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I think people too often forget that VTubing takes it's roots in anime and idol culture. What is one major theme these two have in common ? Escapism. Japanese culture, especially it's work culture, is utterly brutal with long work hours. Once the average salary man gets back home, the absolute last thing he fucking wants to think about is his job, the real world. Thus most of Japanese culture reflect this desire to escape reality to a more fantastical universe. Isekai didn't become a top genre in anime by sheer luck. [...] VTubing reflect this. For many it's an escapist medium. Wether you are a mentally ill VTuber, or someone disabled or impaired by your health. Through the medium of VTubing, for a moment, you get to escape all this and role-play your anime OC. Wether you are a viewer, tired of the "work-eat-sleep" routine looking for something different that can completely captivate all your attention. VTubing allows these two to meet and escape together, for a stream, a video, a song. Nothing else matter but what you're currently experiencing. It's soothing, ease the soul, genuinely makes you feel better and can be beneficial to your mental health as long as you don't "dive too deep". [...] And more than ever people are tired, very on edge. The world is a bit of a miserable place at the moment. For a decade or so, as the world's been going worse and worse. There's been an increase in "activist" individuals in the entertainment medium. It's hard to point at a single cause : social media ? Cultural change ? Gamergate ? Ease of access to diploma ? [...] But nonetheless these "activist" tends to have one thing in common : everything must be about/include "the message". I won't dwell on it, you know the one. We all are tired of hearing them again and again. And shocker, but many, if not most people, especially when particularly miserable. Don't feel like getting a moral lesson from "smug morally superior" privileged bourgeois. They don't want to be reminded constantly how nuch the world sucks, they don't want to constantly be demanded to flog themselves, to constantly humiliate themselves and spit on their sense of self worth because that would supposedly make them "a good person". It's all posturing, it's vapid, empty, meaningless words. [...] And thus, again and again, more people want to be left alone, to enjoy the little pieces of happiness that remains in their life. Having enough time to waste to demand entertainers to be political, to ask yourself wether entertainers align with your political belief. That's incredibly privileged, I wish I had that much time to waste. Or maybe it's a case of not having your priorities straight. Instead I have to worry if I'll have enough money at the end of each month. [...] This is a moral purity spiral. YOU HAVE TO REJECT IT. It always ends in witch hunt, harassment, and an appeal to "who is the morally superior person". These people are posers, who speak for no one but their echo chamber of pretentious jackboots thugs circle jerk. They should be told to kick rocks. They should be told to fuck off. I've been around this culture long enough to know how many VTuber value VTubing as an escapist fantasy. This is a precious gift. It must be protected.