All right, I want to tell you about this wild concert I went to, so picture it.

You're in the middle of a sold out concert at the Vermont Theater in Hollywood.

This place holds about twelve hundred people, give or take, but it is packed with fans.

Everyone's waving their glowsticks in unison, and they've even set their blowsticks all to be the same exact color.

It's this deep red color because that's the artist being color.

That voice you just heard is Maria, and everyone is here to watch or sing.

She's not the only artist here on the stage.

There is also a guitarist and the bass player.

There's a drummer, and behind them, there's this massive screen that takes up the entire back of the stage, and there's images of Maria on that screen and also on these big screens that are on either side of the stage.

But Maria never physically steps out onto the stage herself because she can't.

This is fantastic Reality, a mini festival featuring YouTubers, virtual avatars that and I'm not really supposed to say this kind of don't exist, so you know this.

This is a new one for me.

I'm not gonna lie.

This is a new.

Yeah, this is a new You're you're a little bit different from most of the guests that I talked to.

A lot of vampires come by here.

Not often.

You're the first one.

I'm hon it.

Yeah.

Cole Maria or Maria as people usually call her, is the main organizer and also a main headlining act for this mini festival called Fantastic Reality.

She's avtuber, or put another way, she's a virtual streamer.

V Tubing is something I knew a little bit about, but I had no idea that people would pay upwards of one hundred dollars to watch something like this live.

I am a vampire born thousands of years ago.

I am very timeless, and you and all of my viewers are mortal humans.

And Michael is every time you die and be incarnate as I will find you.

And this is the way I found you in this lifetime.

Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts.

This is kill Switch.

I'm Dextor Thomas, I'm taring, I'm sing goodbye.

So how do you describe v tubers or how do you describe yourself to somebody who's not familiar with this at all?

Usually, for like when I describe it to by gen Z cousins.

I give the example of Imagine offline TV, but they're all anime girls, and that usually gets the point.

Of c.

Okay, all right.

And for my.

Sister who's a little bit older than me, how I describe it is Imagine like podcasters or like whatever she likes to watch, but they're anime girls.

Essentially, a VTuber is someone who uses a virtual avatar to make videos online.

The viewers don't see the person's physical body, instead, they see the avatar.

So if you've ever used that filter thing on an iPhone where you can control the movements or the facial expressions of an emoji with your face, that's the general idea.

You're in the ballpark with a v tuber.

There's usually a little bit more set up involved, so it can track the movements of your hands.

It contract the movements of your body, so if you wave your hands with something like that, so does the avatar.

Your virtual avatar can look like anything.

It doesn't have to look like an anime girl, but the most popular v tubers are definitely anime girls.

There's some follow up questions that have to come after that, which would be okay, But why anime girls.

Yeah.

I mean for me personally, I've always been like huge on anime, but for a lot of people, anime before was this really niche thing.

I remember like being teased for watching Dragon ball Z growing up, and now like if you didn't catch up on Jiu Jitsu Kaisen or five Family, like, you're kind of out of the times, I feel.

So it's really I think it has to do with it being so widespread now, So.

That doesn't fully answer the question of why so many of the most popular YouTubers or anime girls.

And honestly, if we were to really try to grapple with that question, that's not just a whole other episode, it's probably an entire other podcast itself.

So we're gonna leave that to the side.

But the rise of anime's popularity in the US and in other countries, I think it's definitely had an impact Herevtubing might seem like a new trend to those of us in the States, but it's been popular in Japan for close to a decade.

The term VTuber itself goes back to Kizuna I.

She's a virtual YouTuber who first launched her straying back in twenty sixteen, and before too long, other virtual streamers started too, and after a few years you were starting to see other virtual avatars doing everything from hosting online weather stations to hosting official iPhone launches.

It was still mostly a Japan thing, though, and then covid happened and everyone went on lockdown and streaming started to get even more popular, and with it, v tubers started to catch some of that surge of popularity, and it also started to spread outside of Japan.

And that's also when Maria first got into it.

