Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
08 - Vtubers, part 2 - The Fall of Vshojo
39 Plays1 month ago
Part 2 of our series of VTubers explores the rise and fall of the American "talent first" agency Vshojo. And how one of the most promising businesses in the scene resorted to robbing a charity to stay afloat.
For sources and links, please visit www.thewonderkamer.ca
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Context Setting
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello, everyone. And again, welcome to The Wonder Camera. That delightful theme song means three dilettantes have gathered today to tell you a tale. I am Jen Rempel.
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm here with Dave Powell. And Tracy Anderson Poe. And we are continuing with Dave's tale of the VTubers.
Respecting VTuber Culture
00:00:44
Speaker
So I know last week we had a bit of an intro to this topic. um It was quite fascinating. ah Tracy, I think you wanted to you had something to say about this.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, I just felt kind of bad. I think we were a little bit harsh on the VTubers themselves, maybe their fans. I think that we shouldn't be the ones to yuck on someone's ears.
00:01:07
Speaker
And what she means by that is, please don't dox us. You know, I myself was also pretty critical. And the thing is, I, you know, we are a fun, humorous, informational podcast. These are our own opinions.
00:01:20
Speaker
We're not worth going after. But anyways, go ahead, Dave. If you want a dog's gen, contact at thewondercamera.ca. And I'd say that my primary target of the last episode was the corporations or the talent agencies or corpos.
00:01:35
Speaker
And ah the fans caught a few strays because bad fan behavior is a major, major hazard of anybody in any entertainment industry. Lord knows we have stories of celebrities being stalked and harassed to the ends of the earth.
00:01:50
Speaker
This does not mean that the concept of acting is bad. So this is, or that being a fan of an actor is somehow something you shouldn't be
Corporate and Fan Dynamics
00:01:59
Speaker
doing. No. I'm going to be talking a lot about the politics of fan communities as sort of dual forces here.
00:02:04
Speaker
Because this is a story about the Corvos. yes But fans are a second source of ah joy and misery for VTubers at the same time. But I do want to make it clear that people enter VTubing because they want to, because they love it.
00:02:19
Speaker
i it isn light It's not like a last resort. Very few people expect VTubing to work out for them. And those who are just kind of shooting for the stars, like anybody who moves to Los Angeles to get to Hollywood.
00:02:32
Speaker
Or starts a podcast. or start a God like starts a podcast. Exactly. Right. Just going to say, you know, uh, if ever see a dime from this podcast, uh, we will have been some of the select few.
00:02:46
Speaker
So I'm going to dive in and, ah start talking about some of the concepts I introduced.
Ethical Issues in VTubing
00:02:53
Speaker
And one of those is the black corporation, the Japanese term for a company that treats his staff unethically.
00:02:59
Speaker
And the horrible stories I told last time about like, you know, um, Basically, driving talent ah driving talent to attempt exposing personal detail and doxing them to an insane extent.
00:03:14
Speaker
Vengeance through through litigation. This stuff was all people talked about in the VTubing scene because VTubing fans love talking about VTuber drama. As ah as a pro wrestling fan, I can relate.
00:03:27
Speaker
And this meant that there was a desire for an idol-style talent agency that didn't suck and wasn't exploitative. If all the people running these corpos were men, most of them were complete assholes. The solution is what if it's a nice guy?
00:03:43
Speaker
so Or a nice lady. But that's still be beyond people. I mean... Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Although there is a nice lady ah later on in the story.
00:03:54
Speaker
Oh, that's good. Yes. ah But ah and that was, yeah, sort of the setup there is, well, clearly it has to be a man. Let's what if we try a nice one? so and the In the early days of Twitch, the developers were beloved by the streaming community, and there was this wholesome mom-and-pop operation
Creation of Ethical Agencies
00:04:12
Speaker
feel. And one of the most popular was Justin Ignacio, a.k.a. a The Gunrun. And I'm going to just refer to him as Gunrun going forward, soon.
00:04:21
Speaker
Gunrun started as a video game esports commentator and then was integral in setting up video gaming tournaments at a fairly high level and thus was hired by Twitch to sort of handle the incredible technical demands of this fast-growing platform who had to stream games.
00:04:40
Speaker
High-end video game tournaments at in high quality. The logistics of this were insane, and he was a wonder kid. This guy made the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2015. Wow. he And was beloved by fans. They had a moat set up just to like reference the gun run. And he was ah just a character that was really embedded in the sort of early, what people makes may call the good old days of Twitch, before it was bought out by Amazon.
00:05:07
Speaker
After Twitch was bought out by Amazon, he eventually decided, well, I've got wealth, i've got a I've got a name for myself, I have a good reputation, and he was a fan of VTubing. So he decided to try to break into the scene and do something different and try to make an ethical talent agency.
00:05:24
Speaker
And his vision was to forefront, and this is their brand, Talent Freedom. Their actual a motto is talent first. When you compare this to Hololive, Hololive will hire somebody who's not known as a VTuber, like maybe somebody who's a talented singer and a dancer. And OK, you're going to be a VTuber now. They kind of bring them.
00:05:46
Speaker
And ah what he wanted to do was bring established independent talent under their own name. And if they left, they would keep their names in avatars hy and and IP. That's reasonable.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It's surprising too. That's exactly it. And the other thing is the talent keep their tips. When you're in VTubing, it's actually, when you're VTubing under a corporation, it's kind of like, you know, waiting tables where you receive your money for just doing the job, which tends to be through merchandising and sponsorships.
V-Show Joe's Unique Approach
00:06:20
Speaker
These are the revenue streams, but then there's the tips. And that's where most them make the real money. which is fans subscribing to their channels. If you're on YouTube, buying super chats, basically different ways to give them money because ah you're a fan of what they're doing and streaming of all kinds is sort of like, again, waiting tables or even busking. You had a secondary source of income. Right. So okay he...
00:06:44
Speaker
would not touch the tips. He would not touch the subscribers. But the sponsorships and merchandising, the company would handle that and talent receive a cut. So the company was called V-Show Joe, and it launched in late 2020 with a roster of the top independent names V-Tubing who brought their own pre-built audiences over. And while I've mentioned names and things like that, I'm actually going to walk through us the key names in this roster. And I will show you a picture here.
00:07:13
Speaker
We're going to go left to right because most of these names are going to come back and come back in a way where I'd like, you know, ah our listeners and our dilettantes to have some familiarity when I call back to these names.
00:07:27
Speaker
So starting from the far left is Zentreya. Zentreya is interesting and that she uses text speech. So she never does voice acting. Everything is, hi I am Zentreya.
00:07:39
Speaker
But she's also this sort of morose super nerd with elaborate character lore who is also quietly insane and is up kind of a fascinating character.
00:07:50
Speaker
To the right of her is Silvervale, noted for her inclusive and cozy streams. To the right of her is Iron Mouse, who I will circle back to, because Iron Mouse is going to be who I talk about more than anyone else.
00:08:02
Speaker
To the right of that is Project Melody. And Project Melody was a key founder of V-Shoujo, and one of their sort of, I kind of worked as talent scout. She's like, get in Iron Mouse.
00:08:13
Speaker
She's noted for being a lootuber who kind of created the, ah or at least probably created the art of Being a fully raked up 3D avatar who's still doing porn.
00:08:26
Speaker
Hmm. Yes. So, and she was, and Project Melody's a character, ah and but this was her launch into doing kind of normie streams, just playing video games. But she always had the side hustle of doing sex work.
00:08:39
Speaker
After that is Natasha Nyaners, who has a breathy, angelic voice and a tendency to cut sort of kind of edgy rap tracks. Neanderthus is another character. After that is Fruit, or Apricot the Lich, who is kind of noted for being easily spooked. And Hime Hajime, who is loud and aggressive, but also I'm not going to talk about her again. So, ah hi Hime!
00:09:01
Speaker
I don't know her. All the love. so Now, I just said, i don't judge, and i don't want to yuck anyone's yum, but looking at these images, I'm like, this is
Gender Politics in VTubing
00:09:12
Speaker
misogynist. What are we doing here?
00:09:14
Speaker
Well, I mean, i go back. Instinctively, I'm like, what is this? This is not like, OK, oh, this is who is this? so Who is this supposed to be for? And personally, I'm like, if you're a dude and you look at that and i'm like, yeah, that's what I want. I kind of judge. I'm kind of like, really? Like, it's not.
00:09:32
Speaker
It's fake. They're just these fantasies like. Recall what I talked about in part one, right? The entire format of anime style is based on this kind of gender orthodoxy where you get these exaggerated character features and, you know, the giant zero-gravity tits, various things like that, and the over-the-top femininity, which is...
00:09:55
Speaker
It's such a convention within anime style that this is something that is kind of tied into the entire thing. And yes, ah there is unbelievable misogyny within anime style, and it plays right into this. And this is something um the very huge—again, you read manga, right? you're You're very aware of this. This is just right into that.
00:10:18
Speaker
ah So this is these are conventions of a style which is beloved by women and queer people, despite it being misogynist. and this is And again, you have the underground side of it, where you sort of reappropriate these concepts. And that's where you get into these sort of like the queer, the countercultural, and the other interests and narratives.
00:10:39
Speaker
But when you're doing an agency that is tying into idol style, this goes with that gender orthodoxy And I'm to use the term gender orthodoxy again, because the gender politics of this are so important.
00:10:52
Speaker
um Yeah, absolutely. Like, there's no question that ah ah that there's unbelievable misogyny. And these are the models that they put together because this is what they want.
00:11:05
Speaker
And I mean, particularly these are independent streamers, right? They came up with this on their own without a company telling the two when they're all women. But it's also misogynist, right? It's complex.
00:11:16
Speaker
But yeah, Tracy, before we move on, I want to know what you think. um I don't know. I look at these models and I think sometimes you just want to feel sexy.
00:11:27
Speaker
And maybe you're not happy with the way your body looks. So you can't, you struggle to feel sexy. So if you've got this model, then you've got that right there.
00:11:38
Speaker
You're like, this is a projection of myself. Right. And again, like i again, the key thing here is this is a cartoon and the style is exaggerated deliberately. That's the whole thing.
