Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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I am obsessed with this Anti-diss track about Pipkin Pippa. It's so good.
I suspect my weeb levels are higher than average for this place, so not sure how much people care or know about Vtubers, but I've been falling deeper into the rabbit hole of Based Vtuber reactions. People like SmugAlana, Nuxtaku, or Leaflit, who watch and make commentary on various political or culture war stuff. It's not like super deep stuff, it's just something fun to listen to in the background while playing games or something.
Which then led me to Skyebrows, who (like Leaflit) makes AI generated music videos which are pretty cool. And tends to have a generally based perspective (glazing people like Amelia, Elon Musk, or Asmongold)
One of his videos featured a cameo by (AI generated version of) Pippa, who is a rabbit Vtuber known for being based and a bit unhinged. Kind of Alex-Jones lite? She'll go on rants about how she doesn't trust the Federal Government, or how much she hates Walmart. She calls things "gay" or "retarded" as an insult, the way people used to before being afraid of cancel culture. And since she's effectively anonymous as a Vtuber, and her income is derived from her fans who know she's like this, she's basically cancel-proof.
So her chat spams her with pleas to go watch this video because she's in it and it's so cool. And she gets watches it, and is not impressed. She goes on her conspiracy rant about how this dude looks sketchy. It looks gay. It looks like a bunch of clout chasing slop designed to get people hyped, and he's probably going to pull a Candace Owens, make a crypto coin, and then rug pull it. She goes full schizo on him.
So he makes what I can only call an Anti-diss track. He takes all of her words and makes them into the lyrics, and it's about her being cool and based and beating the crap out of him. Literally, there's a scene where Pippa goes and beats him up and he doesn't fight back. And then all the other Vtubers who have watched his videos and liked them line up and shoot heart beams and he powers up with their support and there's this giant energy blob Spirit Bomb and it looks like he's going to finally counter attack and then.... he says "it's okay to be gay" and hugs her while possibly crying, and an inspiring line from her in the background plays about how you can be cool and make all sorts of drawings or other art, you just have to let go of your ego.
The message being "You might hate me, but I still love you"
I thought it was really clever. A cool way to respond to hate, while still kind of getting back at the other person (she's unlikely to actually be happy about being the focus of a video this way, even though it does make her look cool). And it helps that the song is really really catchy (in my opinion).
Anyway, just a bit of minor internet drama that happened (and involves AI) and thought some of you might find interesting.
I've watched Pippa a lot. I think the overall culture has changed a bit (partly because of her). Vtubers really took off around 2020, when people were stuck inside due to lockdowns, with nothing to do but consume endless content online. And between covid and the presidential election, some people were desparate to find a happy space where people weren't talking about politics, so vtubers became something of a sanctuary. And the En world especially, everything revolved around Hololive, which was set up like a traditional idol company, with them having a carefully curated image and avoiding contraversial subjects (although they could still be pretty edgy sometimes).
Pippa was originally just some random streamer working for a small unknown agency. She wasn't trying to be "based" or political at all, she was just a weird shut-in who spent too much time chronically online looking up weird edgy content, and then she started talking about it in streams. She intentionally referenced 4chan memes, although usually not political ones, and 4chan at the time was a big hub of vtuber discussion, just not one that anyone in hololive or nijisanji would ever acknowledge.
So OK, she does occasionally mention things like how she owns guns or is interested in the Bismarck. But she's really not doing "based" political content at all. She's just cracking jokes, trying to be high energy, and doing whatever she can to be funny. She'll mention people like Asmongold or Alex Jones, but almost never discuss them in any detail. She certainly doesn't stand up on a soap box for any specific political causes. Still, even that much was pretty shocking the general vtuber culture of 2021-2022.
Nowadays, of course, there's a million indie vtubers, and most of them are a lot farther removed from Hololive or any other "idol" types. So now we have some that are explicitly political. It's not that shocking though, it's just... kinda boring, they repeat the same talking points as anyone else on the internet.
All of this is to say that Pippa just kinda pretends to be edgy, but it's pretty tongue-in-cheek and she's actually a sweet girl, so I wish people would just leave her alone.
Based doesn't just mean "politically right wing" though there is a bit of connotation in that direction. Ultimately it's when you say what you believe and what's true in spite of the external and opposing narratives and political correctness. People who are trying to be based, or god forbid call themselves based unironically, are almost automatically not. It's based to be yourself in spite of opposition, to say your opinion unapologetically, and be right about it. Which Pippa isn't always. And granted I haven't watched a lot of her content, mostly the more popular clips. But she seems generally based, if a bit unhinged at times.
