Look, I’ll say “I love you, man,” to my bros, because thinking that showing any sort of affection for your friends is gay is NPC behavior. But yeah, I’ll hesitate about saying it to a girl because it might get taken the wrong way.
I imagine it’s the same way for vtubers. I don’t know if there’s any vtuber out there whose audience is majority the same gender as them. Sure, maybe normal people could hear a vtuber say that and think, “Oh, she means she loves us as fans. Because we’ve never met in person before and she doesn’t even know my irl name and face.” But look at all the gachikoi on this board. Saying “I love you” to your fans as a vtuber is just asking for a yab to happen.
