VTubers Cleanup Thread

Regarding "doxxing", in the vtuber community that is almost always used in the context of linking the vtuber and their roommate, rather than trying to find "actual" private info like addresses or whatever. I never liked that because it devalues the term, but if you ever hear someone talking about doxxing vtubers, 99% of the time that's what they mean.

there are some crazy, crazy ass """""fans""""" out there in the vtuber scene. like i said before earlier in this thread, i don't blame anyone one bit for just cutting everything and leave everything buried until the problem stops being a problem (which i predict will be the heat death of the universe).

And if anything actually personal/dangerous gets posted, the offender would be banned and the information deleted. That's no different then how we would handle any other information of that sort, right?

And give people SOME credit. If they're big enough fans to be spending hours editing their pages on here, they're not going to be the type to add that kind of information. And anyone crazy enough to spend however long it takes to find that information wouldn't post it here unless they're deliberately trying to stir shit, in which case, see above.

From a moderation perspective, this feels like somebody else’s problem. I don’t want to have to write “no breaking kayfabe” rules for a specific subset of articles and then have to deal with Hollers about it. The intricate details of each fandom’s internal politics are not something we are going to enforce.

Doxxing in general falls under our “don’t be a dick” rule, so hopefully that’s enough.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 20th 2022 at 1:14:06 PM

i mean, if "any possibility of enabling doxxing" can be filed under an already existing rule, then by all means. the vtuber pages i frequent already make an effort to not do that anyway, so there's probably not gonna be a lot of hollers to begin with.

Most anyone in the community knows and respects the divide, and even on all our entries I've never seen anything explicitly linking anything that wasn't swiftly deleted for that exact reason. That now deleted Reclusive Artist entry was the closest, and even that was basically summarizing their roommates without naming them. Not anything hard to find out if someone cares, but still not something to be brought up casually, and definitely not something to be mentioned on their trope pages unless they (for whatever reason) mention it.

so now that it seems like we're finally over that hill, how do we determine what's not tropeworthy?

i get that we can't trope vlog-style stuff, any real life events they talk about (even if anonymized), and Let's Play streams without much color commentary. the problem i see is that anyone can just go, "haHA, actually, that last bit was in-character!". what do we do then, do we just trope those moments and cut everything else?

a lot of vtubers i bother to watch barely play up ther character after like, what... two weeks after their debut? except for the occasional gag. Salome is literally the only example i could think of where they are their character practically full-time.

For pages like Contractual Purity and Role-Ending Misdemeanor that are explicitly about real life performers and actors, how would the performers behind vtubers fit with that? Right now, they trope the actor but use the character name instead of the actor name. Is there anything with that that needs to change?

Side note: Contractual Purity looks kinda complainy overall, especially with stuff like this:

• Lest you think this is purely an American trope, try following any Teen Idol in Japan (even those grown into their twenties!) and you'll see this in spades. If a girl kisses, goes on a date, or heaven forbid, admits to having sex, she is torn apart by rabid fans who are apparently so lonely and hopeless, they can only imagine younger girls as a pristine virginal fantasy and the companies also enforce rules forbidding romantic relationships whatsoever. Anything that shatters that illusion brings on their vicious ire. Yeah, you think America's Moral Guardians are bad, they're still way behind hardcore Japanese Otaku.

Contractual Purity: considering the page has a big list of fictional examples, it's probably fine as it is. would probably help if there's anything you can give as an example that sticks out like a sore thumb, if any.

Role-Ending Misdemeanor: considering what just happened for the past couple of dozen posts, i'd probably stay away from making examples of this, because you'd have to implicate a real life event and now we're back on the "did we just accidentally doxx someone?" slippery slope again. if there's anything i learned from this old ATT the consensus was basically "leave a streamer's real drama out of it".

Here's what's written for Hololive on Contractual Purity:

This is the only part I'd see any real problem with. The VShojo section doesn't really mention any specific IRL stuff.

Edit: Since V Shojo is a western agency where the purity standards are basically nonexistent, does it really count as defying standards when they don't really exist?

Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 20th 2022 at 1:47:36 PM

Okay, *raises hand*. How does Contractual Purity apply to a Vtuber when their real identity is supposed to be concealed? How would audiences even know if a contracted actor had sex or got drunk in real life unless they are already connected to their character?

I haven't read those entries myself, but if it's meant for actors and the vtubers are being used, I can all but guarantee the name's just a substitute out of respect for the aforementioned divide.

For the latter specifically, if it's about Rushia as I assume, it's probably correct anyway. That was rooted in something she did off-screen that ended her role as Rushia. Again, the name will be Rushia because that's the conceit, but if it is about that it would fit.