People should leave her alone more though, I agree.
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I second Orthoxerox in saying that a community that self-describes as "based" (or even is generally described as such) is nothing such, and is probably more likely to be cringe.
At any rate, I feel too old for this nonsense. It took me a moment to realize that you were talking about Pipkin Pippa and not Peppa Pig. Not that I'm complaining about you sharing this, I just look on in genuine bemusement and in terrified awareness that I'm becoming an "unc". Potentially a gay retard unc to boot.
I was thinking maybe Pippa Middleton found a new hobby.
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I think I'm about your age and an intern at my office called me "unc" and I honestly might just go check into an old folks home and die at this point
Same as seeing an "old person's" listed age in an anime/Final Fantasy. But I tend to mentally age up everyone in those sorts of media by default, so...
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Please don't do that. If you're in the UK, I might be the doctor seeing you, and I have enough on my plate already. If you're elsewhere, I still have sympathy for the local doctors.
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Just embrace the status of 30-year-old boomer.
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Yes, the Kiwi Farms threads on these people generally indicate that they are quite cringe.
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I'm quite wary of vtubers in general, but "based vtubers" strike me as someone particularly untrustworthy. Hiding behind a pretty avatar and telling you things you want to hear in a pretty voice, they are, I'm 99% sure, in it for the money.
There's someone at the vtuber talent agency analyzing the potentical viewer demographic and going, "studies show that a significant chunk of Zoomer incels is not covered by our existing selection of personas, we need someone more... based, they call it?"
Sorry for bringing the CW into the fun thread.
It's actually quite the opposite.
Vtubing, I'd say, tends to lean more centric overall - if anything, recent attempts to try and make Vtubing more 'woke' or drag them into the cultural war have been received roughly akin to a wet fart. It's a weirdly meritocratic, and the benefits of a Vtubing avatar pushing forward toward anonymity means that they have less fear overall voicing thier opinions on things without having to worry about receiving censorship.
Conversely, the Vtubers that are rather left leaning have no fear whatsoever making hay about that - inevitably, they'll have some blow-up or drama or whatnot and then it's masks off. So grifters inevitably get found out, while others just blithly drift along doing thier own thing.
Now, having said that - Pippa gets glazed as 'alt-right' more than she deserves, mostly because the overton window has shifted so badly that someone talking like they're posting on 4chan pre-2016 is going to get people flocking to them in releif to get away from the overall cultural longhouse, so to speak. So while she can be spicy, if you're someone who's been following her for a long period of time, you've probably noticed that she's been purposefully dialing things back, not for herself per se but because she wants to save all her friends the grief and aggravation of dealing with Pippa being a little unhinged. She's quite the sweetheart like that.
Now, there are a few other talents that are actually what people think Pippa is, but I'm not gonna say who they are.
Also, Phase Connect is... weird. That would require a thread on it's lonesome.
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The vast majority of these are indie, not corporate. That is, it's just a regular person who wants to be a streamer and using an anime avatar instead of showing their real face. Almost all of the corporations are too afraid of their image and the potential for being cancelled to let their employees express political views. With the exception of Phase Connect (which Pippa works for), which is much more hands off, though doesn't seem to actively encourage it.
But it's not like you need big corporate money to afford a Vtuber avatar, they're mostly there for handling marketing and sponsorships and stuff. All my experience with non-corporate Vtubers suggests they're the same as any other streamer. Some of them are probably grifting, some of them are not, and you can kind of get a partially accurate vibe check by watching them. It's imaginable that a woman who loves feminism would pretend to hate it just to be popular with men (though difficult, given the difficulties leftists have with understanding right-wing opinions), but it's also imaginable that a woman who hates feminism (they're rare, but they exist) would get on the internet and say so and then be popular with men. And then get signal boosted to the top. Once you start selecting for popularity, it's no longer a random sampling. And the authentic ones are much more likely have more interesting and insightful opinions and not get discovered.
Sure, if you pick literally any random supposedly based Vtuber with a true random sampling there's probably a non-negligible chance of them grifting. But if you pick one of the more well-known ones they're probably authentic. Obviously they want money too, which is why they have cute anime avatar with big boobs. But it's easier to do that with authentic opinions than grifted ones.
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