We were all kind of wandering around, not sure what to do.

And you know, originally it started off for me as a hobby and one thing led to another, and I thought that, you know what if I tried my shot at this.

It's so weird calling myself an influencer, but like this entertainment content creator kind of sphere.

I mean, were you watching a lot of other VTubers at the time already?

Yeah, Originally I was a fan of YouTubers much before covid.

Kisana I was kind of a really main inspiration to me.

Maria's streams vary from just chatting to ASMR to doing karaoke and like just about every other streamer.

She also plays video games.

There's all kinds of content that v tubers can put out, Like there's this one v tuber that I've been watching for years who he says he's ex Yakuza, so like this old school Japanese mafia dude, and he just talks about the old days doing yakuza stuff.

But his avatar looks like this innocent looking twenty something year old despite the fact that based off his voice, this guy has to be sixty plus.

But what distinguishes v tubers from other streamers, and really what distinguished the very first VTuber kisana I from these other streamers and video creators other than the virtual part, is their lore.

So kisana I, we pronounced it I, but that last bit is spelled AI, and her whole backstory is that she's a self aware artificial intelligence, and everyone knew that she was actually played by a real life voice actor, and they just sort of played along with it even though they knew it wasn't real.

And that's a big part of youtubing culture.

There's usually some kind of backstory or lore behind each persona, and the fans will buy into it and make believe along with the VTuber.

So part of Maria's lore, like she said, is that she's a vampire and that she's a mortal.

So every time that you die and you're reincarnated, she'll find you so that you can be together again.

All this pretending stuff might sound really outlandish and bizarre to you unless you've watched professional wrestling.

I am talking about Macho Madness and hal Comania, two makeup powers beating here tonight, Haulkgain.

What has happened?

Well, you know me, Jean, we really don't know what we're dealing with here.

Man, I'm just worried about where we're going from here.

When people watched Hulk Hogan smash a chair over Macho Man's head, we all knew it was fake, but it was still absolutely nuts to watch those two former enemies create a tag team together and shake hands on live TV.

But I get it.

It's drama.

It's fun even if it's fake.

But wrestling fans don't say that word.

They don't say something is fake.

They have another industry lingo for it, kfabe, the concept of everyone pretending that what they're seeing is real, and VTuber fans also use this exact same term kfabe.

They just go about it a little differently.

I personally, I am pretty strict with my kfabe.

Yeah, tell me about that.

Are there certain questions you aren't going to answer if I ask them?

Yeah?

I think so.

I think that I am a vampire through and through.

So what I do camera streams?

For example, I just did one for a card game called Shadow vers Evolve.

I wear gloves.

I want to separate, like completely, flesh and the immersion.

So not the face, but even just the skin, even just the skin of your hand or your arm or something.

Yes, even just the skin.

I personally just like to hide it.

Some v tubers take their k fab a little more seriously than Maria does.

Even the fact that she's here talking about her outside life is kind of breaking k fab itself.

There are some v tubers who straight up would prefer not to talk about this at all.

I don't think they would let me interview them.

It's gotten a lot more diverse since the early days.

I think now that the medium has progressed and it's become so widespread, it is simply just like the medium.

It's just the static behind it.

This anime girl and the rules.

I say rules, but what used to be the regular thing for the industry now has really been much flexible.

We've seen people who face reveal, and that before was not a common thing.

And now I think V two being has expanded enough and there is no right or wrong way to YouTube.

YouTubers will now also show their face at conventions, and you can even take pictures with them, as long as you don't post their picture online.

I don't want to say all this stuff is necessarily taboo, but it is definitely not good form to go jump in somev tuber's chat while they're streaming and say, hey, who are you really?

Do you really look like that?

Where do you live?

Guaranteed everyone is going to get pissed off at you.

And it makes sense because avtuber can't pretend on their own.

Everyone's kind of working together as a team to build this fantasy.

It's just part of the culture.

Is how people do it, partially because it's fun, but for some people there are some other motivations.

The beauty of youtubing is that there is and I always mess up their.

