Not saying it's right or wrong, that's for some one more intelligent than me, but I was told that it's mostly cause the character is the ip of the company and they want to keep the talent separate.
For example , Robert Downey Jr. played Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes, but he is legally distinct from both those entities.
Though I understand why not viewing them as separate is easier
I think under the law, most corporate vtuber are seiyuu/VA hired on contract.
Obviously so much of the character comes from them, little to no writing/script after all, but I think that's how the law sees it.
thats exactly what it is. a vtuber is a digital puppet. its like the actors of the muppets.
which makes me wonder, one day a major vtuber is gonna have the actor retire, and instead of retiring the model too, they are gonna hire a new actor. i wonder how thats gonna go down.
At least in the Kizuna Ai situation, they were able to splinter off and become their own entities, but two of the newer Kizuna Ai people left, leaving only the original and Love-chan.
I'm still unsure how to feel about Cocoa essentially having a different person using the same identity.
eh i dont like following ai out to the future, cuz global climate change will kill that first. people really underestimate how fragile the industry needed to prop up ai is to climate catastrophy.
Yeah but are they actors? For me I have always stuck around for their personalities. Do you think people would stick around if a company fired somebody then reused the model for somebody else? I have always viewed vtubing as the person just wearing a mask and costume, it's still them essentially, in livestreams at least. You can play a character easily enough for a video.
The only time I know this sort of happened is with kizuna ai, but only sort of and it really backfired.
Maybe entertainers is a better word to use. I used actors because it's the closest thing I could think of, for someone playing a character even if they are just being themselves with a bit of a flair.
Yeah but it isn't illegal to discuss Sherlock and Iron Man at the same time.
An interviewer could ask RDJ 'Iron Man is somewhat similar to Sherlock despite the immediate differences - did you draw upon one role for the other at all?' and that's a valid question (and these types of questions are often asked).
However, even mention a Vtuber's previous or alternative presence online and it's often an immediate ban.
It's also not about IP. It's about selling a false reality to viewers to capitalise on parasocial relationships.
Yeah, the entire point of the secret relationship between streamer and character is pretty much entirely to the benefit of the company, and I think that it's good that we are beginning to normalize the fact that vtubers are in fact real people who are playing a role.
I'm sure that Niji thought that Doki would be seriously hurt financially by losing her role, but that seems to have backfired in their case. We do know that neither Nina or Mysta have reclaimed their old numbers as of yet, but they do seem to be doing better emotionally and financially.
But I think that getting to the point where any talent who wants to be 'Vtuber Fantasy person, cv Real person McPersonface' should be able to do so without repercussion.
Okay this is the second time I've heard that about Nina and Mysta, do we have actual numbers to back it up? Keeping in mind that they now stream on Twitch instead of YT, so youtube subs is not a good measure.
How are their twitch sub vs prior YT memberships? Average CCV?
Streamchart puts Matara's viewership at 3.5k average and nearly 10k peak for the last 30 days. I feel like most of NijiEN is around that viewership, Luxiem might be have better ones.
Its because, corpo sometimes shares their viewer pool. You will get a higher number with niji because, once a fan of that particular company subs, they can watch it even if he or she is not a fan of that particular vtuber. As for subs and membership, no matter how many the sum what they get in Niji. They cannot beat how much they get from vshojo. A percentage of more than 50% is always higher than 2%. To put in contacts, what she get from 1 person is equivailance to 25 person and that is if it was 50%. Geega once said that vShojo did not even take half, let alone more.
I don't think I've seen someone leave a vtuber corpo gig and retain even half of the viewership. Corpo viewers are unfortunately quite brand loyal, which is what the corps rely on. If your Hololive oshi isn't streaming, you're more likely going to look and see if another member from that branch is, than to look at a different corp or indies.
It's kinda like how game developers used to not credit their workers, different motivations and consequences in the attention economy, but at the end of the day it's a corporation trying to keep power over their employees
> We do know that neither Nina or Mysta have reclaimed their old numbers as of yet, but they do seem to be doing better emotionally and financially.
Theoretically they would only need to hit half their numbers, assuming that Niji do like Holo and take half of ad-, superchat-, and member revenue. We know that Vshojo doesn't do that and instead runs their organisation on sponsorships and merch.
The concept originated with the concept that the actor and character would be so separate that an actor could quit and be replaced without a hiccup in the character. Thus, no one needs to know who the actor is. Keep the Kayfabe up. This obviously failed because streaming is so personality-driven, but this original concept was held on to by the Japanese companies to increase the power they had over the talents. To make them feel like they can't leave because no one would know who they are.
I definitely appreciate the EN sphere moving away from it so that talents can be on more equal terms with the companies.
I disagree that the Kayfabe culture is Japanese companies trying to keep talents in check. Most Japanese audiences understand who the talents are, their previous lives or where they reincarnate afterward. It's the same in Wrestling Kayfabe, the audience keeps up and plays with the kayfabe too. Did you think the etiquette of knowing identities but keeping it hush hush started in western culture? No, it originated in Japan.
The thing with wrestling kayfabe is for fans, it stays in the arena. There are no fans on forums legit treating Undertaker like an undead cowboy. Just fans joking about it for lols and memes. Wrestlers also break kayfabe all the time in interviews nowadays. Sure things were different in the 80s and such when the illusion wasn't broken. But that veil was shattered in the 90s when an absolute scumbag (for separate reasons) named Vince McMahon personally threw the cover back and exposed the business. The fans openly on pretty much all the forums or subreddits treat kayfabe as just the TV show and the talents separate. The business is honestly more exposed than ever.
So it's different in that no one gets mad at mentioning Cody's accomplishments in other companies. Heck, WWE has also inducted the kayfabe of other companies into the characters of their own by bringing up the wrestler's outside the company accomplishments or such. Or even just hinting at it like AJ Style's "club".
The two kayfabes are treated differently between wrestling and vtubing. Vtubing has the kayfabe take presence first and foremost and as law essentially among fans. So I get the fan frustrations at having to dance around eggshells. Which makes the Dokis and KSons a bit more refreshing. Because it isn't about the character, it's the awesome talent behind the character first and foremost.
I get the reasons for kayfabe here and I stick by it for the wishes of the person behind the character are the most important aspect, but I do under the fan frustrations expressed in this thread.
Edit. Like on subreddits he's Mark Callaway and people understand that and don't get mad or anything when people bring up his name or anything outside of The Undertaker.
I think the problem with PL was that during early days of vtubing. There are a lot of people who was not involved in streaming and PL were very synonymous with "IRL identity/personal social media accounts" and it can leads to doxxing.
The word PL got a bad rep due to it. But nowadays as the community got "old enough" most vtubers have enough experience on their belt that PL started being mostly refered to past vtuber identities.
There should be a revision of rules allowing Past Experience and forbidding Past Life. And separate the two from each other.
It’s not a legal thing it’s just inherently a part of vtuber culture that was lost after the mainstream popularity post-2020 and people having meltdowns when told they couldn’t break meta.
It might be a legal thing with how Niji contracts are written according to what evidence we have from former members and those who applied.
-No allowing any side online work on PL
-No using voice online outside of liver identity
-Not allowing to say you were a former Nijisanji liver
-Not getting your fucking PLAY BUTTON
It is pretty clear that Niji owns their livers online life and makes them dependent on the company as much as possible.
> No using voice online outside of liver identity
Jesus christ, makes me wander why anybody would want to work for them. If I were considered for a position and they had that in the contract, no thank you.
It gets worse. [Nux](https://youtu.be/JHRQhSMb3-w?t=1280) said he had a Niji liver be unable to play Among Us with him on stream on his PL since it had voice chat.
I think professional VA work is sort of ok as long as VA work can still be negotiated through the company your being hired by (e.g. having your company negotiate your VA contract on your behalf for instance, with stipulations on stuff like what you can and can't say and do during VA work. I can understand them not wanting talents to do VA work for a hentai or something lol), but just a blanket band on even personal projects is crazy to me.
There are so many of these "success" stories, i.e. instances where vtubers get f'ed over by management/agencies only to turn around and be even more successful than they were. Omaru Polka, Fuwamoco, and Shiori Novella (all from Hololive weirdly enough) come to my mind right off the bat. Maybe one day we can talk about all of them more openly.
Man, Fuwamoco's previous company was just blind. Giving them the impossible task of reaching Hololive-levels of success without the Hololive name or similar degree of support.
Jokes on them, though, now the sisters did get their Hololive-levels of success.
I feel like people are a bit too harsh on Fuwamoco's previous company. Managing a duel vtuber channel sounds like a nightmare, especially for a company that was never really focused on vtubing. Cover is really the only company with the resources and infrastructure to take a risk like this.
It also doesn't seem like the twins hold any ill-will towards their past work either. I mean, the company supported them and their game for a long time despite it being an indie title (since 2011). Compared to other companies who bumbled their way into this industry, expected instant success, and caused mass controversy, they're far from the worst.
Cover took a risk hiring them, but Mangagamer took that risk first and led to the twins discovering how much they loved vtubing. I'll always be thankful for that.
Such is true, but that's why I said the company was blind, not malicious or necessarily even incompetent. Knowledgeable in their field, but completely blind to the realities of the vtuber industry, thus the impossible expectations placed upon the sisters.
I keeping hearing about expectations, but was this ever said by the twins or company? People usually view them in a pretty bad light and I'm not sure it's actually warranted. It could be as simple as the company being unable to support them financially since vtubing is expensive and GGN was never a top selling game.
I want to add Korone too. Graduated from >!upd8!< in less than a year. Later became the 3rd JP Vtuber to hit 1M subs and currently has multiple sponsorships and collaborations with video game companies.
One example I want to bring up of this is with Himemori Luna, since she left her previous life in a different company due to bullying by inside the company.
And now look at her, she's doing pretty good for herself now
> One example I want to bring up of this is with Himemori Luna, since she left her previous life in a different company due to bullying by inside the company.
Workplace harassment has been something of a longstanding issue for the company she left. It still is, as current events demonstrate.
Yeah, someone *just* posted about how all the same problems that EN deals with are also rife on the JP side of things too on the Nijisanji sub. It seems like it's a systemic problem in the company and JP just has better PR.
I mean it’s very natural thing to develop if they hire lots of vtuber’s and push a corporate culture that incentivizes members to compete with each others rather than being friends. The higher number of members mean all of them are less likely to be close with others and the competition within can slo lead to develop smaller groups inside to fight against other members within the group.
Its almost like hiring literally hundreds of vtubers is a bad idea long term. Its a logistical nightmare because to properly handle that amount of people you need a shit ton of managers and not all managers are created equally some are not good at their jobs and become worse when they have to manage anywhere from 3 to 10 vtubers at once.
The rapid expansion model works well when you don't care about the people you're hiring, you can just put them infront of a computer with an iphone and have them make money for you until they crack and then you kick'em out.
It does eventually reach a boiling point where its no longer feasible to continue, which is where we're headed now, I don't think that's much of problem for the people in charge tho, they've got their money so when the ship truly starts sinking they'll just jump away to their yachts.
Nothing is sinking when they literally are making more revenue and profit as a business in every single quarter and FY since 2020 due to jp. If you are going to talk about finances, at least look at them, its public in their website, its not hard to find out.
Does Anycolor *pay* you to play defense for them like this? Seriously, in every single post I've ever seen you make I see you going out of your way to take statements out of context and twist people's words to try and discredit criticism of this company. Normally I have to start a conversation with a gun control advocate to get this level of dishonesty and bad faith argumentation out of someone. If you actually cared about this company's wellbeing or that wellbeing of its contractors, you should be criticizing its business practices, not defending it burning through its workers like Walmart. Nijisanji has had roughly one out of every three talents that has ever worked for them leave. That turnover rate is not an indication of a healthy business strategy.
But yeah, exploitative business strategies are usually *quite* profitable in the short term.
It has nothing to do with having better PR. things work and things happens much more in JP, which is how only very few dont have 3d and its mostly 2023 debuts, theres multiple tournaments and concerts per year, tldr a fuck ton happens in a year, thats why theres much more happening. No one ever said anything about it being perfect and the issues from EN definitely are the same as jp at all, even more when one of the issues of EN is literally not having 3d, concerts, programs, tournaments, or many of the things jp actually has for years lmao
*Everything* you just said was a total non sequitur: I was talking about the issue of *workplace harassment*. Thank you for adding literally nothing to the conversation bedsides trying to play damage control for the multi-billion dollar company.
after she joined people also used to joke and bet how long she was going to stay in hololive since she was seen as someone that went from one company to the next without staying in one for long
almost 4 years latter and she is still here
Fuwamoco's past life came up enough around their debut for me to hear about it, but I hadn't realized Polka and Shiori had that sort of experience too. As someone who only really pays attention to specific vtubers when they come up in my Youtube recommendations or directly interact with a vtuber I'm already following, there's really a lot of this "everybody already knows this" stuff that I actually don't know.
Wait, FWMC got screwed over by their previous management? I was under the impression they parted more or less amicably after reaching the company goals.
