@mer@shrine.moe I'm personally not into the whole parasocial girlfriend experience and whatever.
I mostly just like the clips, songs and shitposts. Kinda in a similar way to the touhou fandom from back in the day (both started on /jp/ so figures...)
@SuperDicq sorry, I really can't vibe with vtubers not because of the aesthetic tho but because I can't vibe with streamer culture in general so I do respect the memes somewhat
@lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me@mer@shrine.moe Even though I wouldn't mind giving money to some vtubers that I like I would not do it in such a way that would give Google a share of the money.
Someone else who does pay for this has thankfully ripped it for preservation and sharing. I am just sharing it again here.
@lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me@mer@shrine.moe I "pirate" almost everything, not because I can't afford it, but because I think any sort of DRM is unethical. If I can't own something I will not pay for it.
@SuperDicq@mer Yeah, same, pretty sure I'd have thrown a lot more money at them if they'd all publish DRM-free music files on international sites and membership on something like liberapay or Hololive's own thing (Google stuff and Patreon being out for me).
@lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me@mer@shrine.moe I would purchase Hololive merch but I haven't seen a lot of the good merch being imported to my local conventions (Netherlands and Germany) unfortunately.
Actually to be honest the quality of dealers at European conventions has been in decline in the past decade.
I think the biggest issue is that most of the dealers that are at anime conventions here nowadays are the same exact dealers you find at Comic Con. They will also sell shit like Capeshit merch, FunkoPops and DnD dice at the same booth.
As a pretty hardcore otaku I think it is really sad to see that all of the western "geek" subcultures have kind of combined in this regard and the good stuff once actually imported from Japan that we actually want has kind of disappeared.
I remember when you could actually buy imported hentai doujins from last year's Comiket at cons. Also Touhou music and Initial D model kits and shit like that. I no longer see any of that here now.
@SuperDicq@mer Yeah, I'd also buy some Hololive Merch but import tax being half of the price just sucks.
As for anime conventions… I more go to small local ones so imports are rare, it's more a lot of local artists and artisans, which is pretty cool for non-merch kind of stuff. I went to Japan Expo / Comic Con (merged in the same place lol) once like a decade ago and it was neat but I hate Paris with passion.
@lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me@mer@shrine.moe Ah yes local artists selling prints and stickers and such is nice. There are a lot more of them at conventions now than there used to be.
Still sad about the actual good import resellers being gone however.