>>41524064Essentially this. The existence of VShoujo and Niji could've been tolerated because it was offset by Hololive, but as they all became essentially the same thing the majority of the scene turned into shit. It all feels the same because it is the same. While I hold out for a few small corpo chuubas, I truly do think Tempus killed HoloEN and somehow this had a ripple effect across the whole of vtubing. It dispelled all magic and idealism. Everyone including myself is constantly on edge about a maletuber appearing out of nowhere in their oshis stream, but on a more fundamental level that special feeling of magic and that feeling of vtubing being separate from the real world is gone. It's not a break from reality anymore, a place of rest and a shared dream. It kinda became an extension of all the worst aspects of the real world. Or to be specific, the girls who are vtubers just couldn't and didn't want to maintain the illusion. Thus we looped back into, or were suckered into, watching and supporting your average Western woman. Which is something we dislike and never wanted to interact with, or watch. We all saw and had enough of that. But it's even worse, because while it was all working many including myself became convinced that there really are good, worthwhile women out there who understood us and were in fact just like us, our female counterparts, who were awkward, or shy, or ugly, but still wanted to and were capable of becoming idols and winning based on their personality. Once this facade cracked I think many guys just gave up entirely. So you have tourists leaving, and the original core fans slowly getting disillusioned. And HoloEN in particular tried to get rid of us intentionally so there's more than enough bad blood there, and with some chuubas trying to do the same (Ame, Mori, Kroni, any that collab with males) it all kinda fell apart.
There's still a chance the original spirit of vtubing reemerges and wins through small corpos. I think this is the endurance round where many chuubas will quit, some will win bigly, others will fade away, and possibly big corpos get assfucked to pieces. The field is dynamic, but there's a lot of fatigue and fear in the audience and a saturation of vtubers.
I also realized that for me Gura is vtubing itself despite the fact I completely switched to small corpos apart from her. She IS Western vtubing. Without her there is an emptiness.
