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Comment by rmunn | Hacker News Reader

The first time I encountered VTubing, I thought the point was just to hide your face, for various reasons. Being sensitive about your looks, not wanting to attract stalkers, whatever. But there's apparently a lot more to it; I was surprised.

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That's one reason. Another big one is it's fun to put on a character. It lets you step away from things you don't like about yourself while embracing the things you do

There's a lot of indie vtubers who do it for that reason. It's just that the biggest ones are corporate.

I've ran once on some streamer who along with the CGI animation also wears some full body suit of anime girl with helmet, wig. That looked like a blend of two ideas. But that's still nothing new - there were always people on youtube who did fully cover their faces to not be recognized.

How to not be seen

That's what many western VTubers don't get, they see it as an "avatar" for themselves which is not what VTubing is. It's supposed to be a completely different persona with no connection to your real identity. It completely dilluted (and I would say even ruined) VTubing in the west.

Maybe they do get it, but are choosing to lean more into the authenticity angle. An art form, a medium, evolves when new cultures and sub-cultures take it up and add their own stuff, both the creator and the audience.

Maybe from their perspective they're correctly doing it their way, instead of, as in your perspective, failing to do it your way.

They do not "evolve" it, they completely misunderstand and butcher it. You can't just take a concept, do it completely different (and we are talking about 100% different) and re-use the same name. That's just disrespectful.

Supposed by whom?

Japanese idol culture and the first few vtubers, iirc

The people who literally created it.

You might prefer things to be that way, but it's important to remember that's an absurd expectation. Especially in the west with how frequently vtubers graduate and show up under a different name. Even hololive JP, who push the entire persona thing very hard, have to periodically break immersion and remind fans that there are real people behind the avatar.

The "different persona" stuff is responsible for some of the most serious abuses the industry has surfaced, and the increasing treatment of VTubing as an avatar is a direct consequence of that.

There's a massive cultural chasm here. I can understand why people want to hide themselves, and I can also understand the audience not wanting to see too much behind the curtain, but at the same time it feels unhealthy to not acknowledge that it's a performance with a performer, who should be able to get credit for their work if they want.

Hamlet dies on stage. At the end of the play, he gets up and an actor takes a bow. This does not detract from Shakespeare.

(aside: I think the possibilities for vtuber theatre have been under-explored in favor of musical performances, but that's probably just a matter of audience taste again)

If I were to make YouTube videos of the camera-to-face variety, I would cloak my face and voice both to avoid stalkers and to avoid deepfakes of each.

But against the flood of videos even before all the AI-generated content churned out by people who don't care about quality, I think I will instead just not make any.

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