I’ve been struggling a bit with the weblog recently.
I made a decision to re-read a few of my posts from the final 12 months or so, and I observed that my writing has been missing in sure areas. Particularly, I feel I may do a greater job with VTubers, and that what I write can sound a bit too uncritical. There’s nothing inherently improper with saying “I preferred this,” but it surely’s not being executed properly.
Just a few months in the past, Youtuber Dan Olsen launched a brand new video essay known as “I Don’t Know James Rolfe.” It’s troublesome to explain succinctly, but it surely’s basically a take a look at how Rolfe, aka the Offended Video Sport Nerd, occupies a place the place folks challenge onto him their wishes for what a veteran web movie star needs to be. The essay can be introspective, as Olsen struggles with the truth that Rolfe the creator appears to be each an ingenious pioneer of on-line media and somebody whose data of the filmmaking course of is a bit half-baked, just for Olsen to level the lens at himself and reveal his personal insecurities about not being a “actual filmmaker both.”
I watched AVGN nearly from the beginning. I bear in mind visiting the Cinemassacre website over the extra unreliable YouTube of the late 2000s. One among my most fashionable posts ever was discovering a reference cameo of him in an anime. For years, I saved up with each launch and replace, so I’m very acquainted with the character. However the video is much less concerning the biography of Rolfe and extra designed for the viewer to carry themselves into it. And on this occasion, I had my baggage in tow: my issues over the place I’m as a author, the problem of writing about artistic folks in a world more and more full of utmost opinions, and a rising concern for media literacy. As a blogger for over 16 years now, I really feel a connection to Olsen and Rolfe as creators, but in addition to Olsen and Rolfe’s followers as commentators.
To place it in a different way, I noticed that I’m strolling on eggshells a bit on the subject of VTuber commentary, and it’s as a result of, like Rolfe, their followers and anti-fans may be relatively intense. You go from effusive reward to only poisonous hatred that veers into each misogyny and misanthropy through weird conspiracy theories. If I wish to do a comparability or say one thing got here throughout as weaker than I anticipated, I don’t wish to give ammo to the caustic haters even when it solely quantities to a single tossed pebble (and never the enjoyable Biboo type) within the grand scheme of issues. The parasocial facet is even stronger with VTubers, and it may be worrying, even when I feel there are lot of optimistic features to that neighborhood.
Including to all that could be a fixed fear that I’m stagnating as a author, that I overly depend on the identical primary buildings and phrases. I undoubtedly suppose I’ve improved in some respects through the years, however I’ve by no means devoted myself to enhancing this as a craft, and I feel it exhibits. And since VTubers are such a brand new subject, I really feel myself under-equipped to debate them, particularly in contrast with how a lot I’ve devoted my time to anime and manga.
I feel I simply desire a area the place dialogue of VTubers (or some other subject) may be someplace within the center between the 2 extremes of obsessive love and all-consuming hate.
