Categorizing Hololive Content
There are two obvious ways of categorizing Hololive content. The most obvious way is by the type of activities the talents do in the content. The main types of activities that they do are singing, playing games, storytelling, superchat reading, or semi-scripted programs usually in collaboration with other VTubers. In addition, there are special performances such as 3D lives or 3D showcases which are professionally produced concerts or scripted programs made at COVER Corporation’s main studios. The second method of categorization is thematic, and I believe categorizing Hololive content thematically can best capture the aesthetic experience of watching Hololive. As previously noted, clipping culture is a big part of VTubing culture, and clippers, as I will demonstrate, see Hololive content in thematic categories.
I categorize Hololive content into the four thematic categories:
One: special performances such as 3D Lives, which are usually concerts, or 3D showcases, which are usually a combination of concerts and scripted content. These contents are usually not clipped. To watch this content, the fans have to watch it live or watch the VOD of the live stream. This type of content is often made for special occasions such as the VTuber’s birthday or debut anniversaries, so viewer turnout tends to be high. Recently, reaction channels have become more popular on YouTube, so there is now a second way to watch these special performances, though this practice is not very popular. On YouTube reaction channels, YouTubers would watch someone else's content, such as Hololive 3D Lives, and upload their reaction to their YouTube channel, and Hololive fans who watch these reaction videos may enjoy this experience of watching it, virtually, with someone else, or watching someone admiring the Hololive VTubers.
Two: everyday life content where the VTuber plays a game, draws, sings by herself, or performs certain tropes. These contents are akin to the mundane activities portrayed in CGDCT anime–mundane activities in CGDCT are modeled on real life activities but are, more importantly, oriented toward tropes that aim to bring out the cuteness of the characters–they are the “everyday life” and "trope performance" of the VTuber. The aim and appeal is cuteness, not everydayness. Most everyday life contents are not high on the priority list of the clippers, who usually only clip the most comedic, intense moments of these streams, or when the VTuber performs certain tropes. Some tropes are iconic actions associated with a specific VTuber or all VTubers, such as “angry desk slamming” or “screaming at jump scares.” Some tropes are anime tropes such as acting like a “tsundere,” “yandere,” or saying iconic anime phrases such as “ara ara,” “moe moe kyun,” or scolding the viewer in a cute voice.
Three: relationship content includes all content where a VTuber interacts with other VTubers or tells stories about these interactions. The vast majority of VTuber clips are made from and about this category of content. Sometimes, VTubers also talk about their interaction with their managers. In VTuber semantics, VTuber talents often have personal managers assigned to them, but these “managers” are more like personal assistants. From the stories that talents told of their managers, the manager’s primary task was to help arrange meetings with other VTubers, make sure their work is delivered on schedule, and assist them in their daily life–driving them around or buying food for them, etc. They are not managers who decide what content they could make or their salaries. As a result, Hololive talents often have close relationships with their managers, and stories about the interaction between Hololive talents and managers also fall into this content category.
VTubers also interact with viewers regularly through chat, but I believe most of these interactions fall into the “everyday life content” category. Many of the interactions between viewers and VTubers are centered around the performance of tropes (by the VTuber or viewers). A VTuber would perform an iconic action or an anime trope (usually as fan service) and the viewers would react in customary ways. For instance, when a talent slammed her desk out of rage, the chat would spam -10 hp as a response.
And even when the interaction is novel, the dynamic between the VTuber and the viewer is situational rather than relational. The VTuber’s priority is not to respond thoughtfully to the viewer’s communication so that she could further interact with that particular viewer down the line, her priority is to maintain a specific atmosphere or vibe in the chat. So the dynamic is centered around the message and the atmosphere of chat, not around the VTuber and the viewer who sent the message. Some viewers are more prominent in the fandom, of course. VTuber Ceres Fauna often spoke to clippers who were dedicated to clipping only her content, such as SJ Tree, but she spoke to him the way she spoke to other viewers and usually didn't have a drawn-out conversation only with him, so I consider even these interactions as dominated by situational rather than relational dynamics, and do not place them in the relationship content category.
