Notes

What is That What's it About, and what's the Story on it?

You keep talking about Hololive and other related items. I'm out of the loop. What's the issue, and what's the context behind it? A background from my personal perspective could be helpful. I often work for long hours at home at my desk, often late at night, and find that playing something on the second monitor could keep me from becoming even more distracted and spending my time on Twitter or other social media sites.



For a couple of years, I was a devoted listener to a variety of podcasts, including networks such as This Week in Tech and The Incomparable. However, as we entered 2020, a lot content I was listening to that was supposedly about geek or tech subjects was turning unpleasantly political. And by "unpleasantly political" I mean batshit mad communism. The same things that had caused the destruction of Twitter in 2018.



However, around the time, this came up in my suggestions on YouTube the only time Google has gotten anything right since about 2013.



Even though it's only a 20 second clip, it was long enough to make my mind go "What is this?" and take a closer look. Then I realized there was no escape from the rabbit hole.



This is Hololive:



Yes, there are many of them. (That's seven videos compiled by a fan, which explains why some of the transitions aren't perfect.)



Basically Hololive is an international 24-hour all-girl improv comedy channel. Unwoke, unpolitically correct, irreverent and chaotic. They even have their own Bugs Bunny character You can see her for a few seconds in that video, her name is Usada Pekora and she has 1.8 million YouTube subscribers.



They sing, they dance live - they perform in concerts that use full motion tracking as well as 3D models, they draw at least two successful commercial artists, they play an awful amount of Minecraft and don't take any shit from anyone.



Hololive's own background is fascinating. Cover Corp, the parent company was working on an AR device that would replace expensive motion tracking with a regular iPhone. However, they weren't having much success in entering the market.



In 2017, two Japanese girls who were fresh out of high school approached them and told them that they needed their own virtual spokesperson. One of them is now Tokino Sora with 900,000 subscribers, and the other is known as A-chan, and is an executive manager who oversees activities across the entire company.



The pivot was a huge success and Hololive has evolved into a money factory. Their small channel - and they have dozens with close to 300,000 subscribers. The largest is approaching 4 million.



Many people are sick of hypocritical woke crap and want entertainers who are honest. They have enough distance to use the 2D characters and stage names, as well as a strict corporate policy that protects privacy and privacy, so they don't require any excuses.



They're not explicitly political however, they do make an important political statement in this bewildered age.



Beyond the official content and the sheer amount of it that it's difficult to see all of it - there's an flood of fan content, which includes cute video clips.



To entire virtual worlds:



So forget Hollywood Don't forget Netflix, forget podcasts, I really don't need to. https://souldevteam.net/ I'll be here in the corner juggling hedgehogs.



Hololive is also the primary reason I decided to get back on Twitter. They post their stream announcements there.



This is Gawr Gura from Hololive EN. It's the most popular virtual YouTube ever:



She's a bit of a fool in certain areas. But she can maintain both sides of a conversation for 4 hours at a time, every day, without ever repeating herself, and for the most part, she's doing three other things simultaneously, and that's an amazing feat.


Website: https://www.souldevteam.net/