>>76353494There was botting going on, but it was usually just the collabs and important events. Their popularity was real.
ILuna debuted on July 24th 2022, when NijiEN was peaking its popularity. The decline really started August/September. Whether the decline was linked to ILuna or not is debateable, but one thing you can blame ILuna for is killing the hype for future waves.
Whoever was behind ILuna was a femdomfag. The girls were all instructed to bully the guys on twitter, leading to a series of really cringy pre-debut tweets that caused consternation. The simple fact that 2 of the males were undersize, a femboy and shota, made zero sense, and female fans showed an extremely strong preference for Ren's ikeman model even though he had arguably the most vacuous personality of the bunch. Aia back then was doing "femdom slaps" for her audience, which seems to be the real reason she was chosen, overlooking her terrible voice and personality. Conversely, it seems Aster was chosen for his willingness to humiliate himself and dress in women's clothes.
It became a total disaster. The wave that was intended to carry forth the success of Luxiem, with the biggest debuts in history, fell to a group of 3-views within a few months. Kyo started doing NTR streams with Enna which ruined arguably the most popular of the girls, and was generally a toxic cunt who was a magnet for drama.
Everyone was really disappointed, the following debuts showed a noticable lack of interest.