00:11:51
Speaker
And yeah, like look at those shoes. Right. Well, that's what I mean. Yeah. And for as someone for myself, I've never felt sexy a day in my life. But if I wanted to, I know. Well, the thing I mean, and we should damn it.
00:12:04
Speaker
We should. We're feminists. We are. You can be sexy as you want to be. We are sexy. Damn it. But what I will say is if I wanted to, to me, it's just, I guess my thing is with fantasy and reality, I wouldn't feel good about myself if it was a fake. I would feel worse.
00:12:20
Speaker
Having a fantasy projection of myself and my perfect body would make me feel worse. This is ah something that is a challenge for me as somebody who likes a lot of things about anime and VTubing, but is not, I'd say, a proper fan.
00:12:36
Speaker
right I am a tourist here, but I'm a tourist who has really talked to hardcore fans. And the outright misogynist themes and ah particularly like, and I'll be blunt, anime ah anime in the and the more adult stuff, hentai, just gets extremely rapey, right? And these are serious problems.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yes. In time, what you have the style which allows people to tell stories and play with ideas in a way that you simply cannot, through the conventions of Western media because on our end, although there are the graphic novels, that's not ah that's kind of a ah niche thing with a high bar of entry as opposed to where every single person is just growing up trying to draw ah draw manga nowadays because it's this easy style to start drawing and
00:13:30
Speaker
The stories that are told are anything because it's, although it's inherently kind of teenage-y, there's an incredible amount of adult, and I mean content for adults, which is ah artistic and of high value, while at the same time existing within these conventions. And for those listening, we're recording this a few weeks after part one.
00:13:53
Speaker
But again, go back and re-listen to part one because I'm really trying to underline the the framing of this. Mm-hmm. And you did a good job. I just... ah can't help get my opinions in there.
00:14:06
Speaker
So I'm going to get back onto this so while we don't give 80 hours of content for Tracy to edit down.
Iron Mouse's Rise to Fame
00:14:11
Speaker
V-Shoujo hit the ground running. It was an immediate success because these fans all piled in from the existing streamers.
00:14:18
Speaker
And at the head of it was Iron Mouse, who you see as the sort of ah pink, somewhat childlike-looking, even little cruder model of a demon there. Or, like, a demon girl.
00:14:30
Speaker
Uh... and I thought she was supposed to be a mouse. ah Well, her name is Iron Mouse, but the little horns. Oh, those are horns. I thought those were ears. No, ah Iron Mouse had a pretty janky model early on, but Iron Mouse is kind of the hero of the story.
00:14:46
Speaker
So she's a Puerto Rican VTuber who was who was, or I should to say, is bedridden with a severe chronic illness, common variable of immune deficiency. It's Common Variable Immunodeficiency, or CVID.
00:15:00
Speaker
My audio in this episode is terrible for reasons I could never figure out. We ended the recording early and picked it up the next week. You may notice a sneaky cut where my audio magically improves. She was training to become a professional opera singer when a major throat infection completely destroyed her career. And through that infection, she discovered she had CVID, which almost was a common variable immunity deficiency.
00:15:28
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah, so in brackets, it's CVID. No, and even though it says common, it's a very rare disease. It's just the way it's entitled. And she is, to this day, bedridden, right? She can barely walk.
00:15:42
Speaker
ah that's too bad As a result, she was unable to do anything but lie in bed and sort of go online. So she started V-tubing in 2018 as a way to deal with the loneliness because she didn't know.
00:15:54
Speaker
Because, again, she is ah at times near death and rigged up with a ton of medical equipment and does not want to show her face. So her endearing personality in a voice that genuinely sounds like a cartoon child, thanks to that throat infection and also just kind of a naturally high voice, and the fact that she is an opera singer, started to get her to go viral. So I'm going to show you a short clip here. I'm going be a little short on the video clips this time, but I think this is to get a sense of why Iron Mouse is a big deal. So we're going to click on that and I'll
00:16:29
Speaker
And this is Iron Mouse with her again, her earlier kind of janky model.
00:17:04
Speaker
Maria, gratia plena.
00:17:21
Speaker
All right. So what we can see here is just genuinely a terrified young woman, like just showing off the skills she has. And this is really endearing. And this catapulted her to a rising star on Twitch.
00:17:35
Speaker
And she started to get more and more fan attention. In April 2020, she launched a fundraiser for herself to get a new workstation, which she admitted was a new bed, because that's the only place where she work and she started talking a little bit more about how serious realness was so sort of admitting that you know she never leaves her bed basically her hope was to raise two thousand dollars in eight months and she got that much in 10 minutes oh wow damn well she's obviously very talented too right singer she's an excellent singer and she is a uh the more i looked into her i tried to kind of find something that sucked about her
00:18:15
Speaker
And although I think that her overwhelming popularity kind of makes a few few people roll their eyes because she is a superstar nowadays, its she's she genuinely just seems like kind of an angel, which is nice. It's nice see something good.
00:18:30
Speaker
And so there's a lot to be said about the politics of charity, but she trapped into a lot of goodwill, people who just rooted for her. And Project Melody also, ah who is, again, a very big independent VTuber,
00:18:43
Speaker
And so Iron Mouse also started to get even bigger when Project Melody led a raid on her stream, bringing over a ton of her fans. so Can you describe what that means?
00:18:53
Speaker
Well, okay, a raid is when you have two simultaneous people streaming on Twitch, and one says, I'm ending my stream, okay, I'm done for the day, I'm going to bed or whatever. And the fans still want to see you something.
00:19:05
Speaker
So they will do what's called a raid, which is a good thing. And the streamer will say, we're going to this person's server, and then they'll bring all of their fans over. So ah this is a great way for up-and-coming VTubers to get a lot of attention, where a bigger stream says, hey, I like this person, and then leads all of their fans over there.
00:19:24
Speaker
and then Oh, it's kind of like a a band touring with a small local indie group that opens for them. Give them some attention. It's a reverse opening act, right? Or ah like a lead-in on TV. A friend of mine who started streaming Northern King of Frogs, who will shout out later, has an amazing model. And because of that, they've had a couple of raids early on, which is really nice to see.
00:19:45
Speaker
Because it's a hard industry to get off the ground. The other aspect of ah Iron Mouse worth mentioning is her friendship with a streamer, SeaDog, or just Connor. He is a Welsh streamer living out of Japan, and he is a flesh tuber. Which is a normal streamer. It is. dreamer odd So you see his face and everything.
00:20:06
Speaker
And this big, rich, bassy voice, and just genuinely seems like an unbelievably wholesome person. They've developed an older brother-kid-sister relationship. And Iron Mouse is older than people think. Like, in that clip, she's probably in her mid-20s and is pushing 30, if not 30 nowadays.
00:20:26
Speaker
But he is... ah That's young. Well, not for V-Tubing, she's a hag. Yeah. Really? Again, when we go back to the idle forces that come in here, it is VTubers tend to be in the early 20s a lot of the time.
00:20:42
Speaker
But the as the industry ages, so do the big towns. So you're saying is that Jen and i don't really have any options to be VTubers? Actually, you do. I'll get into that.
00:20:54
Speaker
um It's called GreyTube. Again, that'll be the podcast, the four-part series, The Agonizing Pain in Which I Live Every Day. Yeah, there are definitely YouTubers who don't do the... the ah got i think I forgot the term, but there is a ah an anime trope of like a beautiful young woman, which you see people leaning in too hard with V-shoujo, but that is not necessarily the only type. And there are very successful V-tubers who are just kind of like regular adult age past where the brains are fully developed their 30s.
00:21:31
Speaker
so Here's the thing about all this. We just put up a little prepubescent cartoon figure with giant breasts, and it doesn't matter how old we are. that's true it's the care It's the character that matters.
00:21:44
Speaker
Anyway. Yeah, i think I personally would want like an old Hager woman as my, whatever it's called. Avatar.
00:21:55
Speaker
Avatar. yeah have Some kind of creature. Some kind of critter. and And people do that, too. like And again, here's the thing, is when you're looking at independent VTubers, all bets are off and people do anything.
00:22:07
Speaker
And you can see some really whacked out models that have nothing to do with anime style, or they do anime style where they are going against that sort of gender orthodoxy and will play themselves as more androgynous, or even just like...
00:22:24
Speaker
women who look ah less exaggerated or men who look less exaggerated. There are plenty of new YouTubers. They're just sort of incidental to the stories I'm telling here. One of the things is the voice is the most important part of your character.
00:22:39
Speaker
And if you bring forth the voice of like an adult woman, ah your model will tend to reflect that because if you sound like you're in your late thirties and your model looks like she is 18, it's a little incongruous.
00:22:54
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's true. And all about the voice that you bring forwards, right? So the big thing about Connor is collaborates with Iron Mouse all the time and has Like, they bicker constantly in a fun way, playing into a sundere sort of stereotypes, which fans love.
00:23:12
Speaker
But he does unbelievable charity work. He has biked across the entirety of Japan. to raise money for Iron Mouse's favorite charity, which I'll talk about a lot. And there is a just... It's one of the better relationships I've seen, sort of particularly between a man and a woman, in this sort of a VG space, where it's like genuinely wholesome.
00:23:35
Speaker
That's good. That's nice to hear. h Back to Bishojo, they had a good 2021 and brought in more and more talent. Started with noted degenerate and shower-phobe Vebe.
00:23:46
Speaker
They finally start. but Do i want to know? She is somebody who sort of um is not shy about her depression. Sure. That's fair. oh Yeah.
00:23:57
Speaker
So they finally started to hit a couple of scandals
Controversies and Community Tensions
00:24:00
Speaker
late in that year. So the first scandal I'm going to talk about is kind of a growing pain. In October 2021, Natasha Nyaners was doxed along with several other independent feet a Another independent VTuber, a man named Nookstaku, spoke up and claimed that he knew people were being fished by some bad actors pretending to be Vishojo.
00:24:24
Speaker
Vishojo had been holding auditions, and what they did is used vishojo.net and vishojo.org in order to send emails saying, we want to have you on, send us your details.
00:24:36
Speaker
Oh. And they got hacked. Absolutely. So we had, and like heartbreaking, right? We had independent talents who thought they were going to suddenly become rich and famous. And they'd just been ripped off.