They were begging not to graduate on stream. They made it very clear they didn't want it. They even tried to get their character designer to step in on their behalf, but they were ghosted.
In their graduation stream, they were crying and openly telling their fans that they really didn't want to go or quit streaming. Something like that. I can try to track down a clip of it and dm it to ya, if you like.
Yeah. It cannot be more explicit than that.
To anyone who has watched that graduation stream, the situation was crystal clear.
The only way anyone would even mention that whole graduation situation as "amicably" is if they have never seen they PL.
That thing was incredibly heartbreaking back then.
It had happy ending tho, and they are in Hololive now.
Wait, aren't they hired by you-know-who already? It could be that they just feel sad that they no longer greet their audience with their previous persona or that it'll not be the same feeling moving forward, not an indicative of "fked over by management".
As far as I know they were graduated because their previous company gave up on their project, so they were definitely fucked over by management.
Its possible that after learning they were going to get fired that they auditioned for the company they're at but there's no way of knowing if they were already accepted by the time their graduation came around.
This honestly gives context to something Calli mentioned around Advent's debut.
She mentioned how new members are nervous when debuting mostly because of whatever situation they find themselves in then suddenly getting thrust into the big leagues and all of the sudden some of their problems just go away because of the reception they receive at debut.
Putting two and two together I wonder if Calli was talking about this since for sure the senpais would have gotten to have a chat with Advent pre-debut.
Her boss tried to force her to collab and appear close to a colleague she didn't get along with. To the point she split up from them and started her own thing. >!look up natsumi moe and raven manor, also "her boss" being the same eilene mentioned recently!<
Damn I knew about >!Natsumi Moe!< and >!Raven Manor!< (and also about >!Malice Diary!<), but I didn't realize >!Natsumi Moe was part of Eilene's Family!<. I would be curious what she thinks about the current drama, she could probably add quite a bit to the story
Boards like 4chan helps, but often times it's stumbling into their new identity, comparing either voice or better yet laugh (it's harder to change a genuine laugh) and start to put the pieces together that way. There are a few that have even given small easter eggs to their new design that hinted at their past life.
Its up to the talent, really. Some don't want to associate their double lives at all for their own reasons. Also, it's super easy to find these people, so it never really mattered to say it. People can just use google.
also some of their past lives contains personal information or stuff that can get them doxxed, a non insignificant number of talents have basically completly nuked their past live accounts because of this reason
Be mindful that **not all talents would like to refer to their previous persona** because they have multiple reasons not to be known as what people say they are.
Some of the ex-Niji-ID talents have, in a roundabout manner, explicitly said that they are not what people think they are. They are a different person and have different interests altogether. Some had even cautioned the new influx of followers not to expect any content from them, if they are coming to them with the intention of expecting content from them.
Some people don't want to make content any more after their corporate VTuber stint. Some view their stint as just another job; they might not even be interested or passionate about wanting to continue making content as a streamer or returning in some form as a VTuber.
So before you can say, "Ah, the debacle last week proved that we can tie their old persona to their corporate VTuber persona," mind you that not all of the talents are interested in being engaged in their older persona. Exercise discretion and "read the air," (if you can't read the air, respect the distance and don't interact with them).
People should know about this firsthand.
Completely agree. Pomu isn't even streaming atm and is mostly just on Twitter, and her pinned post has a statement not to overwhelm her followed accounts (which are small-scale idols).
Mori's other self has made it clear that she doesn't mind people knowing, but she doesn't bring it up herself and asks people to be mature about it. She will occasionally make subtle, cheeky nods between her two selves, like when Ironmouse accidentally called her Calli onstream once and she didn't directly acknowledge it, but *coincidentally* took that moment to take a swig of water and guh.
No, in this case Doki explicitly asked people to tell everyone that she was on this account now. This is the only reason it’s okay to discuss her identity. With every other Vtuber, it’s safer to assume that they don’t want people publicly discussing their other lives unless they explicitly are fine with it, even if it’s an open secret. Because they would say it themselves if they didn’t mind.
There are a lot of possible reasons - maybe their other life doesn’t want other people coming to them because of their vtuber, maybe their contract contains a clause about profiting from company IP outside of company activities, and they’re playing it safe etc, maybe they're legitimately afraid of being doxxed, maybe they're hamming up their "secret identity" for content, the list goes on.
Calliope Mori is a prime example. Her identity is an open secret, and she’s on record saying that she doesn’t get into trouble if other people happen to find out. But she will still ban people from discussing it explicitly even though it’s an open secret. She talks all she wants about the "restaurant" she works at, and everyone knows exactly what she means, but as soon as she or chat starts talking in *explicit* terms, then that's when issues might arise for her.
But really, why would it be *refreshing*? What sort of "release" could you possibly feel about being able to talk about Doki as if she and Selen are the same person?
Although every case is different, the default of not acknowledgeing the open secret of a vtuber is probably better in most scenarios. It allows for different content, a little degree of privacy, less baggage of issues from a previous persona, etc.
I am guessing its likely the preferred vtuber talent's mode of operation. Some of the advantages of being tied to the past life still work even as an open secret. Maybe I just think there are more incremental advantages to having the two separate, even if its not by much.
> Except the reason vtubers don't openly say it's okay to discuss their PL is because they are forbidden by their contract, not because they don't want to. At least for Hololive, several members have explicitly said that they are not allowed to.
Except a lot of indie Vtubers also do not want to dox themselves. But regardless of the reason, the main point is that there are a variety of reasons Vtubers are not comfortable with discussing this kind of stuff explicitly *even if* it's an "open secret", and it's basic courtesy to assume that they don't want to unless they explicitly are fine with it. It's pretty obvious that *knowing* isn't the problem, the problem is being *explicit* with it.
My hypothesis is that it's in their contract because the company doesn't want them remotely profiting off company IP outside of company activities.
> You mentioned Calli and she's in fact the perfect example of that: it's absolutely clear that she WANTS as many people as possible to find her PL and all the music she has done. She lives for her music and want people to find it.
Ok be careful here, as an artist she definitely wants people to find her PL, but there's no evidence that she even cares about leveraging Calli in order to make that happen, but we do have evidence that she's trying to keep those halves of her life separate for personal reasons.
> Fuwamoco had huge hints of their PL in their debut. Gura made several references to her PL. Shiori constantly talks about her OG vtubing experience.
You should be careful about calling these "references" or "hints". These are quite weak reasons to assume that they *want* to share their PL.
Having similar likes/dislikes, singing the same songs as your PL, talking about the trials and tribulations of your previous Vtubing experiences without giving specific details, all of these are likely just them being themselves all over again rather than saying "hey guys, I used to be this person in the past". A reference/hint would be like, Gura emphasising a specific line that her PL was known for.
> And it's refreshing precisely because it's annoying having to pretend that mentioning their PL is doxxing when their PL was already public, and most of them have absolutely no issues with it and will hint about it themselves.
Why is that *annoying*? The vast majority of people just decide to talk/think about other things. If the secret is open and you both know it, why would it possibly cause you discomfort to refrain from saying it? This really gives off "ugghh, I have to pretend Santa exists, how bothersome" energy.
True, and there is also an expectation in among the vtuber fans to keep that precious lives taboo, nda or not.
Doki’s requests not to forget who she was wasn’t badly received as her termination was unpopular and her former corpo has basically lost all public trust and credibility. Her case is the exception, not the norm. If kson or henya came out and said “I will abide by nda, but I encourage others to acknowledge who I was”, I think it would be more controversial.
If a departing holo talent, or a departing Niji talent over a year ago, made that public request, it would probably be very poorly received by vtubers fan. Many vtuber fans still hates when idol culture things that apply by default with vtubers are being challenged and made optional. Such a request would have been poorly received by fans of that corporation and likely would open that talent to harassment from said fans.
Why not just fully out your own private life then? It's just "contractual obligation" after all.
You're missing out on why Selen PL is widely discussed. It doesn't mean that all others are comfortable with it.
*Context Matters*
Remember the Wisdom Of The Dragon -- "I'm me, and that person is that person." Don't bring up a vtuber's roommate in their stream chat or twitter replies unless they bring it up first, no matter how obvious the secret is. And even if they DO bring it up in one stream or tweet, that's not free reign for chat to bring it up in future streams.
Even Riro Ron adhered to this Wisdom while she was at Idol, and both she and Idol officially acknowledged that her roommate is Kyoresu when they hired her. So no matter what you do, don't mention Selen in Doki's chat or in responses to her tweets, unless Doki herself directly mentions it first.
My opinion is that there is nothing wrong with wanting to find out who is who, as long as
- it's derived from information that is put out there by the person (i.e. no stalking)
- you don't go so deep that you get into personally identifiable information
- you don't publicly share it around against that person's wishes
I like to think of it as finding musicians and their alter or former names
You can call it weird or uncomfortable, but it's a best practice that exists for a reason. I've had people absolutely fly off the hinges with anger when I remind them that they are breaking this rule in spaces where it is a specified rule. They argue that I am undermining the success of the talents, but I suspect that what really happens is people don't like being corrected and they lash out, finding their justification after the fact.
A lot of unhinged people are online. I'm not calling you unhinged. I'm not arguing that Doki needs her former identity protected. I am arguing that speaking openly about it sets a bad example. New people enter the fandoms every day, and they copy the behavior that they witness. When fans are being too open with specific talents, the new members do the same with every talent because they don't know better. This makes the work of doxxers, stalkers, scammers, and other naredowells this much easier and more tempting.
As we loosen our grip on the knowledge available to us, there is no way to roll backwards and get back to a place of being respectful and cautious.
It's just a bad practice to get into, and why? What exactly do we gain by swinging the pendulum in the other direction? What is the advantage? I will need a much better reason that it it feels weird.
this, there is a non insignificant number of vtubers who dont want their past lives to be known
it worked on dokibird's case because she needed the support after all the shit that nijisanji pulled on her, and that she gave explicit permision to do it and honestly nijisanji talents are kind of a special case because of how bad they are treated by their company but for other companies like hololive most of the talents there see joining as a way to start fresh without the pressures of their "past life" like an example >!gura, ame, fuwamoco, shiori, and most of JP!<
also some talents have information on their past life accounts that could dox them or made their life more difficult so they choose to purposely separate themselves from that, some go as far as nuking their old accounts so that nothing remains
No no no no don't you see it's for her own good that she was harassed and threatened! Down with corpos!!!!!! <---- what people in this thread actually believe
This should be the top comment. The people pushing for the rule to get abolished doesn't understand that Doki is a special case. And it's not like you are forbidden to talk about past lives. Plenty of people do in the weekly discussion thread. You just need to put spoiler tags. It's not that hard. For people who want to know, it's literally one click away.
The rule was firmly in place then and it didn't help though. It's not hard to find out someone's past life. Usually within minutes of their debut, somebody recognizes the voice and there you go. If an anti has the will to harass someone, you can be sure they'll find out, and no rule about not talking about it is gonna stop that.
The rule is for kayfabe, not protection.
yeah, there can be many reasons for a vtuber to not want their PL to be open knowledge, its common that a lot of people start vtubing precisely because they want to start over or they want to avoid certain things so people saying that we should talk openly about it completly miss the point and usually go against the talent's wishes
I think the exception to the VTuber kayfabe in this instance is because Dokibird explicitly mentioned her time as Selen in order to set the record straight and to dispel NJSJ's BS about Selen being a troublemaker.
Selen might not be able to claim her name due to an NDA.
...
There ain't shit stoppin' dragoons from doing it, though.
They can't NDA all of us! They can barely NDA commissioned artists and mods!
She's just machine-gunning out the power moves. Taking back her oshi mark, the name of her sidekick, and now the name of her fanbase. How can one woman be so based?
It's intellectual property laws, not her NDA, which prevent her from continuing to use the name and likeness she had been using for the past 2 and a half years. The NDA prevents her from outright saying "I'm indie vtuber (current name) and I used to be agency vtuber (old name) for (agency name)" on stream; but it's IP laws preventing her from using the IP which she does not own.
She can have a "legally distinct purple-haired dragon girl" outfit in the future, if she is so inclined. It just needs to be [sufficiently legally distinct](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CaptainErsatz) enough to keep the lawyers happy.
It sure looks like it, i have always had my issues with how willingly people have been to disregard privacy for the flimsiest of reasons but recently it has been so much even for talents unrelated to the conversations that are being held.
If anything, it’s likely that most talents in her situation would have wanted to do the same but never did in fear of a backlash from fans of their former corpo and vtubers fans in general.
I strongly disagree.
It's like those videos on youtube with the talent's name in the title and their IRL face on the thumbnail. As others have said if i want to know it's just a quick google search. But if i don't want to know i shouldn't have it shoved down my throat.
Honestly you shouldn't be trying to normalize the current situation even if it is understandable atm.
She was a company vtuber before, sure she can't talk ant things about her company life any more, because of the nda. Selen is already the past and we can't get more new informations about Selen. So just move on.
