XQC is no stranger to controversial hot takes and he shocked his chat claiming that people who hardcore into VTubers are “weirdos”. The streamer also talked about how he thinks most content creators who have attractive female characters as their avatar are usually just males, to rope in views.
While playing Rust, XQC went off on his hot take claiming “anime VTubers aren’t real. People who hardcore on it are weirdos and most of the hot girls are just dudes with a big long beard”. VTubing has been a controversial topic lately and has been discussed at great length within the Twitch community.
Even Pokimane, one of the biggest content creators on Twitch temporarily stopped showing her real face and used a VTuber streaming tool instead which upset a lot of her viewers.
VTubing is a form of motion capture that lets you use a digital avatar to replicate your facial expressions and movements, instead of using a normal stream set up to show your real face.
A VTuber, or Virtual YouTuber, is someone who streams using a virtual model, instead of their real face. The models come in all forms, each being individually commissioned for the user.
VTubers get to stay anonymous if they choose to and they are able to interact with chat using face and voice tracking systems. Streaming using online avatars is more popular on platforms like Weido, Niconico and Bilbili but it is catching up rapidly on YouTube and Twitch as well. HoloLive is the biggest Vtuber agency at the moment with over 50 anime models representing them. Whether Twitch streamers like it or not, the digital characters are taking over all platforms.
One of the reasons why VTubers grew so big is because “the virtual character can be used at scale in ways that human characters can’t: they can appear in video games and apps outside YouTube, and as VR and AR technology improves, they can even hold virtual reality concerts” as stated by BBC’s Bryan Lufkin in an in-depth report on the VTubing industry.
VTubing grew by nearly 30% in 2019 and the top 20 VTubers saw around 99% growth in the same year. There are hundreds of VTubers with over 100,000 subscribers or followers in popular platforms. But despite the virtual streaming culture growing rapidly, it constantly faces criticism. Most of the valid criticism has to do with how some streamers fake their identities and take advantage of anonymity to lure in viewers from the opposite gender which is what XQC has been criticising.