VTuber

A VTuber, or virtual YouTuber, is an online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar generated using computer graphics. Real-time motion capture software or technology are often—but not always—used to capture movement. The digital trend originated in Japan in the mid-2010s, and has become an international online phenomenon in the 2020s. A majority of VTubers are English and Japanese-speaking YouTubers or live streamers who use avatar designs. By 2020, there were more than 10,000 active VTubers. Although the term is an allusion to the video platform YouTube, they also use websites such as Niconico, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, and Bilibili. The first entertainer to use the phrase "virtual YouTuber", Kizuna AI, began creating content on YouTube in late 2016. Her popularity sparked a VTuber trend in Japan, and spurred the establishment of specialized agencies to promote them, including major ones such as Hololive Production, Nijisanji, and VShojo. Fan translations and foreign-language VTubers have marked a rise in the trend's international popularity. Virtual YouTubers have appeared in domestic advertising campaigns, and have broken livestream-related world records. Virtual YouTubers (although more commonly referred to as VTubers) are online entertainers who are typically YouTubers or live streamers. They use avatars created with programs such as Live2D, portraying characters designed by online artists. VTubers are not bound by physical limitations, and many of them engage in activities that are unconstrained by their real-world identity. Some VTubers, particularly those from marginalized communities, choose to use avatars to reflect their online identity for personal comfort and safety reasons. Transgender VTubers may use their avatars as a means to better reflect their preferred presentation to their audience. VTubers often portray themselves as a kayfabe character, not unlike professional wrestling; Mace, a WWE wrestler who himself began streaming on Twitch as a VTuber in 2021, remarked that the two professions were "literally the same thing".