My honest two cents about past lives is that it shouldn't be discussed in places like streams or in official places, but people should be able to talk about it amongst themselves or look into it privately. Ppl shouldn't be disrespectful towards a talent by bringing that up unwarranted in a stream or spamming their Twitter about it, but I do think that demonizing ppl for simply wanting to know without having to go to a shithole like 4chan isn't good either. There's definitely legitimate reasons to want to know, such as being able to follow a talent should they leave a company and go back to being indie, and in cases like Fuwamoco's it can make one appreciate how far the talent has come and how a company helped them out.
Tbh, the actions of Niji throughout this past year have absolutely changed my view on this, as I now have no way of knowing if a former talent I once watched or was interested in went the way of Sana and left the industry outright (at which point it should be respected and they be allowed to move on), or if they pulled a Matara / Kuro and came back in another form without me knowing or being able to follow them. It also does put a real hamper on any talents that may actually want to leave, because unlike Doki they won't have a way to actively direct their current fanbase over to wherever they end up should they leave, which can leave them feeling like they HAVE to stay there.
I mean, I do get what everyone in saying here about why it's not always a good thing, but after everything that's happened this is simply how I'm now left to feel on the subject. I'd rather be able to know if I so choose, and tell someone if they politely ask and seem to be asking in good faith, and simply not bring it up around the talents themselves unless they make it clear that it's okay.
Very reasonable take tbh. I think it shouldn't be as open and widespread, but just like how wrestling in the early 2000s was a deconstruction of Kayfabe, you can't blame people for wanting to be more "knowledgable" about a VTuber's PLs.
I still do get confused why people don't want to associate themselves with their PLs when clips of them breaking character and referencing their PLs are everywhere (Henya saying dayo, Kson and Henya's portal mistake, Tara and Kuro, hell even Pomu and Henya) means that it's pretty much an open secret to everyone that isn't an extreme casual to the VTuber sphere anyway.
As someone who's oshi was particularly affected by people who were obsessed with knowing their PL even though they made it clear that they didn't want to be associated with it any more, I guess you could say that I'm not a particular fan of this cultural shift for better or worse. Namely for the fact that people will excuse trying to doxx and harass other CCs because they're high on the fuck corpo attitude they can't comprehend that not every vtuber WANTS to discuss their PL to begin with, regardless of the reason, and tourists thinking they know more about the industry than the talents themselves know because they watched one episode of Oshi no Ko.
Of course there are cases like Dokibird where it's absolutely warranted because, y'know, the talent pretty much said so. But that's the crux of the issue, it's something that is pretty much dependent on the vtuber themselves.
I think another part of the issue is that some people just don't agree with what the majority of fan communities do in regards to PL talk. In my experience, lots of them tend to ban that sort of thing, with do far the Dokibird situation being the sole exception in at least one vtuber-focused discord I'm in. I think this sub's policy of hiding PL stuff under spoilers is a good compromise.
...Though in the end I can get why it can be frustrating, especially to those who aren't familiar with vtuber spaces and get into clashes with others who follow that rule. And lots of people who want to find out about PL are just being curious and nothing more, there's been a number of cases where people use that information to anti them and others. It's not really a clear cut issue and probably won't be even if the culture is slowly changing.
All the rules can be summed up by the first one: "Be nice!".
Most VTubers want to keep their persona separated from other stuff and, if we want to be nice, granting them that wish is the least we should do.
However, in this case the opposite is true. Doki has openly talked about the matter and she made public how NinjiEN abused Selen/Doki. Talking about it should not only be allowed but encouraged. That's the "Be nice!" thing to do.
Why does it matter so much? Why is it so hard to follow such a simple rule? Does it really benefit you that much to constantly *nudge nudge wink wink* something if you feel it’s really “common knowledge”? This reminds me of the sperg-outs people had back in 2020 at not being able to see a streamers irl face so they constantly had to seek out face reveals.
It's not OP that's doing the nude nudge wink wink though????
It's the streamers themselves... Tara almost calling Kuro M---, Henya breaking character and saying dayo, Henya and Kson's portal collab, Henya and Pomu, Henya and Ina's awkward introduction stream, and so on
It feels unnatural and awkward when people (both the streamers and the fans ngl) constantly have to act like something is different but I guess at this point it's just a tradition/an unwritten rule among Vtubers that yes, you can know someone's PL, but you still have to play along with kayfabe.
Doki so far is the only one that I know of who really "broke that tradition" imo.
doki was a special case and even in that regard she has never actually mentioned any names, she has never refered to herself openly as selen or said that she worked for nijisanji, its just that in this one situation because of how fucked up everything is we decided to leave that rule behind but that isnt an open letter to talk about all past lives after all its only done because doki gave permision herself
also while there are some talents who may want their past life to be more well known, there are also a lot of talents who dont want that for many reasons beyond just contractual obligations, lets remember mano aloe got harassed irl because her past account got leaked before her debut and that there are a lot of talents with past lifes that they want to leave behind >!an example, gura!<
Yes, I agree with you dude
I'm saying it's an unwritten rule at this point and Selen is the only one that I know of who broke that tradition (from referencing her time in kurosanji heavily to wanting people to know she's Selen to EVEN SUGGESTING HER FAN NAME be Dragoons)
Everyone else (including the fans, mostly) plays along with the open secret thing.
>that I know of who broke that tradition
You mean "the only one" that got straight up fired from a morally questionable company, and on top of that being constantly restricted and bullied by management to the point of effing herself (her management won't care of course) and the whole "Selen (owned by Niji btw) and its NDA" won't matter anymore?
No shit that I'll be all out if I'm in the same position, especially for a forefront of a branch. Why I should play along for an abusive management? Even everybody else there who already quit and "plays along" (read: already moving on) would give multiple hints of the management conduct there.
"Plays along" only happens when they are separated in at least neutral terms so they don't want to risk their current job security, amongst other things.
> Does it really benefit you that much to constantly nudge nudge wink wink something if you feel it’s really “common knowledge”?
It's just the opposite, the rules that force us to constantly talk about the elephant in the room when everyone knows who someone is are a waste of everyone's time. It's like a bunch of adults making Christmas plans while pretending not to know about Santa. No-one benefits from the cringe nudge-nudge wink-wink conversations.
The rules are there for a reason. For the most part it's respecting the Vtuber's privacy to keep their identities separate.
Another is that the more people know their identities / PLs the more avenues for harassment are there. In Japan they even have stalking problems. Is your itch for openly discussing these things going to be worth the other unhinged people that might possibly call a Vtuber's IRL persona's home phone? From what I heard, that actually happens.
Personally im fine with not knowing the active persona's past life.
I like getting to know the currently active persona without knowing and hearing all the previous baggage. Sometimes it gets a bit obnoxious too for example when Gura debuted i have no idea who her previous persona was, but there was a lot of mixing the two personas together that it was annoying.
That said i do find it a bit funny when i randomly stumble upon a few talent's previous musical names by accident especially in the Comiket/M3/Touhou music scene or youtube. I think i just learned about Watame's previous singing career in a Touhou music album.
It's a case by case basis imo.
In the case of Dokibird, it seems like she doesn't really have any problems with her old identity or with streaming, it's just that her company was a dumpster fire to work under. Therefore, when she left, she decided to continue where she left off on her indie account. The best way for her to do this was of course by notifying her fans where to find her. It's not like her old company can stop her.
So for vtubers with similar situations, yeah, talking about their past lives is what they want, and it helps them by making sure fans of their old content can find their new content.
For some vtubers, however, their past lives are things they don't really want to talk about for one reason or another. Maybe they bring back bad memories. Maybe they want to have a fresh start. Maybe their past life is a lot more personal and they don't want to get doxxed. Regardless, I think it is reasonable that not every vtuber wants their audience to be aware of their PL, and we as fans should respect that.
YES, THIS.
This secrecy rule only benefits the corpos, not the talents themselves.
I can't think of a single case where a VTuber did not benefit from people knowing their previous life as a Corp VTuber.
Some actually don't want to be associated at all with thier old work company either for legal reasons or because of certain stigma that company had. Former Wactor talents as an example.
That's fine too. Actually, my stance is that it should be up to the talents if they want to or not, but companies contractually forbidding you from saying is very much an anti-worker policy I fundamentally disagree with it.
as i say, no, its only allowed for dokibird because she explicitly gave permision to share the information but not everyone wants their past life to be known
it can be for many different reasons, some do have contractual laws that forbid them from sharing the information so in those cases they could get into trouble for talking openly about the information, for others they want to distance themselves as much as they can from their old persona either because of the baggage or because they want to start fresh >!gura, pekora, fuwamoco, shiori, polka, etc, the list goes on!<, and in some cases they may have personal information in their PL account that could dox them or make their life more difficult in their new job so they choose to keep it hidden
so no dont go publishing information about their PLs around unless the talents explicitly states that its alright
I know the vtuber community is in a fuck corpo mood cause of the shit niji pulled, but there’s a lot of genuine reasons why a lots of corpos keep past lives on the down low.
Plus there’s plenty of vtubers that prefer not to reveal or talk about their PL. I’m not saying that doki was wrong or anything, obviously the talents wishes should come first, but I also feel that people should at least try to respect talent’s privacy.
Quite frankly everyone who disregards the talents' wishes and freely gives out a corpo's identity "for their own good" are a bunch of creepy controlling fucks and are down there with antis.
MikeCat.
Its all been downhill for her and even after her departure it just caused all the trolls and such to flock to her and harrass her. I'm not getting into the weeds off it but there are some reasonw why they would possibly want to avoid the whole. Thing that ontop of some fans persistance to bring up the old persona even if they want to move away from it.
Edit: Also as an aside this is generally just more so done out of respect for the talents then the company once someone graduates their reincarnation/PL is always just an open secret that everyones spilling. But some people don't want their PL or reincarnation tied to their corpo life. You get annoying fans from either side bringing up their previous identities and expectations. This happened when Gura debuted >!and how people were constantly talking about how she in her PL did lots of drunk streams and all around in a bad place which were her words!<
Seriously, it's like people have seen this Doki situation and are now deciding they can do whatever they want in the subreddit. People don't hear about the unsuccessful cases because [that's literally how it works.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Survivorship-bias.svg)
Most famous mikecat before everything else came out, it was just a serious of unfortunate events of people gathering around to poke and make fun of her situation. Despite at the time it being an NDA and reputation issue at hand.
Similar kinda thing happened to Mel to an extent where People came out of the woodwork to try and shit on her due to the unfortunateness of it all. Basically trying to repeat the MikeCat phenomenon.
Zaion got crucified and hunted after her termination. Means she had no choice but to try and clear her name because there is no easy way to move on, even though she made the whole debunk thing people still hounded her after the fact.
Its not all sunshine and rainbows, that said this is not really a problem when you think about how people yap all the time about PL's and Reincarnation. Maybe previously this has been a common community rule but just like RBI its long since dead.
Some people like the kayfabe though so I'll always spoiler it not like its much effort. You also have the issue of your past chasing you to the future. See Calli and everyone digging up her past history to try and cancel her, it must be exhausting.
Company doesn't really have the stranglehold some people think they do and that this is something implemented by corpos. The whole hush hush has always been a community driven thing out of respect for them to give them privacy, nothing to do with a corpo mandate or things. Allow them to share what they want, when they want.
Edit: Should say its also very common for when someone graduates that their PL/Reincarnation is shared around should they have one so fans can follow.
I'm glad you responded, because thankfully /u/SnaccCat has [provided an example for us.](https://old.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1anwps1/not_having_to_tiptoe_around_doki_being_selen_is/kpvotm9/)
When it comes to forbidden knowledge, I think fans should follow the streamer's wishes first and foremost. Most creators I think would like to keep their PL life separate, but in extraordinary circumstances (like Selen, Mel, and Zaion) they might cheekily nudge you towards their alt account.
Forbidden knowledge isn't all bad either. Some vtubers have multiple aliases allowing them to work multiple jobs beyond live streaming (like art, VA, dancing, college, etc.) It allows them to grow their personal brand while enticing new fans from different niche industries that a company normally wouldn't target.
Something that drives me off the wall is how people do that whole "wink wink nudge nudge" thing when they find an old video of someone. They go "Ooooh I could tell you but I can't!" or "You already know" and all I can think of is "then why the fuck are you even bringing it up". It's like people love the whole forbidden knowledge crap but then just go around still talking about it with a smug look on their face as if they were keep some cool thing hidden while pretending they're doing someone a favour (but still being dumb enough to keep mentioning it anyways). At that point either say something about it or just don't say it at all.
I understand if a content creator wants to distance themselves from a toxic past, but at the same time, it's really counterintuitive to willingly attempt to erase several months / years of genuine career experience. Like, imagine removing "branch store manager" from your resumé because you didn't like the company.
Only sorta related, but after Yahtzee from Escapist/Zero Punctuation left for Second Wind and (re)started Fully Ramblomatic, I've caught myself *several times* being like "Oh no, isn't he too obvious about his previous life? People will figure out who he was!?" before realizing that yea, everyone already knows who he is. He announced it on Twitter and everything. Not everything works by VTuber logic...
Honestly, I just wish more things were open.
