>>47918664Completely out of left field prediction that I don’t actually think is going to happen but maybe has a small chance:
“Idol culture” will die in the west, but it’ll just revive under a different name. It happens all the time where abstract, intangible concepts (like “idol culture”, for example) will develop independently somewhere else. Slightly differently, but mostly the same, and it goes on for a few years or whatever until the two groups realize they have their own term for similar things, and the distinction slowly loses meaning.
It’s partially happened with “gachikoi” and “unicorn” already, for example. A lot of people use them interchangeably. Even I do sometimes.
In other words, maybe the term “idol culture” will become too toxic in the west, and then people will realize that adding professionalism to streams, developing a basic intuition of what your fans want and making an effort not to shit on that, and maybe adding in a few anime tropes because even EN vtubing has *some* anime influence to it. And then that vtuber or group decides to make more covers and original songs and try to do concerts and stuff because that draws views to your channel.
Maybe the only difference will be that this future “not idol culture” will feature a slightly more techno or kpop style of music/concert. Something minor in the grand scheme of things, but enough to ease people into an “idol culture” that isn’t associated with cowering in fear of the unicorn’s wrath.
A bunch of idle, nonsense speculation, I know. But when you get down to it, how many EOPs actually use the word correctly? I don’t even know if there is such a thing as a “correct” definition of the word in EN at this point.
