>>25382047I actually really agree with most of your assessment, it all really depends on the vtuber and how they build their community as far as expectations. If someone like Rosemi or Mori or Fubuki turns out to have a boyfriend I don't know why fans would be upset about it, as their content has never been GFE or emotionally manipulative. They've never ever indicated that they're anything more than an actor playing a character. Meanwhile it's actually understandable that some people got upset at Rushia when the initial allegations came up, because she was leading people on and built a career out of being an emotional girlfriend. Not because they thought she would ever date them in real life, but because they had developed a transactional relationship with her where she promised to give them love and they promised to give her money. When butas feel their GFE chuuba broke that contract naturally they would be hurt.
However I would go further and say that these one-sided GFE relationships are actually predatory and harmful to both vtubing and the victimized butas. I don't think anyone would argue that being in love with a camgirl or Twitch streamer is not predatory, but when it comes to vtubers people seem to be blinded by the cuteness of anime girls. That's not to say a vtuber cannot be GFE, but it's a very delicate line between GFE(simply providing fanservice and being emotionally intimate with viewers) and what some streamers do where they demand emotional loyalty from their viewers like it's a fucking cult. People used to praise Rushia for stalking her fans and melting down when they watched other girls for example. Many would just call this her vtuber kayfabe, but in many ways preventing your viewers from watching other streamers or exercising agency in their consumption of entertainment goes beyond the line of just providing a service. It leads the most lonely and vulnerable fans down a spiral of emotional dependence while seeking to isolate them while simultaneously draining their money, literally the same shit cults and MLM's do.
I'm kinda glad certain types of parasocial relationships are getting pushback from the vtuber scene. Even if Finana's words were retarded there's something to be said that it's unhealthy to be so emotionally attached to a streamer that your happiness is directly connected with knowing the intimate details of a livestreamer's personal life. It's just something you should take a step back and reassess your situation if you ever find yourself in that kind of relationship, because there is no "good end" realistically. The best case is your oshi graduates and you simply move on to another GFE chuuba. The worst case is she drains you of all your money and then you kill yourself when she betrays your feelings by having a boyfriend or something. There is no situation where your oshi will ever date you, and even if by some miracle there was, what are the odds she chooses you and not any of her other hundreds/thousands of fans? Would you not feel just as terrible if you lost to another fan? There's just no mentally healthy way to be in love with a livestreamer in real life. Slightly ironic that the original subject was about women being overly emotionally attached to a male livestreamer when men are usually the ones victimized by this sort of content.
On that front I'd say a lot of the criticism is deserved and it's not wrong to discourage people from forming those relationships with a vtuber. Not because they're normies trying to ruin your happiness but because it's just inherently bad for a society when men are being emotionally abused like this on a massive scale. This is totally different from schizo fans projecting undeserved expectations onto a normal streamer, it's the other side of the coin where the streamer is the one exploiting viewers. That kind of thing is just as harmful and probably why a lot of vtubers are upset that many fans think all their content should be like those bad apples.
>>25382858I completely agree with you, I never suggested western chuubas are bad seeds. Quite the opposite, vtubers in the west and Japan are largely very similar. ASMR content arose due to camgirls joining the vtuber sphere in Japan and it's never really recovered. That's kinda why Japanese viewers are so in love with Salome lately, because she goes completely against that kind of content and returns things back to the roots of vtubing as just an entertainer and adhering to a strict kayfabe.