Anmidi anan amidity.

To it, and I think that's also a really big appeal to a lot of us creators.

Why is that recently, actually I don't remember the name of there's a YouTuber and you made a post about I'm going to stop youtubing because it's affecting my family.

Maria is talking about Luke Nichols, who ran the Outdoor Boys channel and announced that he was retiring from YouTube this past May.

He had over fifteen million subscribers when he just decided to stop posting videos, saying that he needed to step away to protect his family and as well being.

He said it.

Got bigger than he was expecting and he wanted to live a normal life.

And I think the good part about me, too, being is I have this kind of Hannah Montana aspect to me, of like I can do my normal things.

Recently, there's an anime convention and I was able to be a little fangirl and enjoy my time there without having to worry about being spotted or recognized, even though I saw my own merchantise being sold at that same convention.

What draws people to your streams?

I think what gets people interested is definitely the physical aspect.

I'm very cute, but something that I guess makes me stand out is I do have a very personable and calming voice.

Youtubing can vraige from you know, the super high energy, hectic to kind of like the more calming, soothing, let's put this on the background while I work kind of thing.

And I think that's where a lot of my fans find me appealing.

In that wayvtubing isn't really that different from regular streaming online.

The thing that catches the viewers I might be their appearance or some kind of specific gimmick, but if the viewer sticks around, it's usually the same kind of parasocial connection that you get from other streamers or YouTubers.

What they always describe to me as is like, you know, she's always working hard and doing her best for us.

And I think that because you're able to see me cry on stream, that is in common.

I'll be frustrated, I'll cry, I'll get emotional.

You cry on stream?

Really yeah, it's I'm a very honest person.

I think that a lot of people they understand that I'm a vampire, but I'm also very human.

They'll they'll feel the sense of, you know, like I I want to spend time with this person because she is a very raw ball of emotion, which isn't commonly found in the entertainment sphere.

So this is really interesting because you know, if I might very gently break KFE for just a moment, and if you might go along with me, you know, they're they're seeing emotions on a screen, right if you're if you're crying, or if you're you're really upset about something, if you're really happy about something, but a person they're not seeing.

And so that's a kind of an interesting split there if you did what I'm saying.

Yeah, I mean I I tend to be pretty open about, you know, the things that we can cry.

Just recently, something very emotional or something that I typically wouldn't have talked about was I'm sorry if it's getting a little heavy that I lost my brother recently, and I hit it for a while and I thought, you know what, I think I think my viewers will understand if I talk about it.

And it was kind of something that I kind of don't talk about my family too much, but it was something that I kind of made the decision to talk about.

And you know, everyone's been really kind of supportive on that.

Wow.

Yeah, I mean there's the I guess the ability to connect with somebody on a personal level even though they're not seeing a person.

That's really interesting to me.

Yeah, Originally I didn't enjoy streaming.

I are watching streamers.

I thought that, you know, like, oh, like that's cool, But besides a couple of clips here and there, it's not something I really invested in.

But with vtubing, even though there is like an anime anime girl in front of you, there's a sense of connection that I feel, even more so than when I see irol streamers.

Somehow, Really, why is it?

I grew up.

A very very lonely nerd, and I think that a lot of the people and a lot of YouTubers and a lot of the viewers kind of can empathize with that, you know, liking anime and being an introvert and like the conversations you would only have at like an anime convention at like your anime club.

You're able to have these anytime with like minded people, and it's it's really comforting.

To have that.

The vtubing scene has been steadily growing over the past five years, to the point that a twelve hundred capacity venue selling out.

Honestly, wasn't that surprising to me.

But why are these fans willing to pay up to one hundred and eighty dollars per ticket to watch these acts in person when they can just see these v tubers on their phone or at their house.

That's after the break.

V tubers are starting to get more mainstream, and they're showing up in some places that you might not expect.

Just a few nights after the Fantastic Reality Show, if you went to the Dodgers game across town or Los Angeles, you would heard v tubers from a big agency called Hollow Live singing at the seventh inning stretcht.

