As a former vTuber fan, it does take a certain kind of person to make money from loneliness. You watch people empty their bank accounts from your direct actions.
But a lot of the time they drink the Kool-Aid too. They think they deserve that money. They think it’s just a donation and not a person giving away all their disposable income.
It
is a donation, though-- and I say that as someone who also has some level of revulsion to the virtual idol business on account of registering it as monetizing, reinforcing, and encouraging loneliness in perhaps a more intimate way than the conventional idol business.
I don't think the majority of them ever get put in a situation where they have to contemplate the money being spent on them. Most donations are anywhere from $0.99 to $100, there's often several of them from several people through a multi-hour stream, and while they interact with the people in the chatroom, they're also occupied with the very activities that bring people to their streams. It's one thing if someone drops the cost of a working car all at once, but how likely is it that anyone-- in a high energy stream, with a high velocity chat-- would realize that a specific person, out of numerous donators, made several donations that
altogether amounted to the cost of a working car? What's the likelihood that it'll be obvious enough if there's a price minimum for having your chat read, but they never hit that minimum in any of their several donations? I'm sure that at least Youtube has a donation price cap built into their system, too, so if someone's determined to drop $6,000 dollars on a v-girl, they have to do it through several donations anyways.
Still, my issue is more with the concept of v-tubing and e-girling (or, I guess, "e-personing", but I'm unclear as to whether the dynamics are the same with male streamers) in general, than any specific monetary mechanics.
That aside...
All they need to do is see his bank statement and they'd lose interest pretty quick.
Putting aside that they like him for his pitiful-cute adamance, Shigure's also a streamer, and that all three girls sexually harassed him as a kid?
At least one of them has, out loud, said they want to have his kids. Put a fork in 'em, they're done-- they're more likely to find themselves in competition with the v-girl, than anything. They already know they're competing with
some girl.
(I initially considered your observation as an imposition of real people behavior onto a comic narrative, but doing that just made me think that-- by that logic-- they could one day just become un-infatuated with him for no specific reason.)
