Can someone explain this vtoon trend to me? It doesn't seem to be driven by anonymity because their real name is easily findable, so I assume it's something else? It seems very common, especially in certain communities.
I don't have the impression that in Marcan's case it was ever about anonymity, it is more about a creative expression.
Up until Lina's introduction on April 1st, I had never seen a vTuber stream, and I must say it is quite fun to watch. Though personally I wish Lina's voice is tweaked a bit, because it can be hard to understand what she is saying.
Simple things like Lina en Marcan using the same hostname for the development machine (Raider), using the same IDE (Kate), using the same bash aliases (the one I like most if 'stfu' that appears to suppress terminal output), and a huge overlap of knowledge. Then there is also the same fast-paced speaking style that Marcan has.
I did notice Lina always (rather jokingly) denying being Marcan, especially during the April 1 debut, but I always assumed that that was just part of the joke.
Again, I might be wrong here, maybe they are not the same person after all, but as far as I can tell it's just Hector Martin having fun.
> Isn't it the opposite, though?
You mean Lina being first, and Marcan being an alter-ego? Marcan (Hector Martin) is a real person, he has done quite a few interviews on camera. https://youtu.be/dF2YQ92WKpM?t=496
As your get more low level, less visual and more niche, there's less and less diversity of software developers. And everyone should feel welcomed into hacking the kernel.
It is the ham-fisted attempts to increase diversity for its own sake have ended up being discriminatory. [1]
If there are barriers stopping people contributing, these should be removed. I expect these to be economic barriers, rather than those based on particular characteristics.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/03/llvm_contributor_resi...
There's nothing forced about people getting into programming and becoming relevant for it, that just by chance it turns out they are not cis+heterosexual.
Nobody in the Asahi crew was "a ham fisted attempt to increase diversity".
The only forced thing here is the "forced inclusion" topic. That, for whatever kind of reason, people stubbornly keep trying to bring to the front.
You answered your own question; it’s a technical community. Centering political activism is counterproductive to the fundamental telos of being a technical community.
Existing members, unsurprisingly, push back against colonization of their community by those more interested in gender ideology or identity politics than technology.
It is obvious that there's terrific engineers and professionals regardless of sexual orientation and we have countless proofs behind it, last but not least the linked article and many of the other asahi contributors.
But when the likes or Google or Facebook are obviously hiring because you are a minority it's when the solution to gender or sexual discrimination is simply...reversed.
A persistent avatar/alias as an internet persona seems to match the real-life to internet-life relationship better. IE, for many, they’re different and rather separable aspects of life.
There was a talent agency that had three-four performers who took shifts streaming games through a shared vtuber persona who had build up some popularity. At some point the agency fired the performers and replaced them with a new performer who didn't have the same performance.
The fans weren't told but it was immediately apparent, so they started demanding the changes to be reverted. The fans were ignored and both the vtuber's popularity and the agency fell back into obscurity.
I guess the lesson here is that personas are personal.
However Hector Martin is not a woman living in Japan and they look perfectly fine/average.
It’s not fooling anyone to pretend like this is normal self expression.
edit: clarify
Number two: this person's goal CLEARLY isn't to fool anyone, it's not a deep fake video, and it's frankly none of your business or concern that they enjoy using an animated avatar.