Four: relatability content. Because one of the VTuber's primary ways–if not the main way–of making content is by live streaming, there are many similarities between the labor performed in live streaming and VTubing. For live streamers, the most important aspect of their work is relational labor, the building and maintaining of social connections on digital platforms with the implicit goal of promoting economic exchange. The key to success often is to connect with the audience authentically, to speak with the audience as if speaking with one’s friend. Streamers also create a sense of intimacy by allowing them to see their life up close and “invite them behind the scenes.” Collectively, how authentic and how intimate a streamer is with his audience constitutes how relatable the streamer is to the viewer.
VTubers–especially corporate VTubers with huge fan bases–do relational labor in different ways because of their scale and because they don’t have the streamer’s usual tools. Streamers often set their cameras in their bedrooms, which creates the sense that the viewer is in the intimate space of the streamers. VTubers usually do not directly show their intimate spaces. They use anime-style wallpapers to represent their rooms, which does not create the same sense of intimacy that a streamer could by showing the place where he lives and sleeps directly to the viewer. Viewers can see the facial expressions of the streamers, but not the facial expression of the VTubers.
Most importantly, content creators can establish social media accounts on a much wider variety of platforms, from platforms with bigger platforms such as YouTube to smaller platforms such as patreon. On smaller platforms–especially for small content creators–content creators often could communicate with individual fans and set the expectations through that communication. Corporate VTubers are usually limited to YouTube and Twitter and have much larger fanbase, streaming often to hundreds if not thousands and tens of thousands of viewers, which makes direct communication with individual fans impossible. Even if they call out someone’s user ID, there’s no guarantee that he would be in the stream, or that his reply would not be drowned out by other people’s chat.
When VTubers perform relational labor, they do it by storytelling to a large audience, and this creates relatability, not individual relations. VTubers create relatability primarily through two styles of storytelling. A VTuber can share an experience that’s also shared by many others or can be easily imagined by others, which would make her seem down to earth, not snobby or stuck up, and therefore authentic; the primary affect is sympathy and a feeling that “she is just like me.” It’s important to note that authenticity on the internet is not about whether someone is true to her feelings. Fans cannot communicate with the talent telepathically and do not know the talent personally, so they could not reliably know her feelings anyways. Authenticity is a very specific style of acting. When a content creator behaves a certain way–such as having the same, mundane troubles that her audiences also have or can easily imagine having–we call her authentic because we feel she is one of us, not because we know that her action is true to her feelings.
Alternatively, a VTuber could talk about her deepest feelings, emotions, her sense of identity, and struggle to achieve her identity, which would make the viewer see her as a person in her full complexity–or as much complexity as could be communicated on the internet, or imagined by the viewer. If a normal streamer creates a sense of intimacy by letting the viewers see inside his room, a VTuber creates intimacy by letting the viewers see inside her mind and her lifestory. By allowing the viewers to see her existentialist struggle, she potentially alienates viewers who are uncomfortable with hearing someone’s deep, personal experiences. But the people who stay would have a stronger sense of intimacy and personal connection.
Relatability content therefore has two aesthetic bents: an authenticity bent that makes the viewer feel that the VTuber is one of them and down to earth; and an existential bent that makes the viewer feel the full complexity of the talent as a person, which can create a strong sense of intimacy. In my experience, VTubers tend to lean toward one or the other category, but rarely both. VTuber Gawr Gura follows the aesthetics of authenticity and tells many down-to-earth stories about her daily life and talks about her emotions in a light-hearted way as if her emotions follow literary tropes, while Nanashi Mumei talks about her feelings much more openly, seriously, and her stories have a much stronger existentialist bent.
Of course, stories usually are not purely authentic with no existentialist content, or purely existential. Psychological struggle with loneliness, an existentialist theme that Nanashi Mumei often talks about, is an experience shared by many. And the same story can feel authentic to one viewer, but existential to another. So I have combined the two types of storytelling into the category of relatability content. While different types of storytelling can create different affective ties, the way they are commercially exploited is similar: they could both entice fans to buy her merchandise. So functionally, they do similar things in the VTuber economy.
Outside of affective ties created by generic feelings of relatability, however, I believe that there are 3 types of affective ties with unique origin, thematic content, and aesthetic experience: ethical, moral, and interpersonal-existential, which I will explore in the next few sections.