EDIT: The Contractual Purity one covers some fairly deep vtuber history, but the short version is that hololive was basically THE name in the West even before their EN branch debuted. hololive has always marketed itself as virtual idols, and given the skewed perception of Japanese Idol culture in the West, their (again, to the West, the reality is more complex and off-topic) "un-idol" behavior as a contrast was one the initial big draws. That basically set certain expectations about the entire scene.

That entry at a glance looks accurate in terms of events that happened except for that "no male collab" ban. That has always been up to the individual streamer, and pretty much all the girls are shy so it usually doesn't happen. And again, using the vtuber name when meaning the talent is just sticking to the conceit.

Edited by TheFoxsCloak on Aug 20th 2022 at 4:02:16 PM

Correct on both counts. There's also a Nijisanji entry for REM but it's probably misuse since the talent was only suspended temporarily and not fired.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 20th 2022 at 1:55:25 PM

I'm pointing these out because they are inherent contradictions to the idea that Vtubers are not linked to their real identities. I keep hearing that we can't meaningfully separate actor and character because of kayfabe, but if that's true then none of these other things make any sense.

Trivia like Role-Ending Misdemeanor are based either on fans knowing the real identity of the 'tuber and driving them off social media or on their sponsors finding out about something they did and canceling them. Regardless, the kayfabe is broken.

It sounds to me like it's all a shared pretense that nobody really believes deep down, and if that's the case, we go back to drawing a sharp line between actor and character as far as troping is concerned.

that's the problem when dealing with anything idol culture related, you don't actually have to have sex or get drunk in real life, you just have to imply it and the Otaku are all over that shit raging at it. (ironically, they're kind of just whatever when they up and get married. given up, perhaps?)

there's also stuff like this. oh wassat, there was knocking in the background? MUST BE A BOYFRIEND!

edit: this

honestly couldn't have said it better myself. people only pretend the pretense exists from the inertia (for lack of a better word) of vtuber agencies perpetuating the pretense.

Edited by Freecom on Aug 20th 2022 at 3:06:16 PM

While I fully agree that otaku culture is toxic, that doesn't mean TV Tropes needs to be a victim of it. I'm not interested in playing these games.

so basically it sounds like those entries should be nuked. sounds reasonable, even hololive themselves are trying to dump the "idol unit" marketing they initially had, they've been doing so for years. people who are into that stuff can probably just hit up other wikis anyway if they want the nitty gritty history.

Just the Hololive stuff or the V Shojo stuff as well (99% sure the Niji example is misuse)?

Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 20th 2022 at 2:14:25 PM

Contractual Purity in Japan refers to attributes of an Idol Singer, which means Slave to PR: being family-friendly and to have no personal relationship (being always single). Many Vtubers claim to be Idol Singer, but aren't bound to those conditions, which means that new Japanese fans who were interested in singing part and not streamer part would be "severely disappointed" to see the person they took liking to behave impolitely or contacting men. In a way, because Vtubers have lower standards, this obsession with "are they for me" toned down and fans became more respectful, being more interested in Be Yourself and "Character Development" as themes.

Anyway, I was interested for a couple of days if Virtual Youtuber page could use some disclaimers like one at Content Leak, so editors could cite it when cleaning, after we settle out remaining questions.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 20th 2022 at 10:17:10 PM

Again, the whole context would require a lot of off-topic explanation, but for hololive specifically the whole idol thing is partly a running community joke. That entry is accurate in terms of events, and it's mostly about how it DOESN'T fit the stereotypical Western idea of a Japanese Idol as an explanation of the contrast. The three examples where it's played straight are considered a black mark by the community driven a large vocal minority that takes the idol thing as seriously as any other toxic otaku example you care to name.

And again, the name thing is because it is considered rude (at best) to explicitly link the talent and the avatar, nothing more.

then at least hololive's should be removed because you can't play with a trivia item.

i don't know about VShojo's entry because i'm having a brain fart and can't find it on their main or trivia pages (i ctrl+f'd, trust me).

edit: never mind, i'm stupid, it was on the actual trope page. it's the same as the hololive one, it's playing with a trivia item.

Edited by Freecom on Aug 20th 2022 at 3:23:56 PM

Just the playing with part or the straight examples too?

Contractual Purity is Trivia and you can't Play With Trivia, so the averted and defied examples should be removed out of principle.

I know that part, I just want to know if the three straight examples should be kept.

While I won't argue that, I will point out the whole thing is predicated on the West's IDEA of what being a Japanese Idol entails. A lot of hololive's stuff isn't that out there, and some RL Idol company's are even wilder, but that goes back to that maybe needing a whole other discussion.

For Vshojo and the wider scene, because hololive was the trendsetter in the West, the idea of Vtubers = Idols basically got entrenched even when it was never true. Nijisanji is bigger in Japan and they never marketed their talents as idols, but because hololive was first in the West that perception bled over.