Notes

What is that, and what's the Background on It?

You keep mentioning Hololive and other related stuff. I'm on. What's the problem? And what's the background? A personal perspective can be helpful. I work long hours at my workstation by myself often late at night, so having something on the second monitor helps me not to be distracted by Twitter or other social media sites.



For a number of years I was a faithful listener to numerous podcasts, including networks such as This Week in Tech or The Incomparable. As we entered 2020, a lot podcasts I was listening that was supposedly about geek or tech subjects was turning unpleasantly political. And by "unpleasantly political" I mean batshit crazy communism. The same things that had destroyed Twitter in 2018.



This is reflected in my YouTube recommendations. This is the only time that Google has done something right since 2013.



It's a mere 20 second clip , but it was long enough to make me wonder What is going on? and take a closer look. Then I realized that there was no way out of the rabbit hole.



This is Hololive.



Yes, there's plenty of them. (That's seven videos edited together by a fan, which explains why some of the transitions aren't flawless.)



Basically Hololive is an international 24/7 all-girl improv comedy channel. Unwoke, unpolitically correct and wildly irreverent. They even have their own Bugs Bunny characters - you can see her for a few seconds in the video. Her name is Usada Perkora. She has 1.8million YouTube subscribers.



They sing, they dance - they have live concerts with full motion tracking and 3D models. They draw at least two successful commercial artists, they play an awful lot of Minecraft and do not take shit from anyone.



The background of Hololive is also fascinating. The parent company Cover Corp was working on the creation of an AR device that would replace expensive motion tracking with a regular iPhone and clever software however they weren't seeing much success in breaking into the market.



In 2017, two Japanese girls fresh out of high school came to them and stated that what they needed was 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 turned into an money-making machine. Their small channel - and they have dozens of channels - has around 300,000 subscribers. The largest is approaching 4 million.



Many people are sick of hypocritical woke nonsense and want entertainers who are honest. They have enough distance to utilize 2D characters and stage names, as well as an extremely strict corporate policy protecting privacy which means they don't need any excuses.



They don't get explicitly political but in this shambolic time, it is an important political declaration.
Maimers


Beyond the official content and the sheer amount of it that it's difficult to watch all of it - there's an absolute flood of fan content, including adorable video clips.



To entire virtual worlds



Forget Hollywood, Netflix, and podcasts. I don't care what you think. I'll be there in the corner, juggling hedgehogs.



Hololive is also the main reason I chose to return to Twitter. They publish stream announcements on their site.



This is Gawr Gura of Hololive EN, the most successful virtual YouTube of all time:



She's a bit of a fool on a few things. She can engage in a conversation for up to four hours, every day and not have to repeat her own words. She can do that while simultaneously doing three other things that are a rare talent.


Website: https://maimers.com/