Moving Forward

The dastardly NBinted hath returned to address some things

This definitely hasn’t gone how I thought it would. This account keeps growing, and quite frankly it fills me with a lot of feelings. On one hand, I’ve received a lot of positive comments and support. Made some cool friends. Even pushed on some bad actors to change the way they do things successfully. On the flipside, it’s nerve-wracking to know there are semi major figures who are at least tangentially aware that I exist. Some of them like what I post, but it’s safe to say others probably don’t. In light of all that, I think it’s time for me to reflect on how I do things and make some changes.

Put simply, I’m gonna try to be more careful with what I say. I’m not going to lie or bite my tongue about shit that sucks. At the same time, I don’t want to risk upsetting people I respect or causing unnecessary harm.

There are way more VTubers who I love and respect than ones who I hate. WAY MORE. Even a lot of the ones I dislike and criticise are people I respect as creators and sincerely don’t have ill will towards. Sometimes I’ll say something spicy or give a half-baked version of my actual feelings and the next day I’m like “I don’t even care any more”. And yet that take will haunt weird social media comments about me to the end of my days and be twisted into dramatic bad faith assumptions.

As silly as the assumptions are, I do recognise that I can come off as a dick. As a small account that’s not the end of the world (and in the grand scheme of things I’m still a blip on the radar if that). But I know Twitter makes sure that big VTubers can and do see things. Because of that, and because I know my account may get bigger still, I definitely need to watch what I say a little bit more.

I have issues with how criticism goes here. Other hobbies usually allow fans to casually say stuff like “this person sucks” or “I don’t like this thing this person did”. On the flipside, if you have a thimble of visibility in the VTuber space, some people will never forget the time you said something bad about their oshi. It’s a bad and unhealthy reality. Unfortunately it’s the reality we live in.

I criticise creators far beyond my level for their selective apathy with how their words affect people. I hate that they get to be treated with respect because the rancid stuff they say is within the accepted fandom framework. It’s okay to talk about this controversial topic, but not that one. It’s fine to talk shit about this person who everyone is currently laughing at, but not that person because they’re friends with x, y and z. You can be a miserable asshole seeped in drama and negativity who constantly starts problems, and you can be treated with far more respect than a genuinely kind and professional person who rubbed the wrong person the wrong way. That fucking sucks. I’m not gonna mince words.

Regardless… I should still cover my ass a little more. The bigger I get, the risk of me hurting people only grows. I don’t want to be guilty of the things I call out others on. Beneath all the shit I say and do, I sincerely care a lot about this. I love this hobby and I love so many people in this industry despite everything that upsets me. I want to be a presence that can actually help people a tiny bit in the broader scheme of things.

Every time someone thanks me for what I do, it makes all the shit I deal with worth it. I’m still a little ant in the overall VTuber universe. But whatever little power I have, I hope I can actually be of use to some people.

So uhh… what does this actually mean? I get this is all kind of vague and broad. For one thing, I might start using this site a little more. Having a space where I actually curate, proof-read and organise the shit that goes on in my brain helps me make sense of things and also provides an archive that’s less fragile than disparate tweets and bickering. Writing is a huge passion of mine, but the need for me to pay bills and work a full-time job has definitely taken some time and energy from me over the years. So I turn to blurting out tweets where I’m less anxious about the quality of what I put out. Sometimes that’s good, and sometimes it’s not so good. I make no promises about the frequency of my output, but I hope I can actually start posting things here more.

I said that I would use this site to focus more on the stuff I enjoy than drama. While I still do want to do positive stuff, I don’t want to force that on myself. I recognise that tweets can get lost in the void. Posting more stuff here will allow me to link people to stuff I’ve talked about more easily. I can properly proof-read things and make sure that I have all my sources in order too! If I talk about drama, it won’t be slop or microaggressions. It’ll be stuff that I actually have real things to say about, or just stuff that entertains me.

Getting people to actually click through and read long articles is a bigger ask than tweets of course, and inevitably there’ll probably be less eyes on it. For that reason I’ll still be talking about things on Twitter dot com. I’ll still be rambling and talking shit. It’ll just be a different format.

So yeah! That’s my ramble about where things are at for me now. I’m gonna end it here because I don’t want to go on forever. In short, I’m gonna be writing more and I’m gonna dial down the shit talking on Twitter at least by a little bit. I hope you’ll join me on this journey into the slightly less known!