00:24:49
Speaker
And doxxed even, so traumatized beyond that. So. That's terrible. And Nux is full of enthusiasm and jittery sort of crystal meth-y kind of vibes.
00:25:01
Speaker
And he dropped a video about this because Vishojo was not saying anything. And he broke down the entire scheme, bragging about how he found these people, got the home address of the key person who was doxing everybody, and put a stop to them. Put a stop to them?
00:25:18
Speaker
and yeah Yeah. Just kidding. yeah As far as I can tell, they're fine. They were not killed? i don't believe so. That said, you know what happens VTuber Space days is VTuber Space.
00:25:32
Speaker
Thanks. I'm just kidding. This video was a real labor of love from Nux, and he posted it, and the Vshojo talent were furious. Mm-hmm. Because what he did is he exposed the entire operation of how the doxers work and to the talent, gave people keys to dox them even further.
00:25:51
Speaker
That sucks. And so ah tons of vishoujo talent immediately started posting, what the hell are you doing? We told you not to post this. This is an enormous betrayal. You never respect us.
00:26:03
Speaker
That kind of thing. And what had happened at the same time is V. Shoujo posted a big congratulations, Nux, you did a great job a response to his video. Shoujo then completely reversed course, took down their congratulations, and eventually posted a document picking apart his video and all of the inaccuracies in it.
00:26:22
Speaker
no Who I genuinely believe was a well-meaning dumbass who thought he could be a hero. Which, when you're dealing with complicated things like this, and I say this as a union rep, can be a problem. one Shared a ton of receipts about how he was collaborating with Vishoujo the whole time.
00:26:41
Speaker
And this got messy as everyone tried to like show, everyone talks on Discord, i show different Discord logs about what happened. And what really comes through on this is Vishoujo had a tendency towards people pleasing.
00:26:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm. An allergy to controversy, and so what they did is, rather than taking charge of this, they let Nux take the fall, whether it worked out or not. Sure.
00:27:06
Speaker
Following the scandal, Vishojo continued to do well, though, and Gunrun's fundraising efforts really paid off. Our favorite people, venture capital companies, invested $11 million of seed money into Vishojo in 2022.
00:27:21
Speaker
Vishoujo then kicked off a lot more hiring and launched at their own Japanese branch, similar to how Hololive and Nijisaji have English branches, led by Talents and Aethon and Amamiya Nizuna, and continued to debut new talent the English branch.
00:27:36
Speaker
Iron Mouse then, while they're doing so great, started at yearly traditions of subathons, where she ran a 31-day marathon stream. Oh my god.
00:27:46
Speaker
Where because she's in her bedroom all the time, you know, if she was asleep, she was asleep on stream. And a subathon is if you subscribe to Iron Mouse, half the money goes to her favorite charity, the Immune Deficiency Foundation, or as I call it, the good IDF.
00:28:02
Speaker
yeah and oh the good yeah yeah it took me a second yes it's constantly referred to as the idf when talking about this and there's another idf which is a different podcast uh that someone else has got better yeah she earned half a million dollars for the good idf so then she raised an absurd amount of money for this charity that's amazing that's great wow So things are smoking hot for Vashoujo, and the goodwill for the company was really, ah really really going well.
00:28:32
Speaker
And Gunrun also was publicly celebrated by the talent talking about how nice he was. Iron Mouse describing him as one of the kindest people she's ever met in her life, and she's had all sorts of bad experiences with men. But then tragedy struck.
00:28:48
Speaker
A 9-11 occurred for video game streamers, and the worst thing that could possibly happen. Hogwarts Legacy was released on February 10th, 2023, and everything went to shit. Hmm. Oh, I've heard a bit about this. This is brand new to me.
00:29:03
Speaker
All I know is, again, I'm going to go on the JKR as a transphobe. Oh, god trust me, this entirely about that. And I'll i'll fly the flag. Yeah. As I get into this, because I'm going to drop some takes that are going to be kind of controversial.
00:29:16
Speaker
This is a radically pro-trans podcast. Yes. We are pro-trans in the ah like most inclusive possible way. However you are, you are. You deserve for full accommodation, government supports for any kind of medical transition. We have your backs no matter what. You are friends, our family, and our community, and we love you.
00:29:38
Speaker
hundred percent. I might say a couple of things that might piss a couple of people off though. Okay. So the first thing is even mentioning Hogwarts legacy. I know. It's like, e well, and here's the thing, right? Hogwarts legacy.
00:29:54
Speaker
And I'll get into this is held up as this symbol of transphobia because you have this, up particularly the millennial generation, but the generations younger, everybody grew up in Harry Potter.
00:30:08
Speaker
Right. And like it or not, it was the book that the book series that everybody read, everybody watched the movies and a ton of queer people found this sort of a happy, inclusive space. you It was, you know, the books were not particularly gay, aside from cowardly saying Dumbledore was gay after publication.
00:30:27
Speaker
yu Jesus Christ. And then J.K. Rowling turned out to be not just a transphobe, but the most effective and politically powerful transphobe on the planet.
00:30:38
Speaker
She is a billionaire who has dedicated her life to eliminationist policies about trans people. It's disgusting. Yeah. Can I just... yeah i just want to I do want to brag that I literally have never read the Harry Potter books or seen them.
00:30:52
Speaker
I was in college and a professor told me, you can't be an English major if you've never read Harry Potter. And I thought, the fuck if I can't, because that woman, those books are trash. Now, this was before we knew how trash she was. This is a bit of a brag on my part. I feel like it's fine.
00:31:08
Speaker
But I'm outside of that whole world as well. So hearing about this, for me, is sort of just a lot of schadenfreude. but This gets ugly. What I do want to say, though, is, yeah, anytime if you purchase any Harry Potter.
00:31:24
Speaker
Merch or the books or anything, you are directly supporting transphobia, so cut it out. Interesting you make that point. That's where this is going. So in the ongoing culture war, V-tubing exists in a strange political space.
00:31:37
Speaker
And this goes back to your visceral reaction to seeing a launch the launch of the V-shoujo full models, right? V-tubing ties in with idol culture, and idle or at least corporate V-tubing.
00:31:48
Speaker
And idol culture is conservative. And it is allergic to anything it continues considers controversial and political, which includes the existence of queer and trans people. And this, of course, goes into the fence-sitter phenomenon, which we're going to get into a lot. So hold your takes on that until we get there.
00:32:05
Speaker
um okay VTuber agencies follow suit. And so what you will almost never see is a VTuber talk controversial politics at length. You will see a few VTubers, like Iron Mouse has said trans rights a million times because she's fucking awesome.
00:32:21
Speaker
Most of them not, irrespective of their personal beliefs. Iron Mouse is so popular, she's almost untouchable about that. Others, maybe not so much. And although they might make edgy jokes for a little bit of a shock jock thing, but you'll never see anyone form something as definite as an opinion.
00:32:38
Speaker
You'll never go to a corporate VTuber and then see them go in deep on like ICE, for example, or Israel Gaza or all these major topics of conversation. Right.
00:32:48
Speaker
The entire principle behind the corporate VTubers under idol culture is this is a space where anyone can just hang out be entertained. hmm. You know, it's like, don't talk politics if you want to be polite.
00:33:01
Speaker
It's the same thing. Gotta keep it nice and anodyne. but throughout the rest of the internet, there is a knife fight going on. right And video games, particularly to Jen, I'll stress this, are the fiercest battlefield for the Terminally Online.
00:33:18
Speaker
devoted game Oh, Gamergate, I know. Exactly. Devoted gamers are incapable of discussing video games with a sense of proportionality. Like, not all of them, obviously. i have a like i game a lot, and I believe I can. But this catalyzed, a decade ago, with Gamergate.
00:33:35
Speaker
The misogynist harassment campaign against feminist forces in the video game industry. yeah And Gamergate worked and didn't work. It didn't work because it didn't eradicate feminism for video games, but it did work because it catalyzed the nascent online right and was the center of the creation of Mega.
00:33:54
Speaker
J.D. Vance, I'm not sure if he was like a gamer gator, but this is the cohort he comes from, right? Yes, that's right. and of many, many people are represented by it.
00:34:05
Speaker
So Hogwarts Legacy took the overheated hyperbolic tendency in video game discourse and turned it into a bizarro world gamer game. And okay understand the logic goes, as you just said, Jen, J.K. Rowling is going to benefit from purchases of any of her products. And therefore, money to J.K. Rowling is funding transphobia.
00:34:27
Speaker
So therefore, if you buy the game, play the game, give it airtime, you're taking a side. This is all starting very familiar to me now. I think I was on the periphery online reading about this. Okay, this is all starting very familiar. Yes, this is all sounding very familiar.
00:34:41
Speaker
Sorry, carry on. And I want to stress how this video game in particular has been held up as a symbol of transphobia to this day.
00:34:51
Speaker
Where people are uncomfortable with it being named. People, like if I bring it up, people will redirect and call it the wizard game. Interesting. Ironically, kind of like how you can't talk about Voldemort.
00:35:03
Speaker
And didn't know you couldn't. well, okay. Sorry. I'm just being smug that I've never taken part in this Hogwarts world. I read them all because they're fine. And I hate missing out on what the cultural zeitgeist is. But, um, see, I'm an inveterate snob. I'm like, you tell me to read it. Fuck you. Anyway, that's my, that's my problem.
00:35:25
Speaker
I read it This one time I was right. but Okay. Okay. I read it. I enjoyed it. I watched the movies. And I was fine with it until we started hearing about her transphobia.
00:35:41
Speaker
And now i can't I can't imagine myself reading about it or reading it or interacting with it in any way because it just feels so disgusting.
00:35:52
Speaker
It feels gross, right? Well, yeah. Honestly, it's like, if you've seen, say, Leaving Neverland. i've i was never a Michael Jackson fan, but I am shocked when I hear Michael Jackson playing on the radio in like the grocery store, in a way. Because I'm like, I can't not think of that.
00:36:10
Speaker
You know what I mean? And so it's sort of like... And again, I love the Smiths. Don't listen to them very much anymore because I'm like, oh, mr you know Whatever...