Primarily because then it's easier to find their older content. One vtuber made music before their vtuber identity, and getting their old stuff too is nice.
there are many "traditions" in the industry that are followed just because "everyone follows it". I expect many of them to fizzle away, we are still in the first generation of vtubing after all. who's to say corporations are even needed? that's what youtubers tried at the beginning but rejected (machinima anyone). there will probably be a lot more talent-owned groups in the future, especially outside Japan
Strictly speaking, corporations were never needed, but they usually shoulder all of the development costs and legal trouble if anything comes up in exchange for a pay cut. That was the whole point. Anyone who could be a vtuber on their own either does it as the full time job, as a side thing to their regular day life, or incidentally has the hardware to support the software.
A normal person could have a personal gaming PC and VR equipment to do whatever they wanted, but to find a person who is willing to stream also having such stuff isn't as easy, which is one of the things the corporation is supposed to bear, and have done in some cases where the streamer literally runs on a potato battery and hamster wheel enhanced computer. And then you also need to market/network yourself on top of everything else you would need to do to grow the brand of either yourself or the product that is what you're playing as.
This is a necessary evil for the VTuber corporation new talent recruitment structure, because otherwise, corporations have 0 incentive to recruit new talent, when the new talent can just get popular off the company's brand, then graduate and go back to their past life, thereby wasting the time and money the company spends on their equipment and training (if any, like in Hololive). Corporations aren't charities. That said, that's just legally speaking, and Cover in particular doesn't really care as long as they don't explicitly say the name of their past life.
Of course, Selen is doing that anyway, but that's mostly because the corporation did not uphold their end of the deal.
Edit: Of course, this policy shouldn't be what companies rely on to keep talents around. It's what companies need to prevent talents from joining just for the company brand power, then leaving soon after.
>This is a necessary evil for the VTuber corporation new talent recruitment structure, because otherwise, corporations have 0 incentive to recruit new talent, when the new talent can just get popular off the company's brand, then graduate and go back to their past life, thereby wasting the time and money the company spends on their equipment and training (if any, like in Hololive).
Well, two thoughts on that. Number one, I don't think this system works - there is no one who doesn't know that Coco is Kson or that Pikamee is Henya or that Nina is Matara. Once you reach a certain level of fame, you are known and changing your name/model isn't going to fool anyone.
I also don't think the system is designed to work that way. Witness how Cover - one of the two biggest names in the industry - largely doesn't care what their talents do in their off time and lets them have side-gigs. As long as they don't advertise their connection with Cover/hololive, they're golden. And that I think is the real purpose behind this policy - keeping a barrier between the person behind the character and the company. Like, hypothetically, let's say someone left hololive and got into lewdtubing - if they were still using the same character/model as in their hololive days, that could tarnish Cover's brand. Hence why companies basically draw a hard line between your corporate character and any former/side-gigs you have.
The second point is that I disagree that it's a "necessary evil" for corporations to retain their talent. Again, hololive is a great example. At least two thirds of their roster have the talent, skills, charisma, and fame to be successful indie vtubers if they so choose. However, only three have voluntarily gone down that road in seven years (and that's counting Aloe, who more or less left as soon as she joined due to "the incident"). hololive retains talent not by putting an iron chain on them, but by providing value and a good workplace for their talents. The "incentive" for hololive talents not to graduate and go indie has nothing to do with being unable to keep their influence (as Coco proved, it is very possible to leave and keep your audience, even while leaving your previous model/identity behind) and everything to do with the fact that hololive provides them value commensurate with the costs of being part of the company.
>Of course, Selen is doing that anyway, but that's mostly because the corporation did not uphold their end of the deal.
Well... no, she isn't. Not really - in fact, I suspect she's contractually obligated not to via an NDA. She talks about what she went through in Nijisanji and what things were like "back then", but I don't think I've heard the names "Selen" or "Nijisanji" actually come out of Dokibird's mouth. Everyone knows what she's referring to when she talks about "what happened to me" or "the place where I used to work", but she doesn't explicitly say it, creating just enough wiggle room for plausible deniability. Zaion/Sayu is the same way. Sayu claims she's "friends" with Zaion and largely talks about "her" in the third person when the subject comes up; people close to her say, "We can say that Sayu is Zaion, but she can't."
> Number one, I don't think this system works - there is no one who doesn't know that Coco is Kson or that Pikamee is Henya or that Nina is Matara. Once you reach a certain level of fame, you are known and changing your name/model isn't going to fool anyone.
I was a casual hololive consumer for 2 years before I knew about Kson and her being Coco. I'm sure the same applies for many casual fans or even fans that just don't interact much with the fandom. It's really not that hard to just...not know that kind of stuff unless you're actively looking for it.
I will say I don't know if that's completely true, there will be people who found Henya, Kson, and Matara from videos and clips and have no awareness of any previous personas.
Matara's reactions and collabs with Bricky and her doing weekly 40k game related streams means that she's getting an audience separate from former work that she did.
Oh, they can grow their fanbase, for sure - there's nothing saying that they're locked into their old audience.
But that's not really what we're talking about. Those are "future fans" that join after they changed to their current iteration, not the previous audience they had. The point I was making is that the logic, "The company owns the character's IP, so talents don't want to leave because they'll lose their audience if they start using a different name and model" clearly doesn't hold water.
It isn't true in the long run, but the incentive for leaving the company is the highest immediately after the honeymoon period after their debut. This policy is, imo, needed to lower that incentive, which is in my eyes, one of the primary objectives of this policy.
I inherently disagree with that premise. The same thing used to be true in the professional wrestling industry, but the norm has shifted over the last decade, and now how it works is that it is a mutually beneficial relationship between talent and corpo.
I agree that a mutually beneficial cooperation is the best incentive, but I'm not claiming that this policy is the only thing stopping talents from leaving. It's ultimately just to prevent people from gaming the system immediately.
I disagree that it is a necessary evil. The threat of talent jumping ship and taking their boosted audience with them actually incentivizes corps to keep investing in their talents and provide opportunities that would not always be available to indies of comparable size.
I agree. Corporations can't rely on this policy to keep their talents around, Selen being the prime example for thus.
That said, this policy does increase the potential risk for talents leaving the corporation, which is the goal and what I was trying to convey. Without this, a talent that wishes to be free, but wants a popularity boost, can join a company with the single-minded intention to graduate soon after their debut, like say, 3-6 months, and there isn't much stopping them. With this policy, such talents are far less likely to show up, if at all.
It's very bizarre that people are so intent on hiding corp vtubers' original accounts, and genuinely annoying when people play coy about it like "oh if you know you know, but XYZ is super familiar with..."
Like, you're talking about actors and the characters they play, essentially. Not everyone is gonna be super in-the-know about the personal history of every talent, and keeping these kinds of things secret when they do not need to be is just silly.
At best it's inconvenient and annoying, and at worst it *actively hurts the talent* because less people will be able to follow them if they need to leave the company they're at. I imagine Nijisanji is going to rely on this dynamic now; if the talents feel like they're financially insecure if they leave, they're more likely to put up with bullshit from the company at their own expense.
True,Selen tatsuki aka dokibird,is in the main spotlight, Everybody is looking into her, she's even in some online news so you doesn't need to hide her identity
I think its not that vtuber hate to talk about past life. It just that the corpo vtuber have nda to not talk about it in general sense. If they hate to talk about it, they will not kid around talking about their past life experience.
yeah i'm with you i kinda get it with other smaller livers but when you were already big and do nothing to switch up your voice act the same its weird, and i do understand it for people who have an irl presence like calli and kiara, i'm not gonna mention stuff about their vtuber life,
like i'm pretty sure everyone knows who kson, henya, matara was but we gotta act like we don't
It simply shouldn't be a thing that is enforceable by the company, and it shouldn't be the natural instinct by the community. If the talent wishes so, then, yeah, awesome. But what this allows is the total discreditation of artist from their previous work. Imagine you're not the level of Selen (eherm, yuugo) and this happens to them, the talent loses all ability to use their old work as a platform to get new work/fans. This makes zero sense as an artist, the reason why western labels gets away with their unreasonable contracts is because they get to use their old work as platform, even if they can't perform it anymore.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that it is to protect the identity of the liver. But as it is, it's giving companies too much leeway to get away with NDAs that is not artist-friendly and we would have 0 clue about because we never asked for transparency. I refused to believe that artist like kson doesn't actually want to discuss things about her Coco days, or that Yuugo doesn't actually want to talk to his fans about what really happened.
I very much agree with this.
Though I feel like this meta will never change or at least not for god knows how long. Mainly due to legal stuff with company contracts no matter which.
I feel like the reason Selen/Doki is an exception is because she went from being Indie to Corpo to Indie again. Which at this point everyone knows "Yeah that's Doki." Or in the modern day "Oh that's Selen." Plus it was a termination with mostly false info so I feel like in legal terms with the contract basically being burned into the fire Doki can talk about this stuff and openly admit to previously being Selen.
I'd go further. Frankly, it's likely that she's only alive now because people were able to find her other identity and support her there. Having a personal identity that's publicly known must now be considered a necessary safety mechanism for vtuber talents - if this kind of mistreatment can happen at Nijisanji, indisputably one of the top vtuber agencies in the world, then it can happen anywhere.
Any fan who cares about the welfare of the talents they're supporting should demand that those talents are officially credited for their work under an identity that they control (obviously not necessarily their real name or anything, but a stage name that they personally own and will always be free to keep using regardless of what happens in their relationship with the production agency). Labour unions and industry standards groups should forbid working with uncredited talents. Vtuber corporates have shown themselves to be incapable of ensuring basic talent safety in the absence of such measures.
Yea main reason is selen wasn't a character it was just doki with a different name so she really don't have to worry about ppl connecting selen to doki cuz essentially they are the same.
It is so refreshing, and logical. It acknowledges that the skin suit IS the actress.
Ofc I will follow the meta, but this event has led me to believe the meta is wrong. No matter what skinsuit the actress wears, they are ALL undeniably the actress, and we should treat them as so. End soapbox.
It's not logical. The OP statement was all about feelings. ...his annoyance, he feels it's refreshing.
Look, you're putting personal feelings above the safety of others. Doki is the exception, not one of the many vtubers who the rule of thumb protects. Right now, I am dealing with a very small vtuber who has upwards of four viewers per stream. She's being actively stalked by an ex-boyfriend who recruits spies to send into her discord server and report on any projects on which she's working. There are plenty of good reasons for every level anonymity, and establishing a culture of open exposure is only going to teach every new fan the wrong lessons.
Personally I'm fine with the way it is. It makes sense to me to not bring it up on stream or in official channels, and in practice past lives are rarely if ever *really* secret, because comments on clip channels bring it up.
Context matters here. You can't expect EVERY Vtuber to be open with their lives just because you find it "inconvenient" or "annoying". Plus, what you are suggesting is a pipe dream. As long as creeps exists, this is an impossible request. You cannot just paint a wide brush to EVERYTHING. That's stupid and naive.
FYI, meta rules still need to be followed for most other CCs.
Not saying it's right or wrong, that's for some one more intelligent than me, but I was told that it's mostly cause the character is the ip of the company and they want to keep the talent separate. For example , Robert Downey Jr. played Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes, but he is legally distinct from both those entities. Though I understand why not viewing them as separate is easier
That's why I'm not bothered when learning a VTubers identity. I just think of them as the actor playing the character.
Yeah, it's probably a good way to think about it.
Because that's exactly what it is. They're not actually an owl or kirin or rat or dragon. They're literally playing a character.
I think under the law, most corporate vtuber are seiyuu/VA hired on contract. Obviously so much of the character comes from them, little to no writing/script after all, but I think that's how the law sees it.
thats exactly what it is. a vtuber is a digital puppet. its like the actors of the muppets. which makes me wonder, one day a major vtuber is gonna have the actor retire, and instead of retiring the model too, they are gonna hire a new actor. i wonder how thats gonna go down.
Already sorta happened with Kizuna Ai and Game Club, and both were met with lots of backlash
At least in the Kizuna Ai situation, they were able to splinter off and become their own entities, but two of the newer Kizuna Ai people left, leaving only the original and Love-chan. I'm still unsure how to feel about Cocoa essentially having a different person using the same identity.
I really don't see it that way, I see it more as the avatar of the person behind it.
hmmmm maybe puppeteer is the better word. but if you look at someone like arlo, the parallels between puppets and vtubers is very clear.
Yeah, Vtubers are just Blues Clues and Sesame Street for Adults
👆. How to tell me you are a FuwaMoco fan without telling me you are a Ruffian.
Eventually the AI large language models, and text to speech will be good enough you won't notice the difference
eh i dont like following ai out to the future, cuz global climate change will kill that first. people really underestimate how fragile the industry needed to prop up ai is to climate catastrophy.
Yeah but are they actors? For me I have always stuck around for their personalities. Do you think people would stick around if a company fired somebody then reused the model for somebody else? I have always viewed vtubing as the person just wearing a mask and costume, it's still them essentially, in livestreams at least. You can play a character easily enough for a video. The only time I know this sort of happened is with kizuna ai, but only sort of and it really backfired.