Free.

It can feel like an underground thing, and in some ways it still is, but there is big business here and popular v tubers like Maria can get scouted to work with certain corporations and agencies.

It's sort of like a record label scouting and signing new artists.

There's a lot of independent be tubers and there are some corporations that like to watch your streams and if they see that you're a good fit for the company, though, DM you and you know ask you to either audition or ask you if you'd like to onboard directly.

As someone who's in a corporation.

What's different is I do things like three D performances.

I sing, I dance, I play video games, and you know, people want to make sure that not only you pass the bye check, but you know that you have that skill set behind to do corporate vtobing.

I suppose Maria is a v tuber at a really high level.

She has to not only be able to sing, but also promote herself.

So other than the virtual avatar, she's not that different from a pop musician under a record label.

The scouting has been one of my biggest and most delicious dreams of the betumbers.

Once again, I wanted to thank you a median reality and.

Now I.

Bucking drama.

This all brings us back to the Fantastic Reality concert that I went to.

Maria decided that she wanted to put on a show with v tubers and live musicians.

This has been done in Japan, but in the States it's definitely not a normal thing.

But probably the most impressive thing about Fantastic Reality is that it happened at all.

For example, that agency that I mentioned earlier, Hollow Live, that put their v tubers in the Dodgers game.

That is basically the juggernaut of the industry.

This is a company that did one hundred and forty million last year, not in ads, not in tickets, just in merch.

They have their own record label, they have their own artists, and so filling a concert hall honestly, is probably light work for them.

Maria does not have pockets like that.

She just decided that she wanted to do a show, and she hit up a bunch of other v tubers who she respects, and people said yes, including v tubers with way bigger followings than she has.

The closer for that night was a v tuber named iron Mouse, who at one point had broken the world record for the most people subscribed on Twitch.

Put that together with some of the other acts that Maria had gotten on this lineup, and if you're a fan of this sort of thing, this is like a mini Coachella, But it's not all connections and singing talent.

If you want to put on a virtual show, you need to talk to somebody with some experience.

If you're a weekend fan, you want to go to MSG, you want to go to the Staples Center.

Same with like Bieber or like any of these other IRL artists.

So basically, you know, we view this like this space is incredible because fans make it real.

You know, the performers make it real, but then the fans co sign and make it that much realer.

Spencer Burnham was one of the producers of The Fantastic Reality Concert.

The joke of my career has been finding jobs that are really difficult to explain at Thanksgiving and I think this is like the final boss of life.

How do I do that?

You know?

He co founded a company called Emerging Technology Company, which makes sense, but genuinely, I do not know what Spencer tells his family on Thanksgiving because his resume is all over the place.

He's made an augmented reality game that won a BAFTA Award.

He's produced three D live concerts for Justin Bieber and The Weekend.

I mean, what do you do after that?

Well, one path is you get really intovtubing.

So there were two kind of like aha moments.

There was seeing the performers need the tech, and the second thing was one of my co producers and I went to a YouTuber concert in the US and twenty twenty three, and I think we heard eight different people waiting in line saying to someone else, I can't believe I'm meeting you in person, And there was a second aha moment of like, these concerts are creating spaces for in person meetups, in person hangs, ways to have your fandom extend beyond the screen.

Extend beyond the screen while still being on the screen.

It's a little hard to wrap your head around.

And just like Spencer, Maria still sometimes finds herself explaining her vision.

Imagine Para Moore.

But Haley Williams is an anime girl.

We don't want it to feel like, oh, this is just virtual, this is just reality.

It's kind of just how can we mix it all together where you can't tell what is virtual what is real?

Anymore?

How can we kind of prove to not just myself, but to a lot of other people that you know, it isn't silly to be an anime girl on the internet.

Being an anime girl on the internet is one thing, but being an anime girl on stage involves a lot of people behind the scenes, not justser I'll put a link in the show notes to the Fantastic Reality Show and you can see there is a long list of credits.

