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VTubers

You might remember it as Kizuna AI, virtual YouTuber

This spread through many posts rather than one canonical upload.

2020·Short-form and streams·impressive

Online entertainers who appear as a computer-generated character.

At a glanceThe facts

Remembered as
Kizuna AI
Spread in
2020
Format
Phenomenon
Era
Short-form and streams
Made by
Kizuna AI was the first to call herself a virtual YouTuber, late in 2016
Origin
No single original
Available
Not held by ViralWorld

What this wasThe story

A performer streams behind an animated avatar driven by real-time motion and face capture. The character is consistent and often has a backstory; the person behind it usually stays anonymous. Kizuna AI, from late 2016, was the first to use the phrase virtual YouTuber, and by 2020 there were more than ten thousand active VTubers.

It solves the problem streaming created — that being an entertainer online means being permanently visible — by separating the performer from the persona, and it did so at industrial scale. Agencies like Hololive and Nijisanji operate rosters the way idol companies do. It is the largest cultural export from Japanese internet culture since anime itself, and the English-speaking internet mostly discovered it in 2020.

VTubers hold livestream superchat records, appear in national advertising, and have generated a genuine labour argument about who owns a character when the person voicing it leaves. The model has since been adopted well outside Japan, including by performers who use it to work without being identifiable at all.

TimelineIn order

  1. Made

    Kizuna AI begins posting to YouTube.1

  2. Took off

    The number of active VTubers doubles from 2,000 to 4,000 between May and mid-July. The agency Nijisanji is founded.1

  3. Record

    Seven of the ten biggest earners from paid comments on YouTube are VTubers.1

  4. Mainstream

    The agency Hololive launches an English-language branch.1

  5. Record

    Gawr Gura passes Kizuna AI as the most-subscribed VTuber.1

Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later

Where it came fromWhat we know

This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. No copy is held here — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is what this page can tell you.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

SourcesWhat was read

  1. Wikipedia — VTuber

Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things

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