VTubers: Para-Social Relationships with Simulacra on Virtual Hyperreality

Edited by Thomas Michael Covert-Pareja

Abstract

VTuber is a phenomenon that has gained popularity in the last ten years over the internet. They are fictional personas embodied by digital graphics played by an actor, hosting interactive live streams involving bi-directional interaction with thousands of viewers. Many of the viewers developed para-social relationships with their favourite VTubers through watching and interacting with them through the digital media. This paper examines the VTuber phenomenon through a reading of Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, which introduced the concept of hyperreality as a generation by models of a real without being rooted on profound reality. Two main arguments discussed are: that the viewer-VTuber relationship is between the viewer and the Person Behind as individuated from both the fictional character and the actor, and that the Person Behind is hyperreal. A deceptive effect brought up by the VTubers as simulacra is examined through Baudrillard’s example of a hyperreality. The hyperreality of VTubers opens up the possibility for the simulacra to precede the real.