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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Immediately made me think of VTubing. A lot of vtubers now are among the most popular streaming channels on Youtube and many of them are probably what you could call above average performers in terms of what content they put out, from music to narrative fiction.

Also reminded of me of an interview with Buckethead explaining his alter ego:

""Because I was always super scared to play, and I didn't really link that together, I just thought 'This is weird.' Like a horror movie guy. And when he saw it he was like 'You should just go for it!' I was like 'That would be cool.' Because I could do everything I liked doing as this character that I'm totally scared to death to do otherwise. And it applied to all the stuff I like, like Disneyland and martial arts and dancing, all that stuff I liked. I was like, 'I can't do it just like me.' It was a great way to get all the stuff out."

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Okay I will fly the Old Guy flag proudly and paste a definition:

A VTuber, or virtual YouTuber, is an online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar generated using computer graphics and real-time motion capture software or technology.

Straight from Wikipedia.

I don't think this one is an old guy thing. No one I know in their 20s would know what a VTuber is. Thanks for the definition.

I'm in my forties and have known exactly what this was for years (ever since Hatsune Miku), but still had to look up the term "VTuber", which I did not recognize.

If you want to get nitpicky, Hatsune Miku is a voice synthesizer and character design that anyone can use, whereas VTubers usually have one person who "is" the character. A VTuber is basically the video equivalent of someone who uses a fake name on an internet forum; fans generally think of them as real people with coherent personalities. (Whereas any personality Hatsune Miku has is more like a loose convention among all the different artists who use the character.)

My friends that I’ve taken to masquarades (or just worn fun masks to clubs with) have said similar things.

Its like despite being goofier and less conspicuous, they feel so much more free

This is why Halloween is so popular with adults. Once you get past the lazy Sexy _____ costumes and into the ones that took some thought, you wind up meeting some interesting people. If you take the time to come up with your costume, you naturally start becoming that character in just the decisions of what they would/wouldn't wear because you're already thinking of the back story.

By coincidence, I heard this at morning too:

"Give a man a mask and he will tell the truth" - Oscar Wilde

Carnival comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival

I imagine them being faceless streamers does more to ease their anxiety than their fabricated persona. But my imagination doesn't come with a p-val so guess you'd have to ask them.

French guitarist Matthieu Cheddid, althought not hiding as much, says he changed his appearance and created some kind of persona (so-called M) to drop his fears to be a public artist.

You bring guitar into the idea of an alter ego without https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead

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