00:36:22
Speaker
Morrissey. Fasho Morrissey, whatever. I'm trying to think of a nickname for him, but I don't know. He's a right wing piece of shit. Right. So it's like, what do you like? It just music I love gets tainted where I just can't even listen to it.
00:36:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It just feels dead to me. Some people can, but for me, I'm like, man, it's not interested anymore. Yeah.
Hogwarts Legacy and Trans Rights Debate
00:36:40
Speaker
It's the separating the art from an artist with a crowbar i is a constant topic, but again, we're right into this. So,
00:36:49
Speaker
and But what I really want to stress here is they don't call it the wizard books. They don't call her like the turf, right? But they can't name the video game. The video game has charged with a kind of symbolic power.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yes. And I think the reason for this is that Hogwarts Legacy was the first major Harry Potter release that actually had a chance of doing well because nobody cares about Fantastic Beasts movies Since J.K. Rowling went full transphobe, and again, video games are this supercharged political space where they are treated with an outsized sense of, again, that like I don't believe it's being treated proportionally. Not at all. Because Harry Potter, to this day, is still one of the best-selling book series on the planet year by year.
00:37:37
Speaker
Hogwarts Legacy was a single video game release. And to be clear, it's developed by a company who take almost all the profits. They bought the license from Rowling. but Oh, interesting. Yeah. that It's not like she wrote video game. She just licensed it to a to a video game company. So she gets a cut in some sense. Yeah. No, she profits from it, clearly. Right. I see. um But the key thing here is different caps break out when this game comes on and everybody's talking about it in these spaces. I cannot stress how, like, I ran ah an online community and I had to go to an oratorium on talking about the video game because it pissing people off.
00:38:13
Speaker
Yeah. And there are various camps that broke out. From the more moderate ones, I will not play it and prefer to never hear about it. To the more radical ones, nobody should play it and it must be stopped.
00:38:27
Speaker
And then on the other side, you've got the right wing who don't care about Harry Potter, but love transphobes and so can use this in a cynical way to their advantage. yeah and And most of the people who are, this is just a game. What are you mad about? This is stupid. Then perhaps those who are vehemently pro trans, but maybe be thought this wasn't the tactic.
00:38:48
Speaker
which, ill love spoiler, that's where I am. The radical boycott crowd were intense, particularly on Twitter and Twitch, and their most glorious tactic was to draw up a list of streamers who they could then name in shame and pressure them to stop streaming the game.
00:39:06
Speaker
to see where we're going here. Now, one name that was not a V Shoujo talent at that time, but does matter to the story, is Pikimi, who later became known as Henya. And I'm just going to call her Henya because that's the name I know her by, and there's enough names here.
00:39:20
Speaker
Hanya streams in both English and Japanese and belong to an independent group called Thons. And Hanya is a kind of a gloriously incapable adult that is sort of a trope people love within these kinds of spaces, like genuinely. And friends have said that her parents won't let her hold knives.
00:39:38
Speaker
She is in her twenty s Wait, wait, wait. The character or the actual person? No, the actual person. She crashed two cars in a week. She is a helpless adult. And some people can't adult. And she takes it to an extreme.
00:39:52
Speaker
But she is also like super cheerful and and like pleasant and funny. And so you know you get why she's successful, right? There is a certain, oh my god.
00:40:03
Speaker
ah Do I get it? Do you get it, Tracy? Yeah, kind of. It's like seeing a cat run into a wall you're like, ah, bless your heart. But mean when it's in a grown ass adult, i yeah. Okay. Well, we'll carry on. You don't even know what I think all the time. I guess on one hand, I do have a hard time coming up with sympathy for somebody who isn't allowed to hold knives. Yeah.
00:40:32
Speaker
Like, I'm sorry, at a certain point, like, there's self-infantilization. Yeah. That's what I mean. And it is, again, born sexy yesterday. That's a whole trope, right? I'm just a girl. I can't even hold a knife. I'm so dumb.
00:40:47
Speaker
Sorry. you This ties in with those entire forces, and you're absolutely right. At the same time, she's genuinely like this, and what other job could she get?
00:40:59
Speaker
I mean, that's the thing. Yeah. I would say just as a blanket to all of this, the problem with all of this, again, is the capitalist infrastructure under which we are all being crushed because these things are all like everything being equal. People can do whatever they want.
00:41:15
Speaker
But we live in a system where people are being pushed to these misogynist stereotypes and all these things because that's what's making money for a capitalist. We all know how I feel. And ah no, again, it's capitalism the and patriarchy. Patriarchy. Yes. Well, yes. we Go ahead. Yeah. and yeah Even though I am very much an economy before other kinds of other things kind of person, but different. points Yes.
00:41:36
Speaker
So she is Japanese. Right. And that's the key thing. So she is not clued into any of the controversy about Hogwarts legacy and has no clue. She starts streaming Hogwarts Legacy because it is a massive video game launch, and she kind of likes Harry Potter, and it is immediately harassed offline.
00:41:55
Speaker
A month later, right she quits the company. And kind of vanishes. People speculate she has quit V-tubing entirely. And because, again, this is someone who, again, probably a very vulnerable person.
00:42:09
Speaker
And this only worsened the infighting because the right started to waver around as a symbol of how a reasonable person, ha ha a reasonable transphobe, even though their opinions on trans people probably don't even exist.
00:42:24
Speaker
Mm-hmm. But she's held up as this symbol because these are all fighting symbols. And meanwhile, ah the more left crowd are going, if you look at it, she was probably quitting the company anyways. And she was.
00:42:36
Speaker
But the circumstances under which she quit were very clearly affected by this. yeah Afterwards, Shojo steps into it as several veil the cozy streamer. A lifelong Harry Potter fan wants to play the game.
00:42:49
Speaker
She is bombarded with attacks. Every single thing that's mentioned about this has endless replies, calling her out of the transphobe, and then people arguing with that and it going down. up and just The discourse about this, I cannot stress, was awful.
00:43:04
Speaker
Furthering the ire of the boycott crowd, it was discovered as people crashed her streams to complain that the word trans was auto-moderated. Whether she did it or a moderator, because again,
00:43:15
Speaker
Moderators are volunteers who are handling thousands of live people at once, and how closely a streamer is on top of what they're doing varies. But ah either way, it doesn't matter if she gets benefit of the doubt, in my opinion.
00:43:29
Speaker
Silvervale went live sobbing in a genuine panic attack about the harassment doxing, notably not talking trans issues or making a statement one way or another. Her silence was taken as evidence of guilt, and it got worse, and she stopped streaming for a little while while things blew over.
00:43:46
Speaker
Now, V-Shoujo was silent throughout all of this, and the other talent ended up trying to fill the void. Iron Mouse, who again is where is like the most visibly pro-LBGT corporate V-Tuber probably out there, spoke out loudly against the harassment and asked people to fight for LBGTQ plus rights in a more constructive way.
00:44:07
Speaker
ah Fruit outright donated to the Mermaids charity for trans youths. Sort of every like on this on this tweet, I'll send money to Mermaids. Sure. sure Which is lovely.
00:44:19
Speaker
But because the fans are fighting nonstop, they think this is indication that the VTubers are fighting about the same thing they are. And therefore, Fruit is subtweeting Silver Veil and using this as a veiled attack against her.
00:44:32
Speaker
Oh, boy. That's what I mean. Go outside. Like, honestly, hearing about this, it is so tiresome. Like, I mean, I get trans rights are hugely important important issue, and I am sympathetic to the boycotters.
00:44:45
Speaker
But on the same token, it's like, do something and constructive. Like, yes, this link donates to a pro-trans charity. Done. Why you got to attack? That's where it's going too far. Anyway. As we're getting to sort of the end of the Hogwarts legacy drama and sort of would be shoujo dead,
00:45:00
Speaker
illll I'll share my take as well. This boycott didn't work. hu Hogwarts Legacy was the biggest selling video game of 2020. It was a massive success. And nobody knew this boycott was happening in the first place. Because it's movies.
00:45:16
Speaker
Right. That's exactly it. And so what happened here is Hogwarts legacy was seized upon as a symbol with that chain of causality, which is if you buy the game, you give money to J.K. Rowling, will then use that money to fight trans people. And J.K. Rowling is a billionaire.
00:45:33
Speaker
The success of this game had no impact on her whatsoever. That's true. It was the wrong fight. And also, yeah these harassment tactics only benefit the right.
00:45:45
Speaker
They are not a tool of the social justice crowd in the left. And the reason for that is when Gamergate happened, this tapped into old money conservative boomer interests, right?
00:45:57
Speaker
Who saw something they could use. And so that allowed them to sort of integrate into the conservative sphere and get fostered and developed as sort of the next wave of ah a wave of political actors.
00:46:11
Speaker
Hardware's legacy simply divided people. Because nobody could have a calm conversation about this. It's been two years. People still can't. Again, mentioning this game at all is totally upsetting, and some friends are probably going to be mad at me about it.
00:46:28
Speaker
But I have to talk about it because it's a corporate feature thing. But even listening to this, I'm like, I'm afraid to be on a podcast now. um like well I don't want to be recording a podcast panicking because I got doxxed because I'm a feminist. like This is literally like a concern.
00:46:45
Speaker
This is the hazard of online entertainment, and it's something we're going to have to be wary about. Yep. but And the thing here is that by seizing upon Hardware's legacy and saying, if we boycott this, we'll win, there was actually no success condition.
00:47:02
Speaker
The failure of the kingdom would not affect transphobia in any serious way. yeah so The fascists are now in power. they And at in 2023, rights for trans people were being eroded all across the U.S. and various states, while the Democrats did nothing.
00:47:18
Speaker
and And of course in the UK because of Rowling. So this was like tilting against windmills, right? And by using this all or nothing feeling of Silvervale must be a transphobe if she's playing this game, rather than Silvervale is very deliberately trying to avoid talking about something which she thinks is political and is going to make her life hell if she engages in it.
00:47:44
Speaker
And again, her neutrality cost her. yeah but Because not engaging is kind of taking a side. But would taking a side cost her more? Right. Right? And so it's this impossible situation. Yeah. Because it's tied into this corporate VTuber thing.