The next question, though, is how mainstream can this stuff get Do you think there'll be a time when av tuber is on stage at say, Coachella?

Oh?

I hope so, I definitely think.

So how long away do you think we are from that?

Ooh?

I think we're much closer than we think.

I want to say, was it last year hutson Miku, a virtual singer, performed at Coachella?

So I think the technology is there.

We're just kind of just waiting in our inboxes Coachella.

Hint, hint.

Hutson ay Miku is sort of a good comparison here, I say sort of in the sense that appearance wise, Yeah, it's also an anime girl that most people would associate with that kind of general J pop type music and the vibe that a lot of v tubers also do.

But Hutsoni Miiku isn't a VTuber.

It's basically just a mascot for a set of computer software that music producers can use to make vocal songs without having to hire or use an actual vocalist.

It's not like there's actually a specific human being tied to this character.

But it is interesting that they were able to put Hatsanimiku on stage at Coachella no.

Granted, not everyone liked that performance, even some of her fans, and a lot of people thought it was pretty weird.

But I would actually argue that a lot of people are probably more familiar with concerts by virtual artists than they think.

If you've ever listened to the Gorillas, then there you go.

This is a band that is a bunch of fictional animated characters, and all the way back in two thousand and one, way before v tubers, they were putting cartoons on stage at concerts.

Music critics were a little weirded out by back then, but audiences seem to have liked it enough to keep going to shows still, though it's kind of hard to blame someone for being a little skeptical of all this at first.

I mean, for you, are we still in that phase of justifying the technology and saying art can be done with this, that you could have a concert that is partially virtual and this is actually worthwhile?

Are we past that?

I think it depends on the audience.

It's like when Scorsese says, like Marvel movies aren't movies.

You know, It's like you still have people that will point a finger at something because it doesn't match their schema for what art should look or feel like.

You know, it happens with music all the time, people saying that's not music.

Music is created by like a person strumming a physical you know, like electronic music isn't music.

Hip hop isn't music, like right right, right right, orchestral music is only music, you know.

I think what's interesting about the space that we're finding ourselves in right now is people used to get into youtubing because of their fandom of anime.

It was this like combination of live streaming and of anime.

But what was crazy.

So there's an amazing festival conference every year called off kay Expot and there was a couple of people I overheard say that they were fans of youtubing, not coming from an anime fandom, like they were justvtuber fans.

A lot of people talk about you fall down the YouTuber rabbit hole.

You know, it's like it is a rabbit hole, like like i'd like and I say that lovingly, but it's like there's two kinds of people who have been on YouTuber TikTok, those who have had YouTuber clips served to them and those who will you know, it's like, uh, you're just gonna see it at a point you know.

Okay, maybevtubing is going to become more mainstream, but you know what else is becoming more mainstream AI.

So how are the fans and more importantly, the v tubers feeling about the possibility of artists becoming automated?

That's after the break.

We can't talk about v tubers without talking about Blue.

So this is an AI generated v tuber who was created by a guy who ran a really successful YouTube channel, but he wanted to take a break and he realized that if he physically wasn't on screen, he wouldn't be able to keep his business running.

The creator talked to CNBC and broke it down in a really straightforward way.

The flow in this equation is the human, so we need to somehow remove the human out of this, out of the channel.

So to be clear, this is someone who came from outside of YouTuber culture and kind of just jumped in.

And not only were a lot of v tuber fans not into it, a lot of his own fans didn't like it either, and they were very vocal about it.

On the other hand, there is an obvious financial incentive here.

If not for individual creators, then for corporations.

Last year, the venture capital firm Andrees and Horowitz posted an article that has this anime market map, and it puts AI companions and V twoing side by side and breaks down the kind of money that can be made here.

I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that there are companies who were very interested in figuring out how they can make money more efficiently off of fans if they can convince them to like AI.

But if you talk to those fans and I have, you start to realize that this might not be such an easy sell.

One thing that I've noticed recently is that when somebody's describing v tubers, they always include it somewhere in parentheses, not AI.

