• bizarroland@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      13 hours ago

      My first exposure to VTubers was the tool bear, who would tell you things about cheap tools.

      I was always curious because why did this guy need to use a digital bear skin to talk about tools? And then he quit using the V-Tuber skin and he’s just a regular guy, so it doesn’t make any sense to me.

      • logan_hero@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        4 hours ago

        Looking at graduation video at the start bear was easier than IRL camera/studio/background for a starting youtuber. But problems with vtubing software killed the bear. Boils to: Not having full rights to bears likeness, new versions not adding more features for expert user, old version that wouldn’t activate on new pc and new version of software costing more $, or even worse be a monthly subscription.

  • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
    111·
    12 hours ago

    Vtubers have always made me uncomfortable in a way I can’t fully describe. Fans talk about them as if the vtuber characters are real, and they all seem to lust after them in a very unhealthy way.

    • Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de
      11·
      3 hours ago

      I mean, the people controlling those characters are real. You can interact with them and are genuine people.

      You can compare it to characters in a tv show. People talk about Water White as if they are real. And the actor playing that character is real.

      The lust has more to do with the weebs lusting after anything that looks anime. But the majority of vtubers aren’t even anime girls. For the vtuber it is also more to do with privacy and not having to look presentable every time they want to stream.

    • DaGeek247@fedia.io
      5·
      12 hours ago

      I expect it’s the same way people treat regular streamers, they’re just a bit less careful about how they talk about their favorite vtuber in public than they way would a regular streamer.

    • Harvey656@lemmy.worldM
      53·
      9 hours ago

      Vtuber characters

      They are people, not characters. I cannot fathom how this dissonance began, but its so odd.

      Edit: after about 45 minutes of thought, I think this person’s only knowledge of vtubers comes from hololive. Hololive really is much of the time characters, I think that’s why Gura was so big, because she really was genuinely a goober. But I digress. I would look at some indies like Ironmouse, Crelly, or someone on the smaller view count that aligns with your personal interests.

      Actually dont watch crelly. Your soul wont survive.

      • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        2 hours ago

        From what I can tell it seems like it’s sort of up to them how much they want to play a character vs streaming as themselves, with the possible exception of the ones whose vtuber identities are the intellectual property of a company that employs them. There’s a spectrum of things like how much they lean into their character lore, do a voice/mannerisms, or how much they use the avatar as a privacy shield and avoid revealing personal details.

        Not that there’s anything wrong with it either way, it’s basically similar to pseudonymous internet identities, but for live streamers. Anyway if we’re shilling vtubers I want to shoutout my favorite chicken themed vtuber, Henemimi

    • bizarroland@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      13 hours ago

      Yes, but where the imaginer has invested so much energy into it that they lose control of it, usually tinged with some sort of mild to moderate mental illness, which may either be a cause or a consequence of creating a tulpa.

  • Grail@multiverse.soulism.netEnglish
    3·
    11 hours ago

    The word tulpa has been removed from its original cultural context in a way many people aren’t okay with. So the plural community now calls them parogens.

    I’m friends with someone else’s parogen

      • Grail@multiverse.soulism.netEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        It means intentionally created. In the context of plurality, it makes perfect sense, because it distinguishes parogens from traumagenic, walk-in, and other kinds of system members.

  • Sunsofold@lemmings.world
    55·
    13 hours ago

    Sort of, but dumber. At least a tulpa is a display of a quirk of the human mind that it can create an imaginary friend that feels like a different person, and isn’t done for the titillation of strangers. Vtubers are just the laziest automation of a ventriloquist act.

    They don’t learn the subtle art of throwing their voice and looking like they’re paying attention, practicing a skill like a magician. They don’t even engage sincerely with an esoteric religious tradition like tulpamancers. They just run a software to control the digital dummy and do the exact same thing every other streamer does. Give it a few more years and they won’t be anime girls, it’ll all be AI Pokimane bodies with AI modulated voice changers played by the 50 dudes who sold their souls, their cars, and their neighborhood children to get ahold of the only 100 consumer graphics cards to leak out of the Nvidia pipeline.