00:47:59
Speaker
And also, it doesn't matter if Silvervale is a transphobe. She has never said anything anti-trans. She's not a political streamer. She's not, like, agitating towards any goal. Yeah. I would love it if trans people were not held up as a political football and were not treated politics, but they are.
00:48:17
Speaker
And and so these are the realities we're in.
Vishojo's Internal Challenges
00:48:20
Speaker
And the notion that taking down streamers who were playing this game would somehow result in any positive outcome. It's a bad strategy. It's bad political strategy. If your politics do not have some form of self-interest for the other party,
00:48:38
Speaker
Which is because if your politics are just like, you have to do this because it's right and it's because it's for other people, you're not going to bring your cause. You need to show solidarity with trans people and that we are in this together in our community, our families and so forth. Not that I'm going to get out. I'm going to do this for you as a gift.
00:48:57
Speaker
That's patronizing. Exactly. Yeah. So when this blew over properly, Shoujo then shocked everybody by announcing that Silver Veil and Vebe, the depressed no shower lady, were leaving V Shoujo at the exact same time.
00:49:14
Speaker
These were the first graduations from the company, and this was weird. Graduations in idol-style agencies, of which V Shoujo was one, are normally celebratory solo affairs.
00:49:24
Speaker
So when Veibay, and it's sort of like a happy funeral, it's kind of that vibe. So fans were like, what the hell is going on? Veibay then indicated she quit over contract negotiations and advised people hire lawyers.
00:49:36
Speaker
The already unsettled fan base immediately turned against Veibay and Silvervale, seeing them as this beloved company, like notwithstanding Hogwarts Legacy stuff, that everyone was cheering for, they quit over money.
00:49:50
Speaker
And the fans were like, like basically called them greedy bitches. And there were, there were all sorts of rumors going around and it was ugly. And then Natasha and Yanners left shortly thereafter.
00:50:01
Speaker
So three people left in a very short amount of time, and the company's reputation took a bit of rocking. But, truth to the word, all of them returned to their independent careers quite happily. Veibay did retire, and sorry, not soon thereafter, I think.
00:50:16
Speaker
But Nyaners and Silver Veil are still going strong to this day independently. So Vashoujo did hold to their word NIP. and Okay, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. So the company pivoted from this from this like rough patch into its best years.
00:50:31
Speaker
But with their massive amount of seed capital, they kept on hiring because Nijisanji, if we recall from part one, was going through some troubles. So they were losing English english VTubers like Matt and Vashoujo saw fire sale.
00:50:45
Speaker
So multiple talents debuted in 2023, and I'm going to draw attention to a couple who are of both women who sort of north of 30, who have very much an adult, I have my shit together aura with them. Matara Khan, who has a kind of motherly, doting approach to the fan, and Giga, who I would say kind of comes across as a like a sharp, intelligent, gay-to-face woman.
00:51:09
Speaker
who's like, you know, sort of, aside from just having fun playing video games, sort of like basic life advice about adult things. So like very much competent adults. Oh, how refreshing.
00:51:21
Speaker
Yeah. So speaking of ah people who are not competent adults, Henia the Genius joined the company, re-emerging under this new name after the Hogwarts Legacy scandal.
00:51:32
Speaker
So she had quit bombs and then reappeared to be shoujo as Henia. And the new search of talent kicked off their best years with Iron Mouses, the constant juggernaut, and sort of metric success on Twitch.
00:51:45
Speaker
Bishoujo sunk massive amount of money into marketing and events, moving the startup to try to stand alongside these genuine giants, Niju Sanji and Hololive, who had budgets many times that of Bishoujo.
00:51:58
Speaker
um It also launched its Japanese subsidiary even further, with Henya particularly, functioning as a bilingual glue to entertain both audiences. They launched a subsidiary earlier, but they sort of expanded on it.
00:52:11
Speaker
Notably, it bought ludicrously expensive transit advertisements in Japan advertising talent freedom. Like you saw these big words, talent freedom, sort of as a direct shot at Hollow Life.
00:52:23
Speaker
Iron Mouse in particular was doing incredibly. So since streamers make their money from tips, it's ah sorry, I already talked about this. She repeated her subathons. And in 2023 and 2024, she's earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
00:52:37
Speaker
And in 2024, she earns another half a million dollars for the good IDF and smashed records, becoming the top Twitch streamer of all time at that point. which Really?
00:52:48
Speaker
This is a male-dominated space. There is hostility to VTubers intruding on the space. and Because even though since there are definitely conservative VTuber fans, and we'll talk about them a lot in a little bit, there is... VTubing tends to be a more progressive space with a conservative sub ah subset.
00:53:08
Speaker
But meanwhile, mainstream Twitch streamers, particularly people like Asmold, tend to attract a pretty conservative fan base. Although, he's an odd one. so But she took the crown.
00:53:19
Speaker
yeah I've heard the name. I'm like, oh no, it's another asshole i got to learn about. Hey Tracy, what do you think about Asmongold? Oh my god.
00:53:30
Speaker
I watched a few of his streams because he was streaming something something about World of Warcraft, which I have been playing for years and refused to stop. ah by help us.
00:53:41
Speaker
his He's grating. Like, I... just can't listen to that guy ah interestingly he kind of went hard into the culture war stuff and then has now disowned his prior transphobia very recently really he's an all i know is the things i've seen online make him sound like a piece of shit that's all i yeah i'm not a fan so put it lightly but you know uh broken clocks or something But to give a sense of how big this is, she dethroned Kai Sinat, who you probably haven't heard of, but he invented the word Riz.
00:54:17
Speaker
I'm 45 and I say this. I just said Riz in this podcast. Right, exactly. so no so kind And also, Giat, ah I refuse to say beyond that point. up Kai took the throne back eventually, but she beat this legend who is genuinely affecting the culture. That's how big Iron Mouse is.
00:54:37
Speaker
So, Vishojo's biggest at this time was goring cries of nepotism. Vishojo had been offering auditions for years, but kept debuting talent who were already established. Fans began to get cross about this, and Zentreya kind of put herself out front to defend the company, taking a bit of a beating in the process, saying that they were absolutely working on independent streamers, sorry, on new streamers, and the independents who debuted were not a part of the audition process.
00:55:04
Speaker
Matara-Khan also could not stop singing the praises of the shoujo, having been clearly traumatized by her time at Nijisanji. The company was seen everywhere, and alongside Hololive Nijisanji and the ethical talent-freedom approach appeared to be working.
00:55:20
Speaker
The talented left kept their IP, and Bishoujo finally promised the debut of two new waves of talent, all of whom had been hired from the open auditions. Bishoujo was unstoppable, the gunrun was the hero of the day, And every everyone lived happily ever after.
00:55:36
Speaker
May 5th, 2025. Oh, no. When you have a date and a podcast. At least the ones I listen to. Usually bad. Yeah, once you get specific with the time, something bad is going to happen. not That was deliberate. Yeah.
00:55:51
Speaker
So, Vishojo posts the following. Dear community members, we want to share that after careful thought and consideration, we've made the difficult decision to formally part ways with Matara on May 5th, 2025.
00:56:05
Speaker
We're genuinely grateful for everything she's brought to Vishojo and wish her the best moving forward. Goodbyes are never easy, and we understand many of you deeply care about Matara as we do. The best way to support us right now is with kindness, understanding, and respect for everyone's feeling and privacy during this transition.
00:56:21
Speaker
We're committed to our incredible talent, community, and the values we share. Thank you for your empathy and continued support. This was a shock. Matarakan had only been with the company for two years, but she was really beloved and seen as, again, kind of a mother figure, right? for this For somebody in this sea of people who are younger than her, giving this very nurturing presence, as well as a stalwart defender of the company.
00:56:49
Speaker
Shortly thereafter, a one of Bishoujo's founding people, the irritatingly named mountain mountain Mountain Dew. And I'm going to spell his name just to annoy you.
00:57:00
Speaker
That's M-O-W-T-E-N-D-O-O. That's one word. that is and sense that is That's annoying as he That is. That really bothers me.
00:57:12
Speaker
He was hired into V-Shoujo as a content creator on YouTube who did sort of YouTube music remixes. Everything he does is annoying. But he quit. and was a founding member.
00:57:23
Speaker
After that, Giga left. And the fans are starting to get worried because there's no clue of why any of this is happening. Although Matara and Giga were newer hires, and, you know, mount Mountain Dew is staff, so they're newer, he's a staff member, and then Zentreya quits.
00:57:42
Speaker
And Zentreya is a company stalwart, a founding member, and absolutely integrated into the fabric company. Vishoujo without Zentreya was kind of unthinkable.
00:57:53
Speaker
And then the talent director quits. Nothing is available publicly and the fans are panicking. And then on July 21st, 2025, Iron Mouse posts
Vishojo's Collapse and Scandal
00:58:06
Speaker
a video.
00:58:06
Speaker
And we're going to watch the exact same video. Three, two, one, click. I am leaving Vishojo. Unfortunately, I recently found out that for the past couple of months, I have been misled by Vishojo.
00:58:23
Speaker
With the information that I currently have, I believe that I am owed a significant amount of funds which I have not been paid and most importantly the thing that hurts me the most is that the immune deficiency foundation which is the most important charity to me and also the reason why i am here to- today is owed over half a million dollars from Vishojo.
00:58:52
Speaker
All right so Although part of me is not shocked because it's like, a corporation skimming and ripping off their employees.
00:59:04
Speaker
Shocker. Well, this is at one thing to rip off their employees. It's another thing. Think about what I was talking about, those charity subathons. Yeah.
00:59:15
Speaker
They stole half a million dollars from indeficiency donations.
00:59:21
Speaker
Well, that's the thing. It's like, that is a shock, but it's not a surprise. This is a story where you knew that I was going to go to the bad news. Now, that video we heard was what her lawyers let her say.
00:59:34
Speaker
There's the cut. Flawless, isn't it? And I think to some great stress to those lawyers, according to some later statements from Iron Mouse, we're recording this in December 25, and there's just more incoming nonstop.