This isn't AI.

I guess.

One of the things that I think about is that even in the you could say, more traditional same music industry, right, there's a lot of talk about, hey, how can we use AI and music?

And this isn't necessarily coming from musicians, It's coming from the corporations.

Yeah, right, And so I think if there are corporations who are thinking about, how could we have we could just generate music via AI and we could just have a virtual artist that's starting to get a little bit close to whatvtubers are doing, and it seems like actually you tubers might be the first line of where this starts to encroach.

That's interesting.

I think that the culture and of youtubing is that if you use AI that it's really looked down upon.

So I think that a lot of YouTubers.

Have made that ruin because we're all independent and we have that kind of culture of you know, let's keep working with human with humans, like right, yeah, I want to say, you know, like in our sphere, we're pretty safe from that.

Vtwo B has grown because of artists.

You know, our visuals are made by human artists.

Our rigging is made by human riggers, Our songs.

Are made by humans.

And I think that it would be a little bit insulting to the way we grow and the way that we have advertised ourselves has always been community based.

And you know, a lot of the fan art that's made, like the people who watch us are humans.

Like art is an expression of, you know, the human experience.

So to lose that in the entertainment industry, I think is a really scary thought.

And I hope that will never lose that, and I hope that the things that really mean the most to us well will still be the human creative thing, even if it does mean it costs more money.

I mean, I think there's always that, and this is just speaking you know, as artists here.

I think there's always worry that some of the audience might start to be satisfied with fake right, is that they get they really enjoy somebody who's making real stuff for them, and they really appreciate what they're doing as a person.

And then if they're provided something which is just an endless supply of stuff, even if it's not as good, they might say, ah, I like this because this person never takes breaks.

This person, right, this AI thing never takes breaks.

And if I could be entertained by an AI fake version of something that I like, I'll take that because it's more convenient.

Yeah, I definitely see where you're coming from, especially like when I go on YouTube now, I go on YouTube shorts, and I see a lot of this AI dub stuff, and like, you know, to be honest, like I kind of don't get it too much, Like I know that it's kind of like it's kind of like this junk food of consumption of media where it's like really fast and really easy, but then you kind of realize this isn't good for me and you go back to that human created stuff.

I know it's kind of inevitable that we will see it, but I think, you know, I think people will always go back and realize, you know, this is like, yes, this is quick, and this is making me entertained, but it doesn't give me that same fulfillment as listening to someone who cried while writing the lyrics to a song.

You know what I mean.

I, for example, like one of the songs that I sing is something that I like, poured my entire heart into.

And I think that no matter how far into the AI sphere people get into, like, it will never amount to like that experience and you know, being able to tell that story that only I have experience.

So you don't think any of your fans would leave you for an AI Maria.

Yeah, I don't think they will.

And maybe this is counterintuitive, but fans really seem to like the idea that there are people tied to all of this.

One of the cool things about YouTube and community is how people see these virtual characters.

They assume this must be like an AI friendly like fandom, you know what I mean?

Yes, so not the case, Like what's amazing is number one.

There's always a human element.

There are famous v tuber modelers, character riggers, character animators, because like it's always about the artist.

You know.

V tubers aren't just live streamers, they're also voice actors.

They're motion capture performers.

Like to have a model.

That model is rigged, so every pixel that you see has some type of physics applied to it more or less.

Right, So if I have a model, it's not just enough for me to sit here.

I have to be animating.

I have to be in a state of almost like pantomime level of.

Performance, really exaggerated.

Yeah, a VTuber is a real time person that has to understand like they play their model like it's an instrument.

There's a term in VTuber called scuff, Like you can be the biggest agency in the world and there will be a degree of like something's gonna go wrong and the fans are like haha, haa, like look at the scuff.

You know.

It's like if something doesn't go exactly as planned, the fans celebrated.

They're like Oh that's cool.

It doesn't fully like Pierce Surveil necessarily, but it's enough to show that this is live, like this is real.

You know.

I find this conflict really interesting because I came into this whole thing thinking, man, v tubers are the obvious first target.