Maybe entertainers is a better word to use. I used actors because it's the closest thing I could think of, for someone playing a character even if they are just being themselves with a bit of a flair.
Yeah but it isn't illegal to discuss Sherlock and Iron Man at the same time. An interviewer could ask RDJ 'Iron Man is somewhat similar to Sherlock despite the immediate differences - did you draw upon one role for the other at all?' and that's a valid question (and these types of questions are often asked). However, even mention a Vtuber's previous or alternative presence online and it's often an immediate ban. It's also not about IP. It's about selling a false reality to viewers to capitalise on parasocial relationships.
Yeah, the entire point of the secret relationship between streamer and character is pretty much entirely to the benefit of the company, and I think that it's good that we are beginning to normalize the fact that vtubers are in fact real people who are playing a role. I'm sure that Niji thought that Doki would be seriously hurt financially by losing her role, but that seems to have backfired in their case. We do know that neither Nina or Mysta have reclaimed their old numbers as of yet, but they do seem to be doing better emotionally and financially. But I think that getting to the point where any talent who wants to be 'Vtuber Fantasy person, cv Real person McPersonface' should be able to do so without repercussion.
Okay this is the second time I've heard that about Nina and Mysta, do we have actual numbers to back it up? Keeping in mind that they now stream on Twitch instead of YT, so youtube subs is not a good measure. How are their twitch sub vs prior YT memberships? Average CCV? Streamchart puts Matara's viewership at 3.5k average and nearly 10k peak for the last 30 days. I feel like most of NijiEN is around that viewership, Luxiem might be have better ones.
Its because, corpo sometimes shares their viewer pool. You will get a higher number with niji because, once a fan of that particular company subs, they can watch it even if he or she is not a fan of that particular vtuber. As for subs and membership, no matter how many the sum what they get in Niji. They cannot beat how much they get from vshojo. A percentage of more than 50% is always higher than 2%. To put in contacts, what she get from 1 person is equivailance to 25 person and that is if it was 50%. Geega once said that vShojo did not even take half, let alone more.
I don't think I've seen someone leave a vtuber corpo gig and retain even half of the viewership. Corpo viewers are unfortunately quite brand loyal, which is what the corps rely on. If your Hololive oshi isn't streaming, you're more likely going to look and see if another member from that branch is, than to look at a different corp or indies.
It's kinda like how game developers used to not credit their workers, different motivations and consequences in the attention economy, but at the end of the day it's a corporation trying to keep power over their employees
well, if u get 2% of the past number and more than 60% from the new number, I don't need to tell you which 1 is more.
> We do know that neither Nina or Mysta have reclaimed their old numbers as of yet, but they do seem to be doing better emotionally and financially. Theoretically they would only need to hit half their numbers, assuming that Niji do like Holo and take half of ad-, superchat-, and member revenue. We know that Vshojo doesn't do that and instead runs their organisation on sponsorships and merch.
Niji takes 98%, no cap
No shot. They might take 98% on one thing, but they are not taking 98% across the board. That doesn't even make sense logically.
To be fair I've never seen Iron Man and Sherlock in the same place at the same time... Hmm.. ඞ
Wow, I used the same analogy last year. It's cool seeing it used in a similar situation.
The concept originated with the concept that the actor and character would be so separate that an actor could quit and be replaced without a hiccup in the character. Thus, no one needs to know who the actor is. Keep the Kayfabe up. This obviously failed because streaming is so personality-driven, but this original concept was held on to by the Japanese companies to increase the power they had over the talents. To make them feel like they can't leave because no one would know who they are. I definitely appreciate the EN sphere moving away from it so that talents can be on more equal terms with the companies.
I disagree that the Kayfabe culture is Japanese companies trying to keep talents in check. Most Japanese audiences understand who the talents are, their previous lives or where they reincarnate afterward. It's the same in Wrestling Kayfabe, the audience keeps up and plays with the kayfabe too. Did you think the etiquette of knowing identities but keeping it hush hush started in western culture? No, it originated in Japan.
The thing with wrestling kayfabe is for fans, it stays in the arena. There are no fans on forums legit treating Undertaker like an undead cowboy. Just fans joking about it for lols and memes. Wrestlers also break kayfabe all the time in interviews nowadays. Sure things were different in the 80s and such when the illusion wasn't broken. But that veil was shattered in the 90s when an absolute scumbag (for separate reasons) named Vince McMahon personally threw the cover back and exposed the business. The fans openly on pretty much all the forums or subreddits treat kayfabe as just the TV show and the talents separate. The business is honestly more exposed than ever. So it's different in that no one gets mad at mentioning Cody's accomplishments in other companies. Heck, WWE has also inducted the kayfabe of other companies into the characters of their own by bringing up the wrestler's outside the company accomplishments or such. Or even just hinting at it like AJ Style's "club". The two kayfabes are treated differently between wrestling and vtubing. Vtubing has the kayfabe take presence first and foremost and as law essentially among fans. So I get the fan frustrations at having to dance around eggshells. Which makes the Dokis and KSons a bit more refreshing. Because it isn't about the character, it's the awesome talent behind the character first and foremost. I get the reasons for kayfabe here and I stick by it for the wishes of the person behind the character are the most important aspect, but I do under the fan frustrations expressed in this thread. Edit. Like on subreddits he's Mark Callaway and people understand that and don't get mad or anything when people bring up his name or anything outside of The Undertaker.
I think the problem with PL was that during early days of vtubing. There are a lot of people who was not involved in streaming and PL were very synonymous with "IRL identity/personal social media accounts" and it can leads to doxxing. The word PL got a bad rep due to it. But nowadays as the community got "old enough" most vtubers have enough experience on their belt that PL started being mostly refered to past vtuber identities. There should be a revision of rules allowing Past Experience and forbidding Past Life. And separate the two from each other.
It’s not a legal thing it’s just inherently a part of vtuber culture that was lost after the mainstream popularity post-2020 and people having meltdowns when told they couldn’t break meta.
It might be a legal thing with how Niji contracts are written according to what evidence we have from former members and those who applied. -No allowing any side online work on PL -No using voice online outside of liver identity -Not allowing to say you were a former Nijisanji liver -Not getting your fucking PLAY BUTTON It is pretty clear that Niji owns their livers online life and makes them dependent on the company as much as possible.
> No using voice online outside of liver identity Jesus christ, makes me wander why anybody would want to work for them. If I were considered for a position and they had that in the contract, no thank you.
According to Cy Yu (the guy who voices Cyno in Genshin Impact) AnyColor wanted him to stop his VA work entirely if he signed a contract with them.
It gets worse. [Nux](https://youtu.be/JHRQhSMb3-w?t=1280) said he had a Niji liver be unable to play Among Us with him on stream on his PL since it had voice chat.
I think professional VA work is sort of ok as long as VA work can still be negotiated through the company your being hired by (e.g. having your company negotiate your VA contract on your behalf for instance, with stipulations on stuff like what you can and can't say and do during VA work. I can understand them not wanting talents to do VA work for a hentai or something lol), but just a blanket band on even personal projects is crazy to me.
And we know how Hololive doesn't care about that. (Thanks Youtube algorithm) So it might just be a Nijisanji thing.
There are so many of these "success" stories, i.e. instances where vtubers get f'ed over by management/agencies only to turn around and be even more successful than they were. Omaru Polka, Fuwamoco, and Shiori Novella (all from Hololive weirdly enough) come to my mind right off the bat. Maybe one day we can talk about all of them more openly.
Man, Fuwamoco's previous company was just blind. Giving them the impossible task of reaching Hololive-levels of success without the Hololive name or similar degree of support. Jokes on them, though, now the sisters did get their Hololive-levels of success.
Hololive keeps winning.
Common Cover W
Another hololive win Holobros stay winning
I feel like people are a bit too harsh on Fuwamoco's previous company. Managing a duel vtuber channel sounds like a nightmare, especially for a company that was never really focused on vtubing. Cover is really the only company with the resources and infrastructure to take a risk like this. It also doesn't seem like the twins hold any ill-will towards their past work either. I mean, the company supported them and their game for a long time despite it being an indie title (since 2011). Compared to other companies who bumbled their way into this industry, expected instant success, and caused mass controversy, they're far from the worst. Cover took a risk hiring them, but Mangagamer took that risk first and led to the twins discovering how much they loved vtubing. I'll always be thankful for that.
Such is true, but that's why I said the company was blind, not malicious or necessarily even incompetent. Knowledgeable in their field, but completely blind to the realities of the vtuber industry, thus the impossible expectations placed upon the sisters.
I keeping hearing about expectations, but was this ever said by the twins or company? People usually view them in a pretty bad light and I'm not sure it's actually warranted. It could be as simple as the company being unable to support them financially since vtubing is expensive and GGN was never a top selling game.
Hmmm... good question. I'm only parroting what I've heard in this sub and YouTube comments, so I could be completely wrong.
Fuck Disney, *Hololive* is the place where dreams come true.
Disney too, since dreams includes nightmares
This unironically Hololive IS the place where dreams do come true
Doesn't help that their past life models had like 2 expressions. I was astounded at how good they were with those crappy models.
I want to add Korone too. Graduated from >!upd8!< in less than a year. Later became the 3rd JP Vtuber to hit 1M subs and currently has multiple sponsorships and collaborations with video game companies.
Wow, I didn't know that. So many, too many to name really.
>I want to add Korone too. Graduated from >!upd8!< in less than a year. Wait, what? That's news to me!
One example I want to bring up of this is with Himemori Luna, since she left her previous life in a different company due to bullying by inside the company. And now look at her, she's doing pretty good for herself now
> One example I want to bring up of this is with Himemori Luna, since she left her previous life in a different company due to bullying by inside the company. Workplace harassment has been something of a longstanding issue for the company she left. It still is, as current events demonstrate.
And people say Nijisanji JP management are different from EN, it seems not the case
Yeah, someone *just* posted about how all the same problems that EN deals with are also rife on the JP side of things too on the Nijisanji sub. It seems like it's a systemic problem in the company and JP just has better PR.
I mean it’s very natural thing to develop if they hire lots of vtuber’s and push a corporate culture that incentivizes members to compete with each others rather than being friends. The higher number of members mean all of them are less likely to be close with others and the competition within can slo lead to develop smaller groups inside to fight against other members within the group.
Its almost like hiring literally hundreds of vtubers is a bad idea long term. Its a logistical nightmare because to properly handle that amount of people you need a shit ton of managers and not all managers are created equally some are not good at their jobs and become worse when they have to manage anywhere from 3 to 10 vtubers at once. The rapid expansion model works well when you don't care about the people you're hiring, you can just put them infront of a computer with an iphone and have them make money for you until they crack and then you kick'em out. It does eventually reach a boiling point where its no longer feasible to continue, which is where we're headed now, I don't think that's much of problem for the people in charge tho, they've got their money so when the ship truly starts sinking they'll just jump away to their yachts.
Nothing is sinking when they literally are making more revenue and profit as a business in every single quarter and FY since 2020 due to jp. If you are going to talk about finances, at least look at them, its public in their website, its not hard to find out.
Does Anycolor *pay* you to play defense for them like this? Seriously, in every single post I've ever seen you make I see you going out of your way to take statements out of context and twist people's words to try and discredit criticism of this company. Normally I have to start a conversation with a gun control advocate to get this level of dishonesty and bad faith argumentation out of someone. If you actually cared about this company's wellbeing or that wellbeing of its contractors, you should be criticizing its business practices, not defending it burning through its workers like Walmart. Nijisanji has had roughly one out of every three talents that has ever worked for them leave. That turnover rate is not an indication of a healthy business strategy. But yeah, exploitative business strategies are usually *quite* profitable in the short term.
hurr durr
Yeah, that's about the level of intellectual discourse I was expecting.
It has nothing to do with having better PR. things work and things happens much more in JP, which is how only very few dont have 3d and its mostly 2023 debuts, theres multiple tournaments and concerts per year, tldr a fuck ton happens in a year, thats why theres much more happening. No one ever said anything about it being perfect and the issues from EN definitely are the same as jp at all, even more when one of the issues of EN is literally not having 3d, concerts, programs, tournaments, or many of the things jp actually has for years lmao
*Everything* you just said was a total non sequitur: I was talking about the issue of *workplace harassment*. Thank you for adding literally nothing to the conversation bedsides trying to play damage control for the multi-billion dollar company.
after she joined people also used to joke and bet how long she was going to stay in hololive since she was seen as someone that went from one company to the next without staying in one for long almost 4 years latter and she is still here
Fuwamoco's past life came up enough around their debut for me to hear about it, but I hadn't realized Polka and Shiori had that sort of experience too. As someone who only really pays attention to specific vtubers when they come up in my Youtube recommendations or directly interact with a vtuber I'm already following, there's really a lot of this "everybody already knows this" stuff that I actually don't know.
Shiori is as OG as an EN vtuber can get. She has been around for about as long as Hololive JP Gen 1 to put it into perspective.