00:59:48
Speaker
I cannot stress what kind of impact the scandal had on the V-tubing space. The stories we had of Hololive and Nijisanji and their scandals, these companies are alive and well. Even Wachter is still around under a new name.
01:00:01
Speaker
A stupid new name, but a new name. V Shoujo was completely destroyed by this. Wachter? don't even know her.
01:00:12
Speaker
I'm a comedy genius. So original. yeah You know what? You gotta laugh. That's what matters. You know what? Cheap laughs? I'll take them. And we'll go to the consequences cheap laughs later on.
01:00:27
Speaker
oh would be we'll We'll learn about the bad laughs later on. Spoilers. Within three days of Iron Mouse's video, every single talent could be Shoujo.
01:00:40
Speaker
The company folded immediately. wow So huh the first thing that happened after this video was posted was that artists, musicians, and other merchants who sell assets to vshoujo all started complaining.
01:00:53
Speaker
The company always paid late and more recently, not at all. ah Several talents then started posting their own videos or just, ah and again, all the VTubing discourse is on ah mostly on Discord or on Twitter. that's Those are the big two places with a lot of stuff on Reddit and 4chan too. But if people post things, it's usually on Twitter or YouTube. Talents start posting videos. Some just took everything down and discussed.
01:01:20
Speaker
Fury and heartbreak is everywhere. What came out from almost everyone is the Shoujo Ode almost all of the talent, if not all of them, a lot of money. Now, if we recall V Shoujo's business model, the way they work is that the talent keep their tips.
01:01:37
Speaker
So all subscriptions ah and other ah forms of tipping on Twitch, the talent goes directly to the talent. But sponsorship and merchandise is handled by V Shoujo, who then divide the ah the revenue between V Shoujo and the talent.
01:01:53
Speaker
And they were just not giving the talents their cut. Yeah. So one resignation throughout all of this, because everyone sort of had their own ah their own take, and most of it was just misery and heartbreak.
01:02:06
Speaker
ah But there is a Japanese ah English talent, but it was based out of Japan, Kason, who launched in 2022. And she quit in a magnificent way. I'm going to show you a video here.
01:02:18
Speaker
And the clip is from her live on live on stream. So she is on Twitch as this is going. And she calls the CEO of the show, Joe Japan um to grill him about what the fuck is happening.
01:02:32
Speaker
Oh, wow. So and K-San speaks in both English and Japanese in this. So there's going to be some switching between languages in order to sort of get both audiences.
01:02:43
Speaker
Let me just send you the clip.
01:02:47
Speaker
And come on. not Stop it. Stop it.
01:02:55
Speaker
Ah.
01:03:02
Speaker
Sorry. My me life from my Bluetooth mouse. There we go.
01:03:07
Speaker
All right. And ah the sort of lame looking cat there is the avatar. When VTubers have a second person on stream, they often have a very simple like caricature who just sort of has talking, not talking animations.
01:03:23
Speaker
And so this is the one that they have for the Japanese CEO, who is kind of like a regional manager. So he is in charge of Japan, but he's not a major player in Shoujo Central.
01:03:35
Speaker
So three, two, one, click.
01:03:43
Speaker
the dog ah
01:03:48
Speaker
I quit Vy shoujo today.
01:03:52
Speaker
We shoujo, I'm going to stop. It was 31 days ago, but I'm going to stop. I quit. This is very wrong. Very very wrong.
01:04:06
Speaker
very very wrong
01:04:10
Speaker
You're telling me that this shoujo JP was doing good? Looked like, at least. Doing good. You're telling me you could have paid me? So you're telling me you could have paid me?
01:04:23
Speaker
difficult this Then where where is it? Where is it? I want it now. oh Did you just die? What? Yeah.
01:04:36
Speaker
Short little clip from a longer stream there. But she and this guy was not responsible, but he joined this stream and there's 20 minutes of her just going at him about where the fuck is my money?
01:04:52
Speaker
You haven't paid. That's understandable. He's just ashamedly going. Yeah, absolutely. Doesn't seem to be answering. i don't even understand Japanese really, but I can tell he was not answering.
01:05:05
Speaker
Yeah. So, ah and at one point she again said, fuck every talent freedom, I quit. Absolutely humiliate their boss like that.
01:05:17
Speaker
That's right. So, in these apocalyptic days, the gun run, as is usual during scandal, is silent. Finally... he He posts a big accountability post.
01:05:30
Speaker
And it's a bit of a doozy. And I'll start quoting now.
01:05:35
Speaker
V Shoujo has failed and I've mismanaged the company into the situation you're all witnessing. So today I'm sharing the difficult news that V Shoujo is shutting down and I will take full responsibility to the decisions that led us to this point.
01:05:47
Speaker
I've been doing everything I can to fundraise and help right the ship these past few months. But despite my efforts, we are in a worse position and those I care about are now paying the price. Over the past few years, we raised around 11 million to pursue a bold talent first approach in V tubing, prioritizing creators and community over short term profits to achieve long term sustainability.
01:06:07
Speaker
Our funding went directly to our creators through splits, generous splits, debut investments, infrastructure, concerts, events, staffing, all designed to support them. We also wanted talent to own their IP, which we knew was a unique creator first approach for the agency.
01:06:22
Speaker
However, despite all our efforts, the business failed to generate the revenue we needed to sustain the model. And eventually we ran out of money. Additionally, I acknowledge that some of the money spent by the company was raised in connection with talent activity, which I later learned was intended for a charitable initiative.
01:06:39
Speaker
At the time, we were working hard to raise additional investment capital to cover our costs. And I firmly believed based on the information available to us, we would able to do so and cover all expenses.
01:06:50
Speaker
We were unsuccessful in our fundraising efforts. I made the decision to to pursue funding and I owned its consequences. I'm deeply sorry to all the talent, staff, friends and community members who believed in our brand.
01:07:02
Speaker
You did not deserve this. Justin in brackets, gun run. So, just but again, you'll provide more details here, but it's interesting where i listen to that. I'm like, that's plausible in terms of like, you know, didn't make as much money as we thought. The idea, though, that, oh, I didn't know this was for charity. yeah. And then yeah it just disappears.
01:07:28
Speaker
That is all sounds very sketchy. And obviously, i'm what I'm assuming is that, please, nobody. but the talented fans were not happy. Yeah. and Former Rishoujo talent bombarded the post calling out gun run. Notably the claims. He didn't know that the half a million dollars for charity,
01:07:48
Speaker
The company yeah had raised $11 million dollars over its ah four-year history and somehow wasn't able to account for half a million dollars in revenue from their top talent doing the thing she is the most famous for, which he publicly congratulated for her about repeatedly. yeah And again, he owned the company.
01:08:13
Speaker
When you get those numbers, though, you're going to get embezzlers. Like to me, it just seems that when you have private companies, all they're about is fraud because there's no accountability.
01:08:27
Speaker
Yeah. There's and just any way to line their own pockets. Yeah. yeah And so, and I'll get into my read and I think the popular opinion on how this happened.
01:08:38
Speaker
Yeah. Because this, this company was a Ponzi scheme. h Maybe not intentionally, but it was a Ponzi scheme nonetheless. Yeah. I sort of feel like from my very limited knowledge of the Theranos ski scandal with Elizabeth, it kind of sounds like the same thing. It sounds like she legitimately thought that this could be a technology that could exist.
01:09:00
Speaker
Got all this money and all these investors was like, Oh fuck, this is not possible. then what do you do then? this case, they promise you too much. Double down, double down. Yes. And then they end up doubling down rather than being honest. then, you know,
01:09:13
Speaker
So the death of V Shojo was nothing like the VTuber space had ever seen before. It's now been a little over five months. And during that time, there's been an autopsy that is still ongoing.
01:09:24
Speaker
Not all of the information is out yet, particularly anything that was sort of held up by ah the legal counsel of the talents. So, for example, Iron Mouse, when she quit, indicated, I'll say more when my lawyers let me. That time has not come.
01:09:38
Speaker
She has interesting ah reinforced and spoken about some other information that's come out because it didn't come from her, though. ah So we've learned a lot since July. I'm going to now wind back the clock. And unfortunately, we're going to go back to this horrible time a few points during this episode to the Hogwarts Legacy drama.
01:09:56
Speaker
oh Oh, boy. So if we recall, the talent who was the most directly affected in V Shoujo was Silvervale. And Silvervale graduated the company in the not directly in the outcome of this drama, but in the following month ah at the exact same time as a talent who had nothing to do with this, Vebe.
01:10:18
Speaker
And then shortly thereafter, a third talent left. Natasha and Yanners, and they talked about how it was due to contract disputes and the fans really turned against them. hu Vebe, who is self-admittedly kind of mentally ill,
01:10:34
Speaker
on the best of days wrote a huge, our NDAs are now now in void. And so here's what happened tweet. Oh, was like a manic episode where you don't want to get into legal trouble. yeah Well, and and this is I would say, ah folks, if the company that you have an NDA with folds, it doesn't mean they can't sue you. It just means they don't have the money to sue you.
01:10:58
Speaker
Yeah. So what happened is she info dumped about this and let out the ranch. She had wanted to let out two years ago. And then other talent corroborated this on their own streams. So Silvervale spoke about this.
01:11:11
Speaker
In 2023, Shoja's new contract demands were insane, calling for a way, way higher cut of sponsors and merch than previously. When they were negotiating, the company relied heavily on guilt, interpersonal pressure, dividing conquer tactics and intimidation in order to get the talents to sign the contract and not use lawyers. Yeah.
01:11:35
Speaker
There was very much a, how dare you lose use a lawyer? I don't think they quite said we're family, but it was that kind of vibe. Like, we're your friends. Why would you use a lawyer against us?
01:11:47
Speaker
It hurts our feelings that you were worried that we're actually going to exploit you. We would never do that. We're a family. yeah though we just defrauded, like, the good IDF. Yeah, exactly. Well, this is in 2023, but they were on the way to start defrauding them. I forgot, we went back in time. Back in time.
01:12:07
Speaker
but Okay, so they were, okay, back in time. Meanwhile, Vyshojo's lawyer negotiating with them had an expired law license.
01:12:18
Speaker
ah Well. This is an international multi-million dollar company. Oh! you know More disturbing, the talent was very as sorry, the company.
