a raid to try and get it taken down, ironically making her into a superstar in the Western developer community) by the series composer, Rare, and Microsoft itself. 2Snacks made his meme video, it went viral, and all eyes were on Hololive. These newfags wanted a place to learn more about Hololive, and so they went to the normalfag's only known hobby site: reddit. They started making their garbage, and Coco took an interest, starting her "Shitpost Review" series, which did two things. One, it made the idea of watching streams more tenable to the Western audience. Two, it converted newfag redditors into extremely loyal fanboys (not quite the oshi relationship we understand, but more akin to how they worship CEOs like Elon Musk).
Throughout all of this, Pekora and Haachama were gaining notoriety, because whenever newfags started their clip journey they'd find a glut of Pekora and Haachama clips. These, combined with the presence of upward-pointing arrows in Pekora clips, which sparked an instinctive response in redditor minds, kept interest afloat while newfags started filtering out into more niche girls. At this point, Hololive was the epicenter of interest online.
What happens only days after that? Generation Five debuts. People flood in, it's the biggest debut in Hololive, everything's great. Then the Aloe Incident. She goes offline. The newfag droves, tens of thousands of them, stick around to wait and worry about what would happen. She retired. It was bad. But newfags that would've left FOTM behind bonded to Hololive through pain. They stuck around.
A few weeks after that, the myth was revealed to be true. Hololive English. If Gen 5 made people stick around, Hololive English used that new group as a second staging ground to jump from. Repeat the interest and hype Gen 5 got, multiply it by a factor due to the new community of hardcore fans. They anchored Hololive into the western world, and offered such diverse entertainment that anyone could find something to like. After that initial boom, when you would expect FOTM to fade, it happens again: a catastrophe. The Chinks. Now the redditors, who were fanboys of Coco, had a martyr; they became fanatical. Hololive English fans once again became bonded through pain, and a large chunk of newfags stuck around for the long haul. You all know what happened from here, as it stops being history, and starts being current events.
It's long winded, but the point I'm making through all of this is simple: The continuity of Hololive's incline is not a simple thing. Lots of factors came together over a long time. You could start it anywhere along the chain. Maybe it was Gen 4 that laid the groundwork for this. Or you could credit HoloFantasy's popularity for helping too build up a base of clips that would be important later. Or you could credit Miko's Nigga clip for laying the foundation of Vtuber streamers in the Western world's eyes. Or even all the way back to the Christmas Miracle for helping to spark the initial interest in Hololive in the most niche sections. But to reduce it to "Corona made people bored?" Ridiculous.