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What happens when technological advancements bring sci-fi entities to life in a real-imagined scenario? Enter the VTuber, short for Virtual Youtuber, a type of content producer that blurs the boundaries between the real, the virtual, and the fantastic—using motion capture technology to create 2D/3D characters for live streaming purposes while gaming, singing, talking, doing other forms of live creation, etc. Considering this new space that VTubers embody as a form of negotiation between ustopia (Atwood, Dire cartographies: the roads to Ustopia—The Handmaid’s Tale and the MaddAddam Trilogy. Vintage Books Penguin Random House, 2011b) and affective heterotopia (Foucault, Of other spaces. In: Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité, 1984; Teodorescu, Japanmania în spațiul cultural românesc. University of Bucharest Press, 2019), this chapter further explores English-speaking Vtube collectives such as Vshojo or Hololive and their fandom(s) to uncover how anime-esque “avatars” fuel transhuman practices in a technologically mediated form. Sharon Kinsella and her concept of kawaii—the cute aesthetic closely associated with Japanese popular culture and its character designs—as “anti-social” and a means to escape real life (Kinsella, Cuties in Japan. In: Women, media and consumption in Japan. Routledge, 1995) also become instrumental in the critical analysis of the VTubers’ performance and their fan practices as a hybrid framework of both popular culture consumerism and counterculture. From identity performance to escapism, from utopic dreams to consumerist dystopia, how is the Vtubing phenomenon shaping the world of today and tomorrow?

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Between Ustopia and the Affective Heterotopia: Vtubing and its Fandom

  • 章节

  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Alice Teodorescu

摘要

What happens when technological advancements bring sci-fi entities to life in a real-imagined scenario? Enter the VTuber, short for Virtual Youtuber, a type of content producer that blurs the boundaries between the real, the virtual, and the fantastic—using motion capture technology to create 2D/3D characters for live streaming purposes while gaming, singing, talking, doing other forms of live creation, etc. Considering this new space that VTubers embody as a form of negotiation between ustopia (Atwood, Dire cartographies: the roads to Ustopia—The Handmaid’s Tale and the MaddAddam Trilogy. Vintage Books Penguin Random House, 2011b) and affective heterotopia (Foucault, Of other spaces. In: Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité, 1984; Teodorescu, Japanmania în spațiul cultural românesc. University of Bucharest Press, 2019), this chapter further explores English-speaking Vtube collectives such as Vshojo or Hololive and their fandom(s) to uncover how anime-esque “avatars” fuel transhuman practices in a technologically mediated form. Sharon Kinsella and her concept of kawaii—the cute aesthetic closely associated with Japanese popular culture and its character designs—as “anti-social” and a means to escape real life (Kinsella, Cuties in Japan. In: Women, media and consumption in Japan. Routledge, 1995) also become instrumental in the critical analysis of the VTubers’ performance and their fan practices as a hybrid framework of both popular culture consumerism and counterculture. From identity performance to escapism, from utopic dreams to consumerist dystopia, how is the Vtubing phenomenon shaping the world of today and tomorrow?