They're really going to be going at this trying to push AI on them, And you know what, I still think that, But what I'm seeing is that the community is actively fighting against it, and there are people who are being very vocal about not wanting AI in their space at all.

Part of the reason that we got so excited about youtubeing number one was because of how, at the time when it was put on a radar, it was the only online fantom that was rejecting NFTs and web three.

Interesting really, yeah, oh they just weren't.

They didn't want any other The fans shot it down.

Wow, they want to be fans.

They don't want financial incentives for being fans.

NFT became synonymous with scam and the vtaming I mean not just the vtubing space, but like, yeah, vtubing fans rejected NFTs and then vtubing fans project AI.

You know, this actually reminds me of something else that I sought the concert.

So the Fantastic Reality Concert was sponsored by this Japanese YouTuber app called Irium, which is basically this streaming app that only hasv tubers on it.

The idea is that if you want to try outvtubing, the app helps you create your own avatar and you can do everything on your phone.

Anyway, I met one of the representatives there and I was talking to him, and as we were talking, I asked him his company's stance on AI, and he told me that actually, the Arium app did have some basic AI features to help you animate your avatar, but when they brought the app to the they removed all those features because they realized that people really did not like AI at all.

And just on the human connection thing.

There's been some pretty wild stuff happening in thevtubing world that maybe illustrates this better than any of that.

So I mentioned iron Mouse a little earlier.

This is the VTuber who at one point broke a record for the most people subscribed on Twitch and who was also the closing singer for the Fantastic Reality show.

Three weeks after the show, iron Mouse posted a video explaining that she was leaving her agency.

She said the company owed money not just to her, but to a charity.

Unfortunately, I recently found out that for the past couple of months I have been misled by the show jo With the information that I currently have, I believe that I am owed a significant amount of funds which I have not been paid.

And most importantly, the thing that hurts me the most is yes that the Immune Deficiency Foundation, which is the most important charity to me and also the reason why I'm here today, is owed over half a million dollars from the show.

Jill.

This was bad news.

Ironmouse posted a link so that people could donate to the foundation, maybe to make up some of the difference.

Over the next three days, her fans helped her raise over one point two million dollars for the foundation.

Man, you could say this stuff is silly, you can say you don't like the music, you can say whatever you want.

But I don't know if you can say it's not real, because that is over a million dollars of very real money that can go to help very real people.

And in talking to Maria and Spencer, I started thinking more about the VTuber world, not just from the viewer standpoint, But from the streamer standpoint, listening to you talk about this really interesting streaming is you know this much better than I do.

Streaming is tough.

Streaming is hard, but you talking about the ability to stream and then walk outside and nobody knows who you are and that kind of thing, which is kind of cool.

Would you suggest vtwoing to other people?

Maybe to me?

Absolutely?

Really?

Yeah?

And vtubing is something I think is for everyone, no matter what kind of content you do.

Like, honestly, I think you have a really good chance because people are looking for a lot of.

Different kinds of YouTubers.

You do anime related stuff, you're like a writer, like that is something that I think.

A lot of people would really enjoy.

Really yeah, So hold on, how hard would it be for me to flip myself into a YouTuber?

What's involved?

So there's a lot of different ways.

Now, we have pre made models that you can adjust to, you know, suit your aesthetic.

There's models that artists that you can adopt.

There's also a way to make it completely your own original, where you can work with an artist to make a design kind of just send them a mood board.

There's also auditions.

Erieung who is the sponsor to their are concert.

They have auditions open right now where they have pre made models and they're just looking for the souls behind it.

So a lot of different ways.

Oh so I could just try to apply Yeah, I wanted to.

I could just jump in and you go straight into it.

You have streaming experience, you have you know your writing experience, you have a lot going for you.

I think you have a chance.

Wow, Okay, I will I will consider this.

I will consider this.

Yeah.

For those who are just getting into vtubing themselves, I'd like to say that it just starts off with a dream.