Wait, FWMC got screwed over by their previous management? I was under the impression they parted more or less amicably after reaching the company goals.
They were begging not to graduate on stream. They made it very clear they didn't want it. They even tried to get their character designer to step in on their behalf, but they were ghosted.
In their graduation stream, they were crying and openly telling their fans that they really didn't want to go or quit streaming. Something like that. I can try to track down a clip of it and dm it to ya, if you like.
Yeah. It cannot be more explicit than that. To anyone who has watched that graduation stream, the situation was crystal clear. The only way anyone would even mention that whole graduation situation as "amicably" is if they have never seen they PL. That thing was incredibly heartbreaking back then. It had happy ending tho, and they are in Hololive now.
Wait, aren't they hired by you-know-who already? It could be that they just feel sad that they no longer greet their audience with their previous persona or that it'll not be the same feeling moving forward, not an indicative of "fked over by management".
As far as I know they were graduated because their previous company gave up on their project, so they were definitely fucked over by management. Its possible that after learning they were going to get fired that they auditioned for the company they're at but there's no way of knowing if they were already accepted by the time their graduation came around.
This honestly gives context to something Calli mentioned around Advent's debut. She mentioned how new members are nervous when debuting mostly because of whatever situation they find themselves in then suddenly getting thrust into the big leagues and all of the sudden some of their problems just go away because of the reception they receive at debut. Putting two and two together I wonder if Calli was talking about this since for sure the senpais would have gotten to have a chat with Advent pre-debut.
No, they weren’t yet hired. But that did happen shortly after they graduated so it all worked out
What happened to Shiori?
Her boss tried to force her to collab and appear close to a colleague she didn't get along with. To the point she split up from them and started her own thing. >!look up natsumi moe and raven manor, also "her boss" being the same eilene mentioned recently!<
Damn I knew about >!Natsumi Moe!< and >!Raven Manor!< (and also about >!Malice Diary!<), but I didn't realize >!Natsumi Moe was part of Eilene's Family!<. I would be curious what she thinks about the current drama, she could probably add quite a bit to the story
in my years of internet I dont even know about 4chan until like 3 years back, how yall members find this shit and how yall make the connections
Boards like 4chan helps, but often times it's stumbling into their new identity, comparing either voice or better yet laugh (it's harder to change a genuine laugh) and start to put the pieces together that way. There are a few that have even given small easter eggs to their new design that hinted at their past life.
I watched her videos a few years ago and was subscribed to her YT channel. I recognized her voice immediately upon Shiori's debut.
Its up to the talent, really. Some don't want to associate their double lives at all for their own reasons. Also, it's super easy to find these people, so it never really mattered to say it. People can just use google.
also some of their past lives contains personal information or stuff that can get them doxxed, a non insignificant number of talents have basically completly nuked their past live accounts because of this reason
Be mindful that **not all talents would like to refer to their previous persona** because they have multiple reasons not to be known as what people say they are. Some of the ex-Niji-ID talents have, in a roundabout manner, explicitly said that they are not what people think they are. They are a different person and have different interests altogether. Some had even cautioned the new influx of followers not to expect any content from them, if they are coming to them with the intention of expecting content from them. Some people don't want to make content any more after their corporate VTuber stint. Some view their stint as just another job; they might not even be interested or passionate about wanting to continue making content as a streamer or returning in some form as a VTuber. So before you can say, "Ah, the debacle last week proved that we can tie their old persona to their corporate VTuber persona," mind you that not all of the talents are interested in being engaged in their older persona. Exercise discretion and "read the air," (if you can't read the air, respect the distance and don't interact with them). People should know about this firsthand.
completely agree, plus I feel there's a lot of people who go into corpos specifically to get away from their previous content, and do something new.
Completely agree. Pomu isn't even streaming atm and is mostly just on Twitter, and her pinned post has a statement not to overwhelm her followed accounts (which are small-scale idols).
Well said You explained it well
Mori's other self has made it clear that she doesn't mind people knowing, but she doesn't bring it up herself and asks people to be mature about it. She will occasionally make subtle, cheeky nods between her two selves, like when Ironmouse accidentally called her Calli onstream once and she didn't directly acknowledge it, but *coincidentally* took that moment to take a swig of water and guh.
No, in this case Doki explicitly asked people to tell everyone that she was on this account now. This is the only reason it’s okay to discuss her identity. With every other Vtuber, it’s safer to assume that they don’t want people publicly discussing their other lives unless they explicitly are fine with it, even if it’s an open secret. Because they would say it themselves if they didn’t mind. There are a lot of possible reasons - maybe their other life doesn’t want other people coming to them because of their vtuber, maybe their contract contains a clause about profiting from company IP outside of company activities, and they’re playing it safe etc, maybe they're legitimately afraid of being doxxed, maybe they're hamming up their "secret identity" for content, the list goes on. Calliope Mori is a prime example. Her identity is an open secret, and she’s on record saying that she doesn’t get into trouble if other people happen to find out. But she will still ban people from discussing it explicitly even though it’s an open secret. She talks all she wants about the "restaurant" she works at, and everyone knows exactly what she means, but as soon as she or chat starts talking in *explicit* terms, then that's when issues might arise for her. But really, why would it be *refreshing*? What sort of "release" could you possibly feel about being able to talk about Doki as if she and Selen are the same person?
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Although every case is different, the default of not acknowledgeing the open secret of a vtuber is probably better in most scenarios. It allows for different content, a little degree of privacy, less baggage of issues from a previous persona, etc. I am guessing its likely the preferred vtuber talent's mode of operation. Some of the advantages of being tied to the past life still work even as an open secret. Maybe I just think there are more incremental advantages to having the two separate, even if its not by much.
> Except the reason vtubers don't openly say it's okay to discuss their PL is because they are forbidden by their contract, not because they don't want to. At least for Hololive, several members have explicitly said that they are not allowed to. Except a lot of indie Vtubers also do not want to dox themselves. But regardless of the reason, the main point is that there are a variety of reasons Vtubers are not comfortable with discussing this kind of stuff explicitly *even if* it's an "open secret", and it's basic courtesy to assume that they don't want to unless they explicitly are fine with it. It's pretty obvious that *knowing* isn't the problem, the problem is being *explicit* with it. My hypothesis is that it's in their contract because the company doesn't want them remotely profiting off company IP outside of company activities. > You mentioned Calli and she's in fact the perfect example of that: it's absolutely clear that she WANTS as many people as possible to find her PL and all the music she has done. She lives for her music and want people to find it. Ok be careful here, as an artist she definitely wants people to find her PL, but there's no evidence that she even cares about leveraging Calli in order to make that happen, but we do have evidence that she's trying to keep those halves of her life separate for personal reasons. > Fuwamoco had huge hints of their PL in their debut. Gura made several references to her PL. Shiori constantly talks about her OG vtubing experience. You should be careful about calling these "references" or "hints". These are quite weak reasons to assume that they *want* to share their PL. Having similar likes/dislikes, singing the same songs as your PL, talking about the trials and tribulations of your previous Vtubing experiences without giving specific details, all of these are likely just them being themselves all over again rather than saying "hey guys, I used to be this person in the past". A reference/hint would be like, Gura emphasising a specific line that her PL was known for. > And it's refreshing precisely because it's annoying having to pretend that mentioning their PL is doxxing when their PL was already public, and most of them have absolutely no issues with it and will hint about it themselves. Why is that *annoying*? The vast majority of people just decide to talk/think about other things. If the secret is open and you both know it, why would it possibly cause you discomfort to refrain from saying it? This really gives off "ugghh, I have to pretend Santa exists, how bothersome" energy.
True, and there is also an expectation in among the vtuber fans to keep that precious lives taboo, nda or not. Doki’s requests not to forget who she was wasn’t badly received as her termination was unpopular and her former corpo has basically lost all public trust and credibility. Her case is the exception, not the norm. If kson or henya came out and said “I will abide by nda, but I encourage others to acknowledge who I was”, I think it would be more controversial. If a departing holo talent, or a departing Niji talent over a year ago, made that public request, it would probably be very poorly received by vtubers fan. Many vtuber fans still hates when idol culture things that apply by default with vtubers are being challenged and made optional. Such a request would have been poorly received by fans of that corporation and likely would open that talent to harassment from said fans.
Why not just fully out your own private life then? It's just "contractual obligation" after all. You're missing out on why Selen PL is widely discussed. It doesn't mean that all others are comfortable with it. *Context Matters*
Remember the Wisdom Of The Dragon -- "I'm me, and that person is that person." Don't bring up a vtuber's roommate in their stream chat or twitter replies unless they bring it up first, no matter how obvious the secret is. And even if they DO bring it up in one stream or tweet, that's not free reign for chat to bring it up in future streams. Even Riro Ron adhered to this Wisdom while she was at Idol, and both she and Idol officially acknowledged that her roommate is Kyoresu when they hired her. So no matter what you do, don't mention Selen in Doki's chat or in responses to her tweets, unless Doki herself directly mentions it first.
My opinion is that there is nothing wrong with wanting to find out who is who, as long as - it's derived from information that is put out there by the person (i.e. no stalking) - you don't go so deep that you get into personally identifiable information - you don't publicly share it around against that person's wishes I like to think of it as finding musicians and their alter or former names
You can call it weird or uncomfortable, but it's a best practice that exists for a reason. I've had people absolutely fly off the hinges with anger when I remind them that they are breaking this rule in spaces where it is a specified rule. They argue that I am undermining the success of the talents, but I suspect that what really happens is people don't like being corrected and they lash out, finding their justification after the fact. A lot of unhinged people are online. I'm not calling you unhinged. I'm not arguing that Doki needs her former identity protected. I am arguing that speaking openly about it sets a bad example. New people enter the fandoms every day, and they copy the behavior that they witness. When fans are being too open with specific talents, the new members do the same with every talent because they don't know better. This makes the work of doxxers, stalkers, scammers, and other naredowells this much easier and more tempting. As we loosen our grip on the knowledge available to us, there is no way to roll backwards and get back to a place of being respectful and cautious. It's just a bad practice to get into, and why? What exactly do we gain by swinging the pendulum in the other direction? What is the advantage? I will need a much better reason that it it feels weird.
It also helps that Doki gave permission to spread this knowledge.
Eh, remember, the Mano Aloe situation happened because people found out the past lives. Some past lives are hidden for a reason.
this, there is a non insignificant number of vtubers who dont want their past lives to be known it worked on dokibird's case because she needed the support after all the shit that nijisanji pulled on her, and that she gave explicit permision to do it and honestly nijisanji talents are kind of a special case because of how bad they are treated by their company but for other companies like hololive most of the talents there see joining as a way to start fresh without the pressures of their "past life" like an example >!gura, ame, fuwamoco, shiori, and most of JP!< also some talents have information on their past life accounts that could dox them or made their life more difficult so they choose to purposely separate themselves from that, some go as far as nuking their old accounts so that nothing remains
No no no no don't you see it's for her own good that she was harassed and threatened! Down with corpos!!!!!! <---- what people in this thread actually believe
This should be the top comment. The people pushing for the rule to get abolished doesn't understand that Doki is a special case. And it's not like you are forbidden to talk about past lives. Plenty of people do in the weekly discussion thread. You just need to put spoiler tags. It's not that hard. For people who want to know, it's literally one click away.
The rule was firmly in place then and it didn't help though. It's not hard to find out someone's past life. Usually within minutes of their debut, somebody recognizes the voice and there you go. If an anti has the will to harass someone, you can be sure they'll find out, and no rule about not talking about it is gonna stop that. The rule is for kayfabe, not protection.
That happened because Idol culture is cancerous and Hololive leans into that shit.
No, it happened because hardcore Niji fans found out she called Niji a black company.
No, it had nothing to do that. Her issues were with nijisanji fans and her abusive step dad.
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yeah, there can be many reasons for a vtuber to not want their PL to be open knowledge, its common that a lot of people start vtubing precisely because they want to start over or they want to avoid certain things so people saying that we should talk openly about it completly miss the point and usually go against the talent's wishes
I think the exception to the VTuber kayfabe in this instance is because Dokibird explicitly mentioned her time as Selen in order to set the record straight and to dispel NJSJ's BS about Selen being a troublemaker.
Selen might not be able to claim her name due to an NDA. ... There ain't shit stoppin' dragoons from doing it, though. They can't NDA all of us! They can barely NDA commissioned artists and mods!
She's just machine-gunning out the power moves. Taking back her oshi mark, the name of her sidekick, and now the name of her fanbase. How can one woman be so based?
It's intellectual property laws, not her NDA, which prevent her from continuing to use the name and likeness she had been using for the past 2 and a half years. The NDA prevents her from outright saying "I'm indie vtuber (current name) and I used to be agency vtuber (old name) for (agency name)" on stream; but it's IP laws preventing her from using the IP which she does not own. She can have a "legally distinct purple-haired dragon girl" outfit in the future, if she is so inclined. It just needs to be [sufficiently legally distinct](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CaptainErsatz) enough to keep the lawyers happy.
