From what i heard it wasn't really a huge number of people doing this, so much as a smaller group who each made tons of alt accounts to repost each other etc.

Regardless, so, SO much bad LGBTQIA discourse can be traced back to this on some level!

So i think part of why there may be an uptick w/ younger demographics is, a whole generation of queer & trans & nonbinary ppl grew up on Tumblr where a number of older radfems posed as fandom or kpop stan accounts to blend in w/ the kids

They'd eventually pivot to their usual talking points

i saw 3TEETH live once and they were completely and utterly...competent. That show was also my introduction to Street Sects, who blew them out of the fucking water as the opener lol

But that "keep it in the family" mission just never seems to stay intact with organizations larger than that. Hololive isn't huge relative to your Hollywood studios or such, but it's still plenty big enough that i don't think they can keep the dam from bursting forever

For another boomer rock example, Springsteen had his fair share of internal drama with his band in the 70s & early 80s...but the public never heard a word of it aside from vague talk in histories that were published long after the fact. That works because it's one guy leading one band

i always think of what somebody said about certain boomer rock icons once:

The Beatles were friends, while the Rolling Stones were always just coworkers. That's why the former broke up after like 10 years while the latter are together to this day!

Also, given i'm a history-driven guy, i can't help but wonder if someday we'll learn that Hololive wasn't as rosy as we believed either. Not because of anything about the company in particular, but because this is how things always end up in the entertainment business!

The smaller up-and-coming indie vtubers are where you'll still see friend groups thrive, in my view, as in general smaller streamers need to collab with each other in order to grow. So that space will still be prone to this sort of drama, as collab partners don't always remain real friends

i think the events of the past 2 years will make it hard if not impossible for vtuber fans outside of Asia to trust any agency not named Hololive, and my prediction is we'll see a lot fewer big Twitch vtubers base their identity around being part of friend groups with other bigger vtubers

By that last part i mean the idea that all these ppl who joined an agency together are genuine BFFs. Vshojo was most popular when they gave off this sense of cohesion via Henya & Geega & the ex-Nijisanji folks, but there's been so many breakdowns in that circle as money ran out & lies were exposed

i think this is where the Twitch vtuber scene is going to end up, most likely. Folks will get tired of all the Google doccys (this is already happening) & things will settle into a healthier place than they are atm, but it'll take a while to get there & they can't do the idol-style marketing again

But they *have* recovered! This year they've been putting on their best shows and receiving their most rave reviews since 2021, at a time when WWE has been in creative freefall too.

But it's still a bit different vibe, as people know that "All Friends Wrestling" was never quite real after all

Their reputation went from "All Friends Wrestling" to "All Drama Wrestling" in a hurry...i'm sure that doesn't sound familiar to vtuber fans at all, no sir!

In AEW's case, it took them a couple years to truly repair all the damage from that; they needed to figure out their central identity.

The biggest blowup was CM Punk publicly feuding with a bunch of other wrestlers there before getting himself fired in spectacular fashion, but we also had cases like Sammy Guevara beefing with multiple talents, Miro refusing to lose to certain ppl, and Ricky Starks being visibly unhappy w/ AEW

To explain a bit more, All Elite Wrestling was founded as a more indie-styled alternative to WWE, and a big part of their early image was what i mentioned above - to the point that people called the company "All Friends Wrestling"!

Then after they signed a ton of ex-WWE talent, that changed...

There's been this attempt in more recent years to make poptimism a thing in wrestling, and a big part of that was portraying WWE as more ~woke~ than AEW because they pushed women & black wrestlers more

That's dying down now as WWE isn't doing that nearly as much anymore, but that's what i saw