It's kind of my takeaway for those who are who are interested in starting youtubing, and for those who are completely new to the whole concept of youtubing, I would say, give us a There's no one kind of streamer, same thing.

There's no one kind of betuber.

If you haven't found a YouTuber you like, maybe just keep looking.

There's a lot of different creators out there.

There's cooking betubers, there's science betubers, there's history related ones.

There's so much out there, and if you have an interest in something, I'm definitely sure there's a YouTuber out there for you to watch.

I'm being serious about this.

I'm actually consideringvtubing.

I might talk to you again about the Absolutely, I'm actually thinking about this because if I don't have if I can get up and like be in my pajamas and still turn on and stream, Yeah, that's kind of an attractive proposition.

I'm not even playing with you right now.

No, exactly.

A lot goes into IRL streaming, right there's like the cameras set up, the lighting setup, you know, I definitely recommend it.

There's a lot of IRL streamers too that have a VTuber model for those times that they don't want to have their face on there.

So okay, you can always mix match.

All right, we're winded down here, and you might be still here at the end and saying, man, I still don't like any of this, all this VTuber stuff, this music.

At the end of the day, it's all fake.

And maybe you can say that, but I personally don't have that luxury because I like rap music.

Hip hop.

Rap is a genre that, despite being completely obsessed with quote unquote reality, has always had some facet of collective make believe.

Every musical genre, every musical culture has had some element of collective pretending to it.

You could talk about hip hop, you could talk about folk music, you could talk about punk music.

VTuber fans, I think, are just more honest and maybe less pretentious about the whole thing.

But there is something that I think YouTuber fans might have on the rest of us, for real, is that maybe they have had more time than us to think about what it means means to separate the human from the machine and to draw a border and to protect the human creativity there.

And so seeing how they look at AI is really interesting to me, and maybe it's an example that other communities could follow, because if they can't prevent AI from encroaching on their culture and their art, man, I think the rest of us are cooked for real, but we don't even have to intellectualize it like that.

I talk to a bunch of people at this fantastic reality concert, and I keep coming back to what this one guy told me at the end.

Metubers are an expression of the happiness.

To me, and like I think a lot of us giving the happiness from watching them.

I don't know exactly why, or how or anything like that, but all I can say is that At the end of the day, Midfantome makes me happy and that's what matters to me.

And you know what, who am I to argue with that?

That is it for this one.

Thank you so much for listening to kill Switch.

Let us know what you think, and you know, if there's something you want us to cover, you can let us know.

You can hit us up at kill Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC, and we're also on Instagram at kill Switch Pod.

You could also hit me directly at dex Digi that's d e x d I g I on Instagram or on Blue Sky.

Oh and quick announcement, we're gonna be on break for a couple of weeks, will be back on September third, so you know that gives you a little bit of time to maybe catch up on the backlog if there's any past episodes you might have missed.

And while you're at it, maybe go to your podcast section of choice and leave us a review because it really does help other people find the show, which helps us keep doing our thing.

Also got to give a big shout out to Miniature Christian, senior culture editor at Wired Magazine.

This whole episode actually is partially based on article that I wrote for Wired, and so if you'd like to read that, plus all the other things I mentioned in this episode, you can find that.

As always, all those links are in the show note.

And as always, this show was hosted by Me, Dexter Thomas Junior.

It's produced by Sena Ozaki, Darluk Potts, and Kate Osborne.

We also had production help on this one from Alex Zaneveld.

Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixed the show from Kaleidoscope.

Our executive producers are Oswald Lachin, Mangesh Hachigadur, and Kate Osborne.

From iHeart our executive producers are Katrina Norvil and Nikki E.

Tour.

Also, for the special few who stick around through the end of the show, I gotta say one thing.

Remember that I mentioned that there's a long list of credits for the people who put the fantastic reality show together.

Well, at the end of the concert, on those big screens, they roll the credits for the show, including the artists in the names of the writers, and the crowd stuck around around watch the whole thing and cheered.

I thought that was pretty cool anyway, Catch on the next one,