01:12:30
Speaker
And ah one night when I say the company, I do want to stress that this isn't all necessarily directly from the gun run. What appears to have happened is he hired his buddies into the senior management positions at very nice salaries and they went off.
01:12:46
Speaker
And he didn't intervene to stop anything. And ah when he did intervene, it was rare and usually not that great. So in this case, ah the the chief operating officer was deliberately going like ah setting people up to go on 4chan of all places to spread rumors that all of the departing talents were convinced to quit by their boyfriends. And they're just greedy bitches who got too big for the company.
01:13:11
Speaker
Oh, look, you never misogyny is always useful to score points and to cause drama. All of this sounds very, yeah, obviously very shady and disgusting. So also a really good way to run a business is to hire your friends and family because, you know, the Trump administration.
01:13:32
Speaker
Wonderful. They're doing so well right now. you know Yes. let me I have a little just a side rant here. It's like the whole ah Herbert Powell in your relation to Homer Simpson's brother. Herbert Powell.
01:13:44
Speaker
Fourth cousin's goldfish babysitter. Oh, OK. Well, he never hired you. See, that's the thing that drives me crazy with that episode. He's angry at Homer for designing. His Homer mobile.
01:13:56
Speaker
Herbert was the one who put him in that position in the first place. hmm. He destroyed his own business. Yeah. Anyway. Absolutely. To me, whole crux of the issue.
01:14:09
Speaker
Don't hire family to run your business or design vehicles. Yes. Or run a country. In case, I'm not sure it was necessarily family, but it was pals, right? Right, right. So, for example, ah mount ah ah Mountain Dew, with the worst spelled name ever, M-O-W-T-E-N-D-O-O, if you recall.
01:14:27
Speaker
Yep. So he was a ah notorious content creator of like YouTube poops for those who are older and recall them. They're just like brain rot videos for millennials.
01:14:38
Speaker
And again, he was somebody who socially knew gun running, and got in as their marketing officer and was openly harassing talent to the point he was told to stop contacting people and shit talking people behind their backs. Like they would have parties and they'd go to people and say and try to turn them against other. Love living in high school. And so,
01:14:57
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Very much high school stuff. So two things became apparent. Gunrun, who is, and I do want to stress, a famously nice person, was being nice when there were people in his employ who were not being nice.
01:15:12
Speaker
So although I think Mountain Dew genuinely got like reprimanded for this, he stayed on. ah And Mountain Dew even was when he quit, ah ah when he quit the company, he was like, how dare you gun run? um He got ah he got community noted and fans were like, you asshole, you're a part of this.
01:15:31
Speaker
um And so and so Gunrun just stayed out of it and even ghosted the talents managers at times because all these talents and managers who are their interface to the company and he's just like avoidant.
01:15:44
Speaker
And so not only ah did V Shoujo have money troubles, but Gunrun did exactly what Jen said. You don't, which is hire your pals. So silverve and veba Silver Veil and Vebe graduated at the same time deliberately to turn fans against them, which worked, and they were unable to defend themselves because of these stupid non-disclosure agreements.
01:16:06
Speaker
And so there's more and more and more that comes out of this. If we recall, the ah the nepotism allegations about V Shoujo were about them hiring ah having open auditions and then debuting established talent.
01:16:20
Speaker
And people going, well, you're just hiring you're you're just hiring like people you already know ah where you know there's ah there's nothing here for like the small streamer. Vishoujo then promised two new talent launches in 2024, then into 2025, and kept them in the dark, endlessly delaying them over a year.
01:16:39
Speaker
One of them, Tori Orian, spoke about sinking five figures worth of debut expenses into Vishoujo, as well as an entire year their life, setting up for this. Another talent ah spoke of how she got so excited when Vishojo said they were debuting her. She told her dad that she was going to pay for his retirement while she was waiting for her debut. Oh, no.
01:17:02
Speaker
Oh, that sucks. um Yeah. And so in in Japan, ah one of their Japanese VTubers, Shibuya Kayo, she spoke about how there was a Vishojo staff member in Japan who um kind of acted like a young rich kid with all the toys. So he was aggressive. He was weirdly cheap. And he'd ah show people and he'd like go to people and show them face pictures of the VTubers and talk about their marital status in order to like, you know, get clever.
01:17:33
Speaker
Oh, which is heinous. You don't do that, right? they an Anonymity is the most important thing to them. Speaking of, Natasha Nyanars spoke up to reveal more of her story.
01:17:44
Speaker
If we recall, way back when, Vishoujo's first scandal was that she and several other talents got doxed, and then an independent talent, Nux Taku, kind of made a pig's ear out of trying to expose it.
01:17:56
Speaker
Vishoujo handled it badly. She was swatted. So a SWAT team was called in on her while she was streaming. She's in America, yes? America is the only place where swatting happens, as far as I know? Yeah, don't think would happen. know what it would in other places. We're in Canada. Okay, so let's try to swat somebody in Canada and see how it turns out. Pierre Palliev?
01:18:19
Speaker
Okay, never mind. No, Danielle Smith. mean We just swat her. No. yeah I don't think you can swat the premier. The cops are going to know lives. Yeah, next time. ah So she's in a sponsorship stream, right? And so ah it's like a hand cam stream and she is like like displaying this product, right? I advertise this, playing with it and being fun for an hour. That is standard stuff. um And she's saying stuff like, my hands are shaking because I'm so excited because ah she had to like pop off stream for a moment, deal with riot cops swarming her house and then go back to stream like nothing happened.
01:18:57
Speaker
I wouldn't. v shoujo never paid her for that stream unbelievable and veibe then joined in on that stream to comment she had not been paid for sponsors going back to 2021 that's the first year of the company wow that's uh obviously being that's obvious fraud You're just not getting you're not paying your talent. That's just, yeah, what else could that be? i don't know. you You're just as i just slavery. That's exactly it.
01:19:31
Speaker
Silvervale elsewhere opened up about V. Shojo's handling of the Hogwarts Legacy scandal, and I'll quote, I was put into a call with Gunn, the CEO of the company, and somebody I looked up to and admired and wanted to please someone I thought was the coolest person ever.
01:19:46
Speaker
He told me I was a damage to the brand, I was a disappointment, and i was I was told that me being harassed was an inconvenience to the other talent and I should not talk to the other talent about it. Optics were more important than their ah their own talent's well-being and I was suspended from streaming.
01:20:01
Speaker
They said it wasn't a suspension because they aren't that kind of agency, but what else do you call being told to not stream? Right. And so that gets and I do want to note that really shortly thereafter, Silvervale left.
01:20:17
Speaker
Vishojo hired Henya, who I really like. I think Henya is the best. But Henya was the first VTuber to go to go under because of ah harassment over Hogwarts Legacy.
01:20:28
Speaker
She left her prior company, VOMS, because she was being harassed. Well, sorry, while she was being harassed over Hogwarts Legacy. So, and then it just hire a talent who was, did the exact same thing Silver Veil did. Right.
01:20:42
Speaker
When they gave Silver Veil, no supports, no instructions, no guidelines on how to deal with it. Completely threw the it seems like anytime a company asks you to sign an NBA, an NBA, an NDA, they're just going to rip you off and not let you talk about it. Or you're going to get sexually harassed and can't talk about it. You know, all this stuff. Yeah, there's nothing good coming for you from signing an NDA. No, no.
01:21:05
Speaker
No. Right. And all VTuber talent agencies require one to an extent, but there is also going to be, ah and and and a lot of it is and a lot of it is about protecting the company from over-inquisitive fans who want to tear apart the details of talent contract, which is to an extent, maybe.
01:21:27
Speaker
But I also think about professional athletes and how much stuff is exposed about professional athletes who have a union, um And that might be a better way to think about this is, well, if everything's available all the time ah and you just have complete transparency, it's going to be a lot fairer.
01:21:46
Speaker
And speaking of NDAs, ah it gets a little worse with Silver Veil.
Impact of VTubing on Mental Health
01:21:50
Speaker
At one point, she wanted not to play a stream, citing extreme stress and needing to take a day off, which is, again, a so like psychological harm is the number one hazard for VTubers. And most of them come in with, you know, i'm i'm I'm online all the time because I'm not necessarily the most thriving person to begin with.
01:22:08
Speaker
Not always. Yeah. But ah it it is a it is a career that is accessible to people with mental health issues. So the kind of overrepresented. And it's good that it is, but not if it's exacerbating the mental health issues. Like, no. Well, like that's exactly it. Her lawyer was contacted by Vishojo stating that they would sue her if she hinted she was leaving or unhappy with the company in ah and in any way. That's terrifying.
01:22:33
Speaker
Vebe was also threatened with lawsuits by Vishojo's fake lawyer who doesn't have a law life. Oh, God. When Silvervale left, they made her mom sign in and a nondisclosure agreement. What?
01:22:48
Speaker
I want to be clear. Silvervale's mom is not her manager. She's her mom. Oh, that's bizarre. Well, no, so it's not if you're an evil company that's defrauding your talent. So, you know, it's pretty standard, actually.
01:23:04
Speaker
i have like ah I've dealt with a few ah with a few confidentiality clauses and near kind of nondisclosure things in my time. No one's ever had their like mom or spouse or someone have to sign one. It's ludicrous. up so And 2023, when all of this is happening, this is the shoujo's golden age. Mm-hmm.
01:23:29
Speaker
This is when they've got that $11 million dollars in investment of a money. They have a giant stack of cash. And ah everyone is convinced the company is doing well from the outside.
01:23:41
Speaker
They did such a good job of quietly dividing the talent to ensure they didn't talk and using the incredible goodwill in a way that you sometimes see with ah NGOs, actually, where ah we're doing such a good thing here that how dare you sit think something bad about it.
01:23:59
Speaker
interesting while yeah and this is something that I can't recall the specific source but it came up I think in a few streams everyone in the corporate VTuber scene so the other companies knew VShoujo was hemorrhaging money and that this company did not make sense Really?
01:24:17
Speaker
All of the talent. Yeah. All of the talent were willing to speak, shared stories of really trusting in this company and really trusting in Gunrun, despite this increasing worry and how devastating and traumatizing this was for them.