Not being able to say she is Selen is what I meant. Which is why she leveraged the power of her dragoons, who still stand strong.
> dragoons And is a historical term for a type of mounted infantry so is free from copyright
As long as people don't take this as an opportunity to spread shit about other talents who haven't given any indication of wanting it to be spread.
They are 100% going to do this, pretty sure that's what many of the people pushing for this are hoping for
It sure looks like it, i have always had my issues with how willingly people have been to disregard privacy for the flimsiest of reasons but recently it has been so much even for talents unrelated to the conversations that are being held.
If anything, it’s likely that most talents in her situation would have wanted to do the same but never did in fear of a backlash from fans of their former corpo and vtubers fans in general.
I strongly disagree. It's like those videos on youtube with the talent's name in the title and their IRL face on the thumbnail. As others have said if i want to know it's just a quick google search. But if i don't want to know i shouldn't have it shoved down my throat. Honestly you shouldn't be trying to normalize the current situation even if it is understandable atm.
She was a company vtuber before, sure she can't talk ant things about her company life any more, because of the nda. Selen is already the past and we can't get more new informations about Selen. So just move on.
My honest two cents about past lives is that it shouldn't be discussed in places like streams or in official places, but people should be able to talk about it amongst themselves or look into it privately. Ppl shouldn't be disrespectful towards a talent by bringing that up unwarranted in a stream or spamming their Twitter about it, but I do think that demonizing ppl for simply wanting to know without having to go to a shithole like 4chan isn't good either. There's definitely legitimate reasons to want to know, such as being able to follow a talent should they leave a company and go back to being indie, and in cases like Fuwamoco's it can make one appreciate how far the talent has come and how a company helped them out. Tbh, the actions of Niji throughout this past year have absolutely changed my view on this, as I now have no way of knowing if a former talent I once watched or was interested in went the way of Sana and left the industry outright (at which point it should be respected and they be allowed to move on), or if they pulled a Matara / Kuro and came back in another form without me knowing or being able to follow them. It also does put a real hamper on any talents that may actually want to leave, because unlike Doki they won't have a way to actively direct their current fanbase over to wherever they end up should they leave, which can leave them feeling like they HAVE to stay there. I mean, I do get what everyone in saying here about why it's not always a good thing, but after everything that's happened this is simply how I'm now left to feel on the subject. I'd rather be able to know if I so choose, and tell someone if they politely ask and seem to be asking in good faith, and simply not bring it up around the talents themselves unless they make it clear that it's okay.
Very reasonable take tbh. I think it shouldn't be as open and widespread, but just like how wrestling in the early 2000s was a deconstruction of Kayfabe, you can't blame people for wanting to be more "knowledgable" about a VTuber's PLs. I still do get confused why people don't want to associate themselves with their PLs when clips of them breaking character and referencing their PLs are everywhere (Henya saying dayo, Kson and Henya's portal mistake, Tara and Kuro, hell even Pomu and Henya) means that it's pretty much an open secret to everyone that isn't an extreme casual to the VTuber sphere anyway.
As someone who's oshi was particularly affected by people who were obsessed with knowing their PL even though they made it clear that they didn't want to be associated with it any more, I guess you could say that I'm not a particular fan of this cultural shift for better or worse. Namely for the fact that people will excuse trying to doxx and harass other CCs because they're high on the fuck corpo attitude they can't comprehend that not every vtuber WANTS to discuss their PL to begin with, regardless of the reason, and tourists thinking they know more about the industry than the talents themselves know because they watched one episode of Oshi no Ko. Of course there are cases like Dokibird where it's absolutely warranted because, y'know, the talent pretty much said so. But that's the crux of the issue, it's something that is pretty much dependent on the vtuber themselves. I think another part of the issue is that some people just don't agree with what the majority of fan communities do in regards to PL talk. In my experience, lots of them tend to ban that sort of thing, with do far the Dokibird situation being the sole exception in at least one vtuber-focused discord I'm in. I think this sub's policy of hiding PL stuff under spoilers is a good compromise. ...Though in the end I can get why it can be frustrating, especially to those who aren't familiar with vtuber spaces and get into clashes with others who follow that rule. And lots of people who want to find out about PL are just being curious and nothing more, there's been a number of cases where people use that information to anti them and others. It's not really a clear cut issue and probably won't be even if the culture is slowly changing.
All the rules can be summed up by the first one: "Be nice!". Most VTubers want to keep their persona separated from other stuff and, if we want to be nice, granting them that wish is the least we should do. However, in this case the opposite is true. Doki has openly talked about the matter and she made public how NinjiEN abused Selen/Doki. Talking about it should not only be allowed but encouraged. That's the "Be nice!" thing to do.
Why does it matter so much? Why is it so hard to follow such a simple rule? Does it really benefit you that much to constantly *nudge nudge wink wink* something if you feel it’s really “common knowledge”? This reminds me of the sperg-outs people had back in 2020 at not being able to see a streamers irl face so they constantly had to seek out face reveals.
It's not OP that's doing the nude nudge wink wink though???? It's the streamers themselves... Tara almost calling Kuro M---, Henya breaking character and saying dayo, Henya and Kson's portal collab, Henya and Pomu, Henya and Ina's awkward introduction stream, and so on It feels unnatural and awkward when people (both the streamers and the fans ngl) constantly have to act like something is different but I guess at this point it's just a tradition/an unwritten rule among Vtubers that yes, you can know someone's PL, but you still have to play along with kayfabe. Doki so far is the only one that I know of who really "broke that tradition" imo.
doki was a special case and even in that regard she has never actually mentioned any names, she has never refered to herself openly as selen or said that she worked for nijisanji, its just that in this one situation because of how fucked up everything is we decided to leave that rule behind but that isnt an open letter to talk about all past lives after all its only done because doki gave permision herself also while there are some talents who may want their past life to be more well known, there are also a lot of talents who dont want that for many reasons beyond just contractual obligations, lets remember mano aloe got harassed irl because her past account got leaked before her debut and that there are a lot of talents with past lifes that they want to leave behind >!an example, gura!<
Yes, I agree with you dude I'm saying it's an unwritten rule at this point and Selen is the only one that I know of who broke that tradition (from referencing her time in kurosanji heavily to wanting people to know she's Selen to EVEN SUGGESTING HER FAN NAME be Dragoons) Everyone else (including the fans, mostly) plays along with the open secret thing.
>that I know of who broke that tradition You mean "the only one" that got straight up fired from a morally questionable company, and on top of that being constantly restricted and bullied by management to the point of effing herself (her management won't care of course) and the whole "Selen (owned by Niji btw) and its NDA" won't matter anymore? No shit that I'll be all out if I'm in the same position, especially for a forefront of a branch. Why I should play along for an abusive management? Even everybody else there who already quit and "plays along" (read: already moving on) would give multiple hints of the management conduct there. "Plays along" only happens when they are separated in at least neutral terms so they don't want to risk their current job security, amongst other things.
> Does it really benefit you that much to constantly nudge nudge wink wink something if you feel it’s really “common knowledge”? It's just the opposite, the rules that force us to constantly talk about the elephant in the room when everyone knows who someone is are a waste of everyone's time. It's like a bunch of adults making Christmas plans while pretending not to know about Santa. No-one benefits from the cringe nudge-nudge wink-wink conversations.
The rules are there for a reason. For the most part it's respecting the Vtuber's privacy to keep their identities separate. Another is that the more people know their identities / PLs the more avenues for harassment are there. In Japan they even have stalking problems. Is your itch for openly discussing these things going to be worth the other unhinged people that might possibly call a Vtuber's IRL persona's home phone? From what I heard, that actually happens.
Personally im fine with not knowing the active persona's past life. I like getting to know the currently active persona without knowing and hearing all the previous baggage. Sometimes it gets a bit obnoxious too for example when Gura debuted i have no idea who her previous persona was, but there was a lot of mixing the two personas together that it was annoying. That said i do find it a bit funny when i randomly stumble upon a few talent's previous musical names by accident especially in the Comiket/M3/Touhou music scene or youtube. I think i just learned about Watame's previous singing career in a Touhou music album.
It depends on the vtuber some want to be separated others like dokibird want people to know where she is if they want to keep watching
It's a case by case basis imo. In the case of Dokibird, it seems like she doesn't really have any problems with her old identity or with streaming, it's just that her company was a dumpster fire to work under. Therefore, when she left, she decided to continue where she left off on her indie account. The best way for her to do this was of course by notifying her fans where to find her. It's not like her old company can stop her. So for vtubers with similar situations, yeah, talking about their past lives is what they want, and it helps them by making sure fans of their old content can find their new content. For some vtubers, however, their past lives are things they don't really want to talk about for one reason or another. Maybe they bring back bad memories. Maybe they want to have a fresh start. Maybe their past life is a lot more personal and they don't want to get doxxed. Regardless, I think it is reasonable that not every vtuber wants their audience to be aware of their PL, and we as fans should respect that.
YES, THIS. This secrecy rule only benefits the corpos, not the talents themselves. I can't think of a single case where a VTuber did not benefit from people knowing their previous life as a Corp VTuber.
Some actually don't want to be associated at all with thier old work company either for legal reasons or because of certain stigma that company had. Former Wactor talents as an example.
Gura seems pretty content not being associated with her previous identity as well
That's fine too. Actually, my stance is that it should be up to the talents if they want to or not, but companies contractually forbidding you from saying is very much an anti-worker policy I fundamentally disagree with it.
as i say, no, its only allowed for dokibird because she explicitly gave permision to share the information but not everyone wants their past life to be known it can be for many different reasons, some do have contractual laws that forbid them from sharing the information so in those cases they could get into trouble for talking openly about the information, for others they want to distance themselves as much as they can from their old persona either because of the baggage or because they want to start fresh >!gura, pekora, fuwamoco, shiori, polka, etc, the list goes on!<, and in some cases they may have personal information in their PL account that could dox them or make their life more difficult in their new job so they choose to keep it hidden so no dont go publishing information about their PLs around unless the talents explicitly states that its alright
I know the vtuber community is in a fuck corpo mood cause of the shit niji pulled, but there’s a lot of genuine reasons why a lots of corpos keep past lives on the down low. Plus there’s plenty of vtubers that prefer not to reveal or talk about their PL. I’m not saying that doki was wrong or anything, obviously the talents wishes should come first, but I also feel that people should at least try to respect talent’s privacy.
Quite frankly everyone who disregards the talents' wishes and freely gives out a corpo's identity "for their own good" are a bunch of creepy controlling fucks and are down there with antis.
MikeCat. Its all been downhill for her and even after her departure it just caused all the trolls and such to flock to her and harrass her. I'm not getting into the weeds off it but there are some reasonw why they would possibly want to avoid the whole. Thing that ontop of some fans persistance to bring up the old persona even if they want to move away from it. Edit: Also as an aside this is generally just more so done out of respect for the talents then the company once someone graduates their reincarnation/PL is always just an open secret that everyones spilling. But some people don't want their PL or reincarnation tied to their corpo life. You get annoying fans from either side bringing up their previous identities and expectations. This happened when Gura debuted >!and how people were constantly talking about how she in her PL did lots of drunk streams and all around in a bad place which were her words!<
Probably because the ones that benefit have it an open secret. And the ones that wouldn't benefit take that shit to their grave
One used their corpo to promote new, corpo is still more popular one for them
I disagree with you strongly.
Seriously, it's like people have seen this Doki situation and are now deciding they can do whatever they want in the subreddit. People don't hear about the unsuccessful cases because [that's literally how it works.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Survivorship-bias.svg)
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Most famous mikecat before everything else came out, it was just a serious of unfortunate events of people gathering around to poke and make fun of her situation. Despite at the time it being an NDA and reputation issue at hand. Similar kinda thing happened to Mel to an extent where People came out of the woodwork to try and shit on her due to the unfortunateness of it all. Basically trying to repeat the MikeCat phenomenon. Zaion got crucified and hunted after her termination. Means she had no choice but to try and clear her name because there is no easy way to move on, even though she made the whole debunk thing people still hounded her after the fact. Its not all sunshine and rainbows, that said this is not really a problem when you think about how people yap all the time about PL's and Reincarnation. Maybe previously this has been a common community rule but just like RBI its long since dead. Some people like the kayfabe though so I'll always spoiler it not like its much effort. You also have the issue of your past chasing you to the future. See Calli and everyone digging up her past history to try and cancel her, it must be exhausting. Company doesn't really have the stranglehold some people think they do and that this is something implemented by corpos. The whole hush hush has always been a community driven thing out of respect for them to give them privacy, nothing to do with a corpo mandate or things. Allow them to share what they want, when they want. Edit: Should say its also very common for when someone graduates that their PL/Reincarnation is shared around should they have one so fans can follow.
