Reminds me of the virtual YouTubers.

They are sort of like streamers with webcams, but they do not expose their real image. Instead they make up a fictional backstory and have an artist create a visual representation of them that gets motion/face tracked. It feels like an offshoot of traditional Japanese idols, with the same merchandising and live events, but with a totally different distribution method.

Personally, as someone that doesn't understand the appeal of real-life idols, I end up watching a lot of the virtual people because even though I understand there is a system behind it, it does fill in the desires that stem from being lonely. Yes, it is not a substitute for human contact, and I am fully cognizant of this every time I watch, but the most interesting parts for me come from the interaction between the different streamers instead of the streamers with the audience anyways. They frequently do collaborations, and eventually there comes a weird sort of mythology that emerges where you and the other streamers gradually understand the most memorable qualities of each (one is perverted, one is the most "idol-like", one is a fluent speaker of English and has knowledge of American meme culture, and so on). Sometimes they also exude a form of the "heel and face" aspects of professional wrestling. Thus when you come back for more you see the same group of characters in new situations, and the backstory you have previously built up in your mind increases your interest in what happens. It feels kind of like a long running soap opera, or indeed professional wrestling, except with much more emphasis on personalized interaction and a lot of people yelping at each other in a foreign language. That's another thing. The fact that most of the members do not speak English and there are no official translations of most of the content gives the experience an odd foreign quality where the streamers will desperately try to translate things or greet people in broken English, which they promptly forget, in order to "summon the foreigner people". That in itself becomes a meme that the group capitalizes on heavily.

I think the fact that you do not see a real person sets your expectations that you are watching someone with a fictional backstory better, and even so you can still enjoy the things they talk about. Unlike actors, they frequently talk about things like going to the convenience store to buy snacks or cook things or discuss that one time that one member paid for the bill for another and then forgot to leave enough for the subway home, in the context of the actual people going incognito and doing things off-stream. Even supposing it was scripted, it does not feel like it at all, more like they were given a general list of topics and free reign to more or less day what they want. It gives it a very human quality that static television or movies or idol concerts do not usually provide, and I think that is the key thing that people (me included) keep coming back for. The virtualness also implies that you do not necessarily have to "sell your body" to make it big as an entertainer, which I think is a relatively recent innovation.

Then there are things that happen like a steamer sneezing triggering a flood of donations, some over $100. The donators are very concious of the image of their kind that gets posted on the Internet. In fact some of the streamers themselves go to great length to satirize the donation culture, the CEO of the talent company that manages them, and "real" idol groups that existed before, also categorizing each character by different dimensions (most to least pure, etc.). It is a very integrated system, and I can easily underand how it can suck people in, having been sucked in myself for a while.

That does not change the fact that a system still exists however. Recently there was a very high profile "graduation" of a member who hadn't even been streaming for two weeks over a doxing scandal, which was really a cover for "firing to save face." It really does remind you that it's just the entertainment business in a different manifestation.

7 out of the 10 steamers with the highest donation amount on YouTube are virtual YouTubers. There is clearly a market being tapped here. Whether or not people should or ought to, if they are "slaves to loneliness," is a different question I don't really want to pursue.