01:24:32
Speaker
Mataracon and Project Melody and Mataracon, we recall, is the sort of really motherly VTuber and Project Melody, one of the key founders who does ah who does adult work,
01:24:42
Speaker
um They were really hard hit. Melody's streaming for a little while, and Matara Khan spoke of, quite openly, ah serious mental health issues and, in fact, getting two therapists at one point.
01:24:53
Speaker
um Vebe just stopped streaming after the trauma of after after the trauma of this when she left in So ah the person with the most insight ah that I found was another one of the VTuber talents, Giga.
01:25:07
Speaker
Giga was hired out of Nijisanji, as I mentioned before, and she is again ah in her 30s and has a shrewd businesswoman kind of affect to her. Giga never worked for Nijisanji and was in fact hired as an independent VTuber. She speaks a great deal about how um in her past life, she just knows how business operates. And she, as somebody who can sense this kind of bullshit, I believe that, ah you know, she knows what she's talking about.
01:25:36
Speaker
And she knows what she's talking about probably better than anybody in V Shoujo did. hmm. So she did endless work with the company ah to try to get them to stop making boneheaded decisions.
01:25:49
Speaker
Because what happened is Gunrun was so high on his own idea. He's hiring his friends and paying way too much. And he's endlessly chasing a new revenue stream.
01:26:00
Speaker
He spent absurd amounts of money on marketing, debuted new talent when he probably shouldn't have, and never once really fixated on revenue, on shoring up revenue what he had. We lost you there, Dave. Instead, moving to the next thing.
01:26:14
Speaker
Did you lose me? Let's see for a second. So he never once and then. ah ah So and so he spent obscene amounts on marketing, debuted new talent when they probably shouldn't have. And revenue was always going to be solved by the next idea rather than shoring it up on what he already had. Oh, only like every tech company now in operation.
01:26:34
Speaker
Oh yeah. The rewards will come later. Oh yeah. Yeah. Just keep investing. It'll cut. It'll, it'll, it'll, it'll pan out later. That's right. It's very similar to the tech companies of the year 2000. Oh yeah. It's very. dot com Yeah.
01:26:45
Speaker
Uh, and one thing that you ah heard a few people say, ah going back and sort of reading the tea leaves is how the hell is this company going to make money?
01:26:56
Speaker
Because show Joe, uh, sold themselves as an equivalent brand to Hololive, which is a major company that are very cold, they're exploitative, they're not necessarily cruel, but they're indifferent to the suffering of their talent and extract every penny they can out of them while the talent still make good living. And vShojo.
01:27:19
Speaker
oh absolutely. Yeah, they're just a standard corporation. vShojo takes less money from the talent, but offers the same product as Hololive.
01:27:29
Speaker
Where are they getting the money? and that's that that was the fly And that was the flaw in the very start of this, right? Is if they're only taking money from merchant sponsor, and they realize that in 23, when they try to renegotiate these new contracts, um demanding way more sponsorship and merch money. Okay.
01:27:48
Speaker
right? Because they realized, oh God, our business model doesn't make any money because it's very likely nobody actually sorted out a business plan. They were just excited. they have to claw it back to the contracts.
01:28:00
Speaker
Right. Right. And what what happened here is, and I'm This is kind of like stealing from the till or committing some small sin that you then, well, not a small sin, but to them, a small sin that you get away with and you become it habituated to it. Yep. Where when you don't pay your employees,
01:28:24
Speaker
you're in trouble immediately. It's massively illegal to suddenly not give someone a paycheck. Right. And it's one of the few things you never see businesses really do is just stop paying employees.
01:28:36
Speaker
The talent, like professional wrestlers, are independent contractors, not employees. And you can cheat contractors a lot easier than you can cheat employees. yeah Contractors have fewer rights and it's harder to get that money.
01:28:51
Speaker
And when the talent have a primary source of income, because this is supplementary, i like i think it's a lot of money still. Like no one's really said that exact amounts, but I think it's like ah with someone like Iron Mouse is probably in the six figures um because she's massive.
01:29:09
Speaker
And iron mouse Iron Mouse is a millionaire. ah And some of the talent who aren't at Iron Mouse level, probably in the five figures like per year, maybe. But, um the idea is if they hold that back, the talent can keep going and this IOU keeps piling up and then they use the IOU to pay down the next talent debut or this marketing plan or this big event or ah these like extremely expensive bells and whistles. They're going to bring more eyes to the company and ah thus bring in the revenue.
01:29:42
Speaker
And so they get addicted to cheating the talent and using that money as further investment money. That's how it turns into a Ponzi scheme. There you go That sucks. And again, seemingly starting off with good intentions, but you can't just fuck around. i yeah the The problem was that, ah yeah, he fucked around.
01:30:03
Speaker
So a huge problem that happened in the aftermath of this that Giga and Henny have spoken about, Giga in great detail, is a ton of merchandise orders were placed by V-Shoujo.
01:30:15
Speaker
The fans gave the company money. and the merchandise was never shipped. So the company, not only because but ah buying and sending the merchandise is going to cost money, so they hold on to the money they get from the fans in order to, again, sink it into the next thing. Oh my God. And again, they were going to debut like eight or ten new talents that year ah who were all unknowns.
01:30:40
Speaker
Like this was their money-saving problem? that's see Like when their basic model is that they don't... ah is It's that old joke, right? We lose money on every sale. How do we make how do we make up for it? In volume. yeah Well, that's the thing. Yeah, but also to... don't know. Sorry. i My mind went blank there. I get to cut this part out.
01:31:04
Speaker
But just the the idea of... Leave it in. Okay, as for a business, that's the worst thing you can do. To... Have a fandom that is very rabid, that is buying your specialized merch.
01:31:17
Speaker
The worst thing you can do is not send them their merch. Yes. like well and That is not only a horrible thing to do, just in general. it you off like it's It is theft. But it's also just like, what are you doing? how would you ever think that's a good idea?
01:31:35
Speaker
Well, and what's happened is ah a fulfillment center, for example, which has not been paid, is now sitting on boxes of the stuff. And you've got Giga, who is not in a good financial position coming out of this because she's not an Iron Mouse.
01:31:49
Speaker
ah You know, she did fine under V Shoujo, but she is trying to sort her life out now. How does she get this merchandise to her fans without taking an enormous financial bath? Because these talents genuinely love their fans and hate that they were ripped off.
01:32:03
Speaker
So they want to free up this merchandise, but there's a lot of money in order to do that. So it's, I think to this date, a lot of that merchandise is still not been shipped and it's been five months. So,
01:32:15
Speaker
That said, so that's kind of like closing off the collapse of this.
Independent Success Post-Vishojo
01:32:22
Speaker
um We've got and up almost everyone from V. Shoujo went over, went back to their independent careers because V. Shoujo never owned the IP.
01:32:30
Speaker
And there's been a surge of goodwill for the talent since they've left Shoujo. And one of the big so ah one of the big good stories is Iron Mouse, who after telling everyone who tried to hire her to fuck off,
01:32:44
Speaker
um launched her independent career and raised an obscene amount of money in your mind. In her first stream, she had tens of thousands of subscribers almost immediately.
01:32:56
Speaker
And again, subscriber is like a Patreon subscriber, right? It's not just a follower. So they the tens of thousands of people giving her money. She and Connor Seadog have now raised a million dollars for the good idea. Wow, wow.
01:33:11
Speaker
the The CEO has personally shouted her out and thanked her. And just recently, she even ran her first independent ah hologram show, which a friend purchased and I got to watch. Nice.
01:33:23
Speaker
So what this is telling me is that. The problem seems to be with these middle management rent seekers. Yeah, can't even
01:33:42
Speaker
you know somebody like iron mouse who has clout already you can go off and be independent people will follow you the challenge is for somebody what's like called i think it's called the matthew effect where yeah if you can you can you can build up a following if you already have a large following and a lot of finance financial backing or your own independent money you can then parlay that into more independent work and more independent subscriptions. But if you're just starting out, it's a lot harder.
01:34:06
Speaker
Yeah. So how do you then, yeah. And another flaw with V Shojo's business model ah is that If working for a company becomes more of a pain in the ass than it's worth and you keep your IP, what stops you from just quitting?
01:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, right. And you gain all of the stuff the company invested in you. and leave the company and then you get to keep all your money and you have the same number of fans. Right. And so that's another flaw with the business model is, uh, and so there's different ways that people are starting to do this. And I am actually going to talk about two companies I like, uh, and, uh, sort of show you how I think a couple of them are doing a little better.
01:34:52
Speaker
ah But yeah, the the short version is that the collapse of the shoujo amidst the collapse of multiple other smaller corpos, because there are probably six other stories I could tell about Wachter style companies. Wachter was the worst one.
01:35:09
Speaker
But ah there's insane stuff that happens because you've got a world with ah rich kids, dumb ideas who really like anime and ah what they can do to vulnerable women who are looking to make a bunch of money.
01:35:22
Speaker
ah So or not even make a bunch of money to find a life and career for themselves doing something. they love I think that's a fair way to put it, because so many VTubers do it for the love of the game. Yeah.
01:35:35
Speaker
So, yeah, V Shoujo was entirely like a gambler's fallacy kind of thing where I'll just keep sinking more money in ah and I will grab every spare penny I have. I am dead certain that the half million dollars gun run stole from the good IDF.
01:35:51
Speaker
He was confident that he would make that back tenfold because of the gambler's fallacy. Right. Sure. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And the simple truth is that ah V Shoujo, and what's actually very frustrating about V Shoujo is if there was competent business minds at the back end of it, it probably would have been what Gunrun wanted it to be.
01:36:12
Speaker
Wow. All right. So, and with that, I'm going to leave that here. And then hopefully some conversations about...
01:36:26
Speaker
ah talent agencies that I think are doing a little bit a Okay. So try to leave it on a pause. Okay. That's interesting. And with that, we'll end our recording for the day. Thank you everybody. ah To our wonderful fans. Thank you. You can send your angry hate mail to contact at thewondercamera.ca
01:36:48
Speaker
Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to The Wonder Camera. Find us under The Wonder Camera on Blue Sky, YouTube, and Instagram. camera