>>93120221>It's not absurd to think the more niche your specialization the closer you would be to other usersYour not wrong about having a similar interest bringing you closer to others, but that still makes community a misnomer. These things exist on a spectrum, such as a fandom being closer to a community than a hobby, but those two things only have the requirement of having an interest in it. Any notion of people belonging in or out is considered gatekeeping (right or wrong), and just because someone has the same interest doesn't mean that they like it the same way for for the same reason, or that they all get along.
For a couple of examples I'd like to point to any instance of a Xwitter artist stating "the art community" when every website has its own culture and not even everyone on that site has to be held to the standards of others. That term is always thrown around by people wanting to punch up for internet points, or they want to watchdog what content is or isn't allowed. Their motivation is at least partially clout instead of the hobby itself. Or when Pewdiepie was fucking around with simple 3D rigs, 1 views and vtweeters were readily jumping at "we can't allow this alt right nazi into our community" when he's not even in the same playground as them.
Vtubing has a cargo cult effect where it was started as a hard roleplay thing for Japanese hobbyists before it shifted into roleplay + idol, and then idol + character. Then when americans looked at it, some of them went "Oh that seems cute I'll do that" and just tried it out before potentially going straight into being a personality or irl streamer + anime mascot. But this isn't to get into a highlander effect, this is about expressing what a wide breadth of people are getting into vtubing for entirely different reasons that it hardly makes a cohesive community. People who use that term are either seeking to belong (which nothing wrong with that mostly) or be arbiters when they're not in charge of who turns a rig on and hits go live while many others don't give them two cents.
A general or a specific chuuba's audience is much more of a community than the hobby in its entirety.
