What went wrong?

[Anonymous No.]

All the friends who got me into vtubers a long while ago have stopped watching them. It feels like Hololive and vtubers in general have lost popularity, even though I can't get any conclusive evidence of this. All the numbers indicate that they're as popular as ever, but no one wants to talk about them for some reason. Why is that? Are vtubers cringe? Is it all fake? Is this just a simulation? Am I being gaslit?

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
Your social circle is not indicative of the greater world at large.
When you graduate high school, you'll understand that better.

[Anonymous No.]

>are vtubers cringe
Yes, but just enjoy them by yourself nerd

[Anonymous No.]

>>67923145
I'm 30 years old.

[Anonymous No.]

Because you're not Japanese and the market outside of Japan is utterly ephemeral.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
>Are vtubers cringe?
Kinda, yeah. The main reason I don't talk about it with my friends is cuz they're all leftists, and I exclusively watch Phase Connect and Phase friends. But I think it'd be a little awkward to talk about even if that wasn't the case.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
vtuber became mainstream in the west and everywhere got filled with shitty indies with coomerbait models and it just gave vtubing a bad name

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
>are vtubers cringe?
Overseas, yeah? They're heavily associated with negative connotations for most western otakus and /or casual fans of streamers. Not even the idol (2.5d or 3d) fans I personally hang out with personally want to fuck with Hololive, and they actively shun the vtuber branches that stem out of their existing idol's companies. It's a niche within a niche within a niche, and so far there hasn't been a single vtuber who's bypassed the "cringe" factor for the masses. Not that they have to, but if vtubing wants to grow as a subculture overseas, they're going to have to eventually, because they certainly aren't gaining wholly new fans at the speed JP side is.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67923666
Clearly not mentally

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
Most of my friends are working adults. After the pandemic and the return to office no one has time to watch vtubers, especially since the ones they watched during the pandemic streamed around mornings local time

[Anonymous No.]

>>67923900
this. no western streamers, let alone vtubers have products that are lined up in real life stores.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
>friends
Normalfags always drift from one thing to the next unable to commit to anything.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
Holomyth is when EN vtubing received its big break, and was largely due to being during the pandemic when we were all inside and willing to do or watch anything to pass time. As time passes, EN Vtubing does little to garner new fans who are totally new to subculture, we end up with a distinct pool of "vtuber fans" with companies and indies alike end up fighting over for a slice of attention from this finite pool instead of broadening their horizons and reaching people who are wholly new. But the pool isn't just finite, it's steadily decreasing: the young adults who got in Myth are 4 years older, with new jobs, new responsibilities, and no time to watch streamers as much.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
early Myth fans disseminated towards NijiEN/Small Corpos/Indies.
Hololive in general? Miko and Korone stopped being hot memes to westerners years ago.

[Anonymous No.]

Normies came and went and contributed nothing except drama

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
vtubers stopped being "the next big thing" and are a fact of life now, so why talk about it?

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
Here is the short version as a picture.

[Anonymous No.]

Hololive was getting popular due to memes from JP girls experiencing western interests. Holo EN exploded and all of a sudden you didn't even need subtitles to enjoy. Clippers became oversaturated and the dedicated translators got less financial incentive to follow their oshii. Meanwhile, Hololive kept getting busier and busier behind the scenes with idol and advertising obligations. It's now a realistic excuse that collabs can't happen due to busy schedules even though the whole point was to have a closed group of people to interact with.

The western audience, while large, is terrible. They repeat jokes ad nauseum and are mentally obsessed with numbers to a ridiculous degree. They want award shows and focus on who is beating who as if it should matter when watching their favorites. The Japanese and Chinese audience has gone retarded too with trying to fish drama out of a intentionally drama free business model.