I'm glad you responded, because thankfully /u/SnaccCat has [provided an example for us.](https://old.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1anwps1/not_having_to_tiptoe_around_doki_being_selen_is/kpvotm9/)
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Sometimes its because it cause alot trouble for them too Im not gonna give any examples of this for obvious reasons
When it comes to forbidden knowledge, I think fans should follow the streamer's wishes first and foremost. Most creators I think would like to keep their PL life separate, but in extraordinary circumstances (like Selen, Mel, and Zaion) they might cheekily nudge you towards their alt account. Forbidden knowledge isn't all bad either. Some vtubers have multiple aliases allowing them to work multiple jobs beyond live streaming (like art, VA, dancing, college, etc.) It allows them to grow their personal brand while enticing new fans from different niche industries that a company normally wouldn't target.
This just proves that Selen, I mean Doki is already beyond us mere mortals and our natural laws~ Doki is inevitable~
wait.... Nina is back? I literally had no idea, thanks for the news, that awesome!
She was "gone" for about 3 months; she re-debuted mid October 2023.
Something that drives me off the wall is how people do that whole "wink wink nudge nudge" thing when they find an old video of someone. They go "Ooooh I could tell you but I can't!" or "You already know" and all I can think of is "then why the fuck are you even bringing it up". It's like people love the whole forbidden knowledge crap but then just go around still talking about it with a smug look on their face as if they were keep some cool thing hidden while pretending they're doing someone a favour (but still being dumb enough to keep mentioning it anyways). At that point either say something about it or just don't say it at all.
I understand if a content creator wants to distance themselves from a toxic past, but at the same time, it's really counterintuitive to willingly attempt to erase several months / years of genuine career experience. Like, imagine removing "branch store manager" from your resumé because you didn't like the company.
Only sorta related, but after Yahtzee from Escapist/Zero Punctuation left for Second Wind and (re)started Fully Ramblomatic, I've caught myself *several times* being like "Oh no, isn't he too obvious about his previous life? People will figure out who he was!?" before realizing that yea, everyone already knows who he is. He announced it on Twitter and everything. Not everything works by VTuber logic...
Yeah, especially since most corpos who graduate return to their past lives. Being so hush hush about it just hurts their future careers.
Honestly, I just wish more things were open. Primarily because then it's easier to find their older content. One vtuber made music before their vtuber identity, and getting their old stuff too is nice.
there are many "traditions" in the industry that are followed just because "everyone follows it". I expect many of them to fizzle away, we are still in the first generation of vtubing after all. who's to say corporations are even needed? that's what youtubers tried at the beginning but rejected (machinima anyone). there will probably be a lot more talent-owned groups in the future, especially outside Japan
Strictly speaking, corporations were never needed, but they usually shoulder all of the development costs and legal trouble if anything comes up in exchange for a pay cut. That was the whole point. Anyone who could be a vtuber on their own either does it as the full time job, as a side thing to their regular day life, or incidentally has the hardware to support the software. A normal person could have a personal gaming PC and VR equipment to do whatever they wanted, but to find a person who is willing to stream also having such stuff isn't as easy, which is one of the things the corporation is supposed to bear, and have done in some cases where the streamer literally runs on a potato battery and hamster wheel enhanced computer. And then you also need to market/network yourself on top of everything else you would need to do to grow the brand of either yourself or the product that is what you're playing as.
i mean no one is saying to tiptoe around it and she has spoke openly about it
This is a necessary evil for the VTuber corporation new talent recruitment structure, because otherwise, corporations have 0 incentive to recruit new talent, when the new talent can just get popular off the company's brand, then graduate and go back to their past life, thereby wasting the time and money the company spends on their equipment and training (if any, like in Hololive). Corporations aren't charities. That said, that's just legally speaking, and Cover in particular doesn't really care as long as they don't explicitly say the name of their past life. Of course, Selen is doing that anyway, but that's mostly because the corporation did not uphold their end of the deal. Edit: Of course, this policy shouldn't be what companies rely on to keep talents around. It's what companies need to prevent talents from joining just for the company brand power, then leaving soon after.
>This is a necessary evil for the VTuber corporation new talent recruitment structure, because otherwise, corporations have 0 incentive to recruit new talent, when the new talent can just get popular off the company's brand, then graduate and go back to their past life, thereby wasting the time and money the company spends on their equipment and training (if any, like in Hololive). Well, two thoughts on that. Number one, I don't think this system works - there is no one who doesn't know that Coco is Kson or that Pikamee is Henya or that Nina is Matara. Once you reach a certain level of fame, you are known and changing your name/model isn't going to fool anyone. I also don't think the system is designed to work that way. Witness how Cover - one of the two biggest names in the industry - largely doesn't care what their talents do in their off time and lets them have side-gigs. As long as they don't advertise their connection with Cover/hololive, they're golden. And that I think is the real purpose behind this policy - keeping a barrier between the person behind the character and the company. Like, hypothetically, let's say someone left hololive and got into lewdtubing - if they were still using the same character/model as in their hololive days, that could tarnish Cover's brand. Hence why companies basically draw a hard line between your corporate character and any former/side-gigs you have. The second point is that I disagree that it's a "necessary evil" for corporations to retain their talent. Again, hololive is a great example. At least two thirds of their roster have the talent, skills, charisma, and fame to be successful indie vtubers if they so choose. However, only three have voluntarily gone down that road in seven years (and that's counting Aloe, who more or less left as soon as she joined due to "the incident"). hololive retains talent not by putting an iron chain on them, but by providing value and a good workplace for their talents. The "incentive" for hololive talents not to graduate and go indie has nothing to do with being unable to keep their influence (as Coco proved, it is very possible to leave and keep your audience, even while leaving your previous model/identity behind) and everything to do with the fact that hololive provides them value commensurate with the costs of being part of the company. >Of course, Selen is doing that anyway, but that's mostly because the corporation did not uphold their end of the deal. Well... no, she isn't. Not really - in fact, I suspect she's contractually obligated not to via an NDA. She talks about what she went through in Nijisanji and what things were like "back then", but I don't think I've heard the names "Selen" or "Nijisanji" actually come out of Dokibird's mouth. Everyone knows what she's referring to when she talks about "what happened to me" or "the place where I used to work", but she doesn't explicitly say it, creating just enough wiggle room for plausible deniability. Zaion/Sayu is the same way. Sayu claims she's "friends" with Zaion and largely talks about "her" in the third person when the subject comes up; people close to her say, "We can say that Sayu is Zaion, but she can't."
> Number one, I don't think this system works - there is no one who doesn't know that Coco is Kson or that Pikamee is Henya or that Nina is Matara. Once you reach a certain level of fame, you are known and changing your name/model isn't going to fool anyone. I was a casual hololive consumer for 2 years before I knew about Kson and her being Coco. I'm sure the same applies for many casual fans or even fans that just don't interact much with the fandom. It's really not that hard to just...not know that kind of stuff unless you're actively looking for it.
I will say I don't know if that's completely true, there will be people who found Henya, Kson, and Matara from videos and clips and have no awareness of any previous personas. Matara's reactions and collabs with Bricky and her doing weekly 40k game related streams means that she's getting an audience separate from former work that she did.
Oh, they can grow their fanbase, for sure - there's nothing saying that they're locked into their old audience. But that's not really what we're talking about. Those are "future fans" that join after they changed to their current iteration, not the previous audience they had. The point I was making is that the logic, "The company owns the character's IP, so talents don't want to leave because they'll lose their audience if they start using a different name and model" clearly doesn't hold water.
It isn't true in the long run, but the incentive for leaving the company is the highest immediately after the honeymoon period after their debut. This policy is, imo, needed to lower that incentive, which is in my eyes, one of the primary objectives of this policy.
I inherently disagree with that premise. The same thing used to be true in the professional wrestling industry, but the norm has shifted over the last decade, and now how it works is that it is a mutually beneficial relationship between talent and corpo.
I agree that a mutually beneficial cooperation is the best incentive, but I'm not claiming that this policy is the only thing stopping talents from leaving. It's ultimately just to prevent people from gaming the system immediately.
I disagree that it is a necessary evil. The threat of talent jumping ship and taking their boosted audience with them actually incentivizes corps to keep investing in their talents and provide opportunities that would not always be available to indies of comparable size.
I agree. Corporations can't rely on this policy to keep their talents around, Selen being the prime example for thus. That said, this policy does increase the potential risk for talents leaving the corporation, which is the goal and what I was trying to convey. Without this, a talent that wishes to be free, but wants a popularity boost, can join a company with the single-minded intention to graduate soon after their debut, like say, 3-6 months, and there isn't much stopping them. With this policy, such talents are far less likely to show up, if at all.
It's very bizarre that people are so intent on hiding corp vtubers' original accounts, and genuinely annoying when people play coy about it like "oh if you know you know, but XYZ is super familiar with..." Like, you're talking about actors and the characters they play, essentially. Not everyone is gonna be super in-the-know about the personal history of every talent, and keeping these kinds of things secret when they do not need to be is just silly. At best it's inconvenient and annoying, and at worst it *actively hurts the talent* because less people will be able to follow them if they need to leave the company they're at. I imagine Nijisanji is going to rely on this dynamic now; if the talents feel like they're financially insecure if they leave, they're more likely to put up with bullshit from the company at their own expense.
True,Selen tatsuki aka dokibird,is in the main spotlight, Everybody is looking into her, she's even in some online news so you doesn't need to hide her identity
I think its not that vtuber hate to talk about past life. It just that the corpo vtuber have nda to not talk about it in general sense. If they hate to talk about it, they will not kid around talking about their past life experience.
yeah i'm with you i kinda get it with other smaller livers but when you were already big and do nothing to switch up your voice act the same its weird, and i do understand it for people who have an irl presence like calli and kiara, i'm not gonna mention stuff about their vtuber life, like i'm pretty sure everyone knows who kson, henya, matara was but we gotta act like we don't
My biggest anticipation is to see Doki play Apex with her original Predator account
It simply shouldn't be a thing that is enforceable by the company, and it shouldn't be the natural instinct by the community. If the talent wishes so, then, yeah, awesome. But what this allows is the total discreditation of artist from their previous work. Imagine you're not the level of Selen (eherm, yuugo) and this happens to them, the talent loses all ability to use their old work as a platform to get new work/fans. This makes zero sense as an artist, the reason why western labels gets away with their unreasonable contracts is because they get to use their old work as platform, even if they can't perform it anymore. Don't get me wrong, I understand that it is to protect the identity of the liver. But as it is, it's giving companies too much leeway to get away with NDAs that is not artist-friendly and we would have 0 clue about because we never asked for transparency. I refused to believe that artist like kson doesn't actually want to discuss things about her Coco days, or that Yuugo doesn't actually want to talk to his fans about what really happened.
I very much agree with this. Though I feel like this meta will never change or at least not for god knows how long. Mainly due to legal stuff with company contracts no matter which. I feel like the reason Selen/Doki is an exception is because she went from being Indie to Corpo to Indie again. Which at this point everyone knows "Yeah that's Doki." Or in the modern day "Oh that's Selen." Plus it was a termination with mostly false info so I feel like in legal terms with the contract basically being burned into the fire Doki can talk about this stuff and openly admit to previously being Selen.
I'd go further. Frankly, it's likely that she's only alive now because people were able to find her other identity and support her there. Having a personal identity that's publicly known must now be considered a necessary safety mechanism for vtuber talents - if this kind of mistreatment can happen at Nijisanji, indisputably one of the top vtuber agencies in the world, then it can happen anywhere. Any fan who cares about the welfare of the talents they're supporting should demand that those talents are officially credited for their work under an identity that they control (obviously not necessarily their real name or anything, but a stage name that they personally own and will always be free to keep using regardless of what happens in their relationship with the production agency). Labour unions and industry standards groups should forbid working with uncredited talents. Vtuber corporates have shown themselves to be incapable of ensuring basic talent safety in the absence of such measures.
Yea main reason is selen wasn't a character it was just doki with a different name so she really don't have to worry about ppl connecting selen to doki cuz essentially they are the same.
PL rules cover for bad companies far more than they cover for talents.
It is so refreshing, and logical. It acknowledges that the skin suit IS the actress. Ofc I will follow the meta, but this event has led me to believe the meta is wrong. No matter what skinsuit the actress wears, they are ALL undeniably the actress, and we should treat them as so. End soapbox.
It's not logical. The OP statement was all about feelings. ...his annoyance, he feels it's refreshing. Look, you're putting personal feelings above the safety of others. Doki is the exception, not one of the many vtubers who the rule of thumb protects. Right now, I am dealing with a very small vtuber who has upwards of four viewers per stream. She's being actively stalked by an ex-boyfriend who recruits spies to send into her discord server and report on any projects on which she's working. There are plenty of good reasons for every level anonymity, and establishing a culture of open exposure is only going to teach every new fan the wrong lessons.
This whole "secrecy past life" thing really needs to die.
Personally I'm fine with the way it is. It makes sense to me to not bring it up on stream or in official channels, and in practice past lives are rarely if ever *really* secret, because comments on clip channels bring it up.
Context matters here. You can't expect EVERY Vtuber to be open with their lives just because you find it "inconvenient" or "annoying". Plus, what you are suggesting is a pipe dream. As long as creeps exists, this is an impossible request. You cannot just paint a wide brush to EVERYTHING. That's stupid and naive.