>>90762175A good chunk of it is lack of anything else in the consumer's lives. In Cover's case it's legit parasocialism and in others it might be technological wonder, cult of personality around a CEO, etc -- the company has given them something to look forward to/something to be excited about/some meaning they're missing. Then the cult shit starts once the corpo successfully hugboxes the community and baits nostalgia for 'the good old days' over their heads. Nobody likes getting their escapism trashed and the company depends on that escapism from their fans ergo hugbox.
IMO it's fishy. The hugbox isn't wholly organic. /vt/ is one thing with it's sus janitors but the recent threads on r/hololive went from outrage to corpo bootlicking in less than two days. Then a good chunk of EN coming out and saying 'its okay guise' makes me even more suspicious.
