this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
28 points (100.0% liked)
chat
8436 readers
297 users here now
Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.
Thank you and happy chatting!
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Hatsune Miku is a digital musical instrument, a piece of software which allows people to generate singing in a robotic Japanese voice by manually tuning each note. This is different from "AI" voice song generation because it actually requires work and skill and predates it by at least a decade. The blue haired character is the mascot of this piece of software, and the company behind it uses that mascot in various tie-in products like video games. There is no specific real human behind the Miku character.
Vtubers are like twitch streamers, but they're behind a fancy mask called a "model" which is animated by face and/or body tracking. Each one corresponds to a specific real human. The big/popular ones are part of agencies, generally out of Japan with corresponding Japanese-style workplace abuse. There are also people who do vtubing on their own, and generally have much less detailed and less animated models, all the way down to just bouncing a png of a face when they talk.
Yes, live performances by both are just on a screen, but with the other things I'm told people like about live events, like a big soundsystem and a crowd of fellow fans.
So vtubers are just people playing games/reacting to stuff/talking to paying chat customers under a stage persona and costume that they may not own like any other actor. But the digital instrument is more like a specific synth you might license.
With the synth who owns the music? and if anyone can license it then who is putting on the concerts?
Where does graduation come into this?
Graduation is just the word vtubers use for when they retire as a character
Oooh it sounds so sinister haha
It's copied from the idol industry. They use it to avoid saying "yeah the performer quit the job" and to create a culture of not asking questions about why the performers quit.
"gawr gura was sent to live on a farm upstate"
"can i visit her?"
"no"