In my major Kirsche/Ana Valens write-up on the KiwiFarms I had a section I called "A Brief Aside On Politics In Vtubing". It feels worthwhile to post that here with this quote to use as a jumping point.
A Brief Aside on Politics in VTubing
Before we continue, I did want to touch base a bit more on the subject of Politics in VTubing. It's important to note that this phrase "Keep Politics Out Of Vtubing" is invoked often as a means to describe Kirsche and her content. She's a big fan of the above Sam Hyde quote, and so she has made pushing more and more to be unafraid to share her personal views through the years.
"Keeping Politics Out of VTubing" doesn't seem to apply to people who have the CORRECT politics. I want to show a couple of notable examples -
GamerSupps Partner Trickywi -
Tricky posted shortly after the Trump Assassination attempt with the above Tweet. Although she was eventually put on blast for it and walked it back, she seemingly suffered no public consequences for it. She is still actively selling merch with GamerSupps including her own flavor.
Roe v Wade -
When the Roe v Wade decision came out back in 2022, many non-politics vTuber shit up their timeline crying about this. The response from the crowd of course wasn't "Keep out Politics", it was "YAAAAAAAS KWEEEEEEEEEEEEEN".
Within the realm of vTubing as well, there are two major notable exceptions to the "keep politics out" mantra.
- NijisanjiEN - Nijisanji is the second largest vTuber corporation in the world. Their EN lineup is completely unabashadly progressive. The have gay people, they/thems, and they are not afraid to voice their opinions. As a special note, the previous Twitter Harasser "Bint" originated as what is colloquially known as a "NijiSister" - AKA a diehard Niji fan. Sisters defend Nijisanji them to the through all the worst Corporate actions they took - up to AND INCLUDING causing the working conditions for a talent to be so bad she attempted suicide TWICE.
- Midrange or smaller vTubers - Although the larger Indie vTubers largely keep their mouths shut, there is a layer of popularity (typically 1-2k viewers or below) where prog politics are fully supported. They may not talk about it all the time, but the aura of rot is there. You won't find a vTuber equivilent of Hasan, but you'll find tons of commies the smaller and smaller you go in the Indie scene,
This all despite the fact Kirsche works VERY hard to keep her politics segregated to her own channel. If she collabs with other vTuber, she doesn't bring up politics unless someone else talks about something first. If she raids people, she will outright ban people if they bring up politics in the raid target's channel. Hell, she used to raid prayersfromabigail aka Sister Abigail. Sister Abbi is an ACTUAL LUTHERAN CHRISTIAN VTUBER. She would have legit sermons and spread the word of God on Twitch. And all the money she made from the streams would be donated to mission work. When Kirsche raided Abbi, if you so much as said a swear word and she recognized your name you were banned from her community with no chance of appeal.
But I digress. It's pretty easy to see people were basically petrified to support her publicly. Most of the support she ended up getting came from OUTSIDE first, which in turn allowed support to come from WITHIN the vTuber community.