So we're left with a JP branch that no longer participates as much with one another needing to adhere to stricter permissions, an EN branch getting burnt out from needing to work a day in their lives for an audience they don't respect at all, and the rest of the vtubing world trying to appeal to the normie market that is no longer there after the pandemic. It isn't in a grim enough state to say it's over but many of the people from other orgs that debuted in the last two years definitely would have made a much bigger splash five years ago. Even Advent which had tons of hype and buildup has a comparatively lackluster amount of success compared to their efforts. (Still doing good though.) And this is coming from the biggest name in the business. I think we're at a state where the novelty and timing of vtubing peaked and we're now in the appropriate range for what should be expected.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
>All the numbers indicate that they're as popular as ever
No.

I remember Ina having 13k viewers at her lowest during HoloEN's hayday.
A significant proportion of streamers and youtubers knew who Gura was.
Whatever the reason they declined was, Hololive in the west today: by measuring HoloEN metrics, are comparable to mindshare of a few magnitudes above THE phase connect and THE idolcorp - it's that bad.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
It's 2024 bro.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67931084
I think a lot of the old viewers just got bored of vtubers in general. Doesn't mean that anyone messed up. People can just move on from a hobby or interest if it's no longer fun or enjoyable.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67931757
cover never intended holoen to be more than what it is today.
even its early days, holoEN's successes needed to have done alot of things to even be more than just an internet subculture in the west.
if carving out a niche is what holoEN did, the next magnitude is to be competing with livestreamers and the one after, and the standard of HoloJP, is to become part of anime culture.

most vtubing fans and even vtubers like kiara don't understand that the industry in the west is so so SO much smaller than it is in Japan, and even in there Hololive isn't an empire - some holomems even find themselves to be in the graces of jp streamers.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67930592
>biggest name in the business
Hololive is Second biggest. Niji JP and as a whole is still bigger than Holo in size, profits, number of livers, number of subs and highest performing ccv talents. That’s just fact.

[Anonymous No.]

ITT retards who have never seen a graph

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
Your friends are a bunch of shallow trend hopping faggots. My friends and I still actively discuss our oshis.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67927115
Do they know you aren't like them?

[Anonymous No.]

>>67923900
This, and the EN vtuber market has declined. The vtuber corpos will never admit that but viewer numbers and superchat revenue peaked in 2021. HoloEN is still earning a lot but NijiEN is having little growth with new waves and they still won't release an update on their cancelled 3D concert.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67933600
>non-austrian pseud drivel
fuck off. these shitter concepts can't even explain ancient history trade let alone subcultural growth.

[Anonymous No.]

>/vt/ is one of the fastest boards on 4chan
>See new indies all the time
>OMG BROS IS VTUBING DYING????
Kys nerd

[Anonymous No.]

>>67935582
> The business cycle is non-Austrian psuedo drivel
What's next, my man. Want to explain how the time value of money is actually a Spook?

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
>my small circle of fwiends no longer watches vtubers which means everything is dying :((

[Anonymous No.]

>>67933995
Have you considered that could be because Nijisanji is infamously run by drooling incompetent morons at the middle level of management?

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
When you think anecdotes are the same thing as real data

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
The EN industry will never reach the peaks it did during covid again as long as we live. It was a combination of shiny new thing and the entire planet sat at home with fuck all else to do creating a perfect storm. The reality is, most people anymore don't have time to watch multi hour streams from a dozen different vtubers, the economy is in the shitter and everyone is a lot more busy and stressed. People are discovering new vtubers, they have their favorites and stick to them quietly, and everyone else just watches clips. The overall audience might be stable but each individual audience member is less active and engaged.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67936445
that is just echochamber hearsay. any good streamer can compete with other streamers just look at not-acknowledged vtubers who mog top streamers.
and regarding muh economy, weebs still exist, twitch simps still exist. stop making generalizing assumptions as if the regular working man was watching gawr fucking gura during covid then had no time because he fucking plumbs for a living

[Anonymous No.]

>>67933807
No, I'm pretty good at masking. I don't like lying to myself, and they annoy me anytime politics is brought up, but if I was honest about my views, and insisted on having non-leftist friends, I wouldn't have any friends.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67933300
Well then things look grim because if I recall correctly 2023 marked the very first year NijiJP’s big events had lower numbers than the year before.

[Anonymous No.]

>>67922976
You got old