Pochi Calls Out Idol Corp

[Hff201]

This could have gone much worse for both parties, and while we have no way of knowing if she had any """encouragement""" to play nice in public, both sides' statements seem professional enough, and donors have the choice on whether they want her to have their money or not.

I stand by much of the criticism I've shared about Idol earlier in this thread, but I can appreciate that the announcement message wasn't a big power trip like the Riro one. Admittedly you'd have to be full-on retarded to try that again after how much attention Selen's termination from Nijisanji caught, the community's out for corpo blood these days.

 

[Superduper Samurai]

she had any """encouragement"""

In this situation one could even comfortably say (((encouragement)))

 

[Punished Lurker]

I know very little of Idol corp or Pochi, but from what I've seen in this thread I'm glad both parties managed to reach an amicable agreement and part ways in a professional way, It's honestly refreshing and welcome that a situation like this did not turn into another drama bomb after all the news in the past months

By the way, one of the few thing I know is that some of their talents like Pochi or Yuko have been taking long vacations or hiatus lately, does anyone know how long these breaks have been? and is there any other Idol talent who's doing the same?

 

[I Wanna Die]

I know very little of Idol corp or Pochi, but from what I've seen in this thread I'm glad both parties managed to reach an amicable agreement and part ways in a professional way, It's honestly refreshing and welcome that a situation like this did not turn into another drama bomb after all the news in the past months

By the way, one of the few thing I know is that some of their talents like Pochi or Yuko have been taking long vacations or hiatus lately, does anyone know how long these breaks have been? and is there any other Idol talent who's doing the same?

Nikki took a long break before her redebut.

Momo's on a long break but it's due to some serious health issues and I believe she hopes to return soon.

Coni's currently on break but it's only like a week.

 

[agility_]

Yuko came back recently and has been streaming regularly, it seems she wants to shift to a more vlog style of streams with voiceovers, something she mentioned was a lot more comfortable doing. I haven't seen her post IRL roommate stuff like her shoes or legs like she used to, maybe she's really intending on appealing to a less coomer audience.

 

[RestlessRain]

It's good that Aviel managed to turn a major disaster into a minor disaster, but this really should not have happened in the first place. A hands-off approach really didn't work for Aviel or Pochi. Instead, there should have been clear communication far beforehand that previous donothon goals need to be completed before starting a new donothon. Oh, and Idol Corp should have set aside a portion of Pochi's part of the donothon money that she could draw from when she had invoices to pay for stuff for donothon goals, and that she would receive the remainder once the donothon was complete.

And that's not even considering how Pochi didn't fulfil her donothon goals in her past life. How did that not raise a giant red flag with Idol Corp management?

 

[Abomination]

Her statement

Spoiler: Image

Lol, what a turn-around of a statement. It's almost like if she would have actually worked on communicating properly, rather than jump the gun to release a statement, things wouldn't have gotten so stupid. I bet if her and Idol parted ways like this without the shitshow she kicked up, there wouldn't have been as many discussions revolving around her failure to deliver on donothon rewards in multiple instances and making her look bad as a whole.

I'm sure she'll end up with plenty of the donothon money. Some people may ask for refunds, but I'm sure she'll make out with the majority of the funds.

On Idol's side, they handled it as well as anyone could have in a situation like this, so good on them. She gets whatever money isn't refunded, and they cut out someone who seems to be a source of headache for them. However, this whole thing shouldn't have even happened, so hopefully Idol is working on making sure things like this don't happen again.

 

[Mehk]

I wonder if we'll see a letter of how much was refunded and how much is given to her from the donothon. Though thinking about it now, whatever happened with the dono money from Ky0resu' donothon? I know they offered refunds, but whatever happened to the rest of the money from that? Think they passed it on, or kept it? This also makes me wonder if possibly idol will jew her out of some money by saying it was "refunded" but they keep a good chunk of it for their warchest.

 

[Hff201]

Lol, what a turn-around of a statement. It's almost like if she would have actually worked on communicating properly, rather than jump the gun to release a statement, things wouldn't have gotten so stupid. I bet if her and Idol parted ways like this without the shitshow she kicked up, there wouldn't have been as many discussions revolving around her failure to deliver on donothon rewards in multiple instances and making her look bad as a whole.

On the other hand, if she hadn't raised a fuss there's a chance Idol wouldn't have let her leave with such a favourable arrangement. The public attention on the situation pretty much forced Aviel to play nice, whether he wanted to or not.

 

[tectalharp]

On the other hand, if she hadn't raised a fuss there's a chance Idol wouldn't have let her leave with such a favourable arrangement. The public attention on the situation pretty much forced Aviel to play nice, whether he wanted to or not.

This seems to line up in my opinion she tried to work it out since late January with Idol willing to compromise Aviel knew she needed the money so wouldn't budge she basically said "fuck it" released her statement and some screenshots Aviel finally realized he had to do SOMETHING and they were able to quickly come to an agreement that made them both look good but that's just my interpretation

 

[RestlessRain]

This seems to line up in my opinion she tried to work it out since late January

Man, it's crazy how you managed to timeline that with no information.

 

[tectalharp]

Man, it's crazy how you managed to timeline that with no information.

It's going mainly off of what we have been told by Fen and what we've seen it's why I called it an interpretation of what I currently think happened not claiming to know exactly I could be completely wrong

 

[Abomination]

On the other hand, if she hadn't raised a fuss there's a chance Idol wouldn't have let her leave with such a favourable arrangement. The public attention on the situation pretty much forced Aviel to play nice, whether he wanted to or not.

It's hard to say without knowing what went on behind the scenes, but in this scenario, it probably would have made Idol/Aviel look worse and would have given Pochi more ammo against them. On the heels of the absolute shit show that was Niji's recent handling and Idol's own cracks beginning to show recently, I would hope Aviel is smart enough to realize it's in his best interest to come to a resolution that would benefit both parties so that public perception doesn't turn against him.

Either way, I'd say Idol came out looking good in this case. Pochi seems to have gotten what she wanted from Idol, but information about her lack of honoring donothon goals has been a discussion because of the way she handled it. If she plans to continue vtubing, I'm sure she'll have fans that'll follow her, but there may be some not willing to give her anymore chances to not deliver again.

 

[fipet11842]

Gonna quote myself, the generic response is the sign of a maturing business.

I think this will be a test case of my theory about vtuber businesses maturation, i.e. setting up business processes. NijiEN + Idol posting twitter firings with extreme levels of detail about why they graduated(fired) a talent are extremely unprofessional and no mature business handles things that way. Idol's response here will pave the way for their representation of their business. If they go the wamen route and post extreme levels of detail I would consider their business as dead. If you post Hololive level details of "Mel did some shit and unfortunately we had to term her (((" then you're good.

This is what you want to see. They have a process setup for dealing with this shit rather than a knee-jerk response.
Also look at the Pochi response, it's obviously written by Idol, white background, black text, same font, same vagueness.

• We talked
• We had some miscommunication(?)
• We worked things(?) out

What didn't happen?

• Rapid response
• Combative response trying to deny everything the person said and throwing them under the bus with some 9001 bullet point shit
• Some more seething that doesn't help

I think there is some overall benefit to donothons, provided you do them sparingly, and make sure to fulfill any obligations you make during the donothon. You get extra subs and boosted in the algorithm, especially if you couple the donothon with ads. You get a boost in terms of income, and you also can encourage extra donations or people who don't normally donate to donate, provided there are good incentive goals. You have a point that some people might just donate in advance of donating later, but I feel that many people will just donate extra, and you might have circumstances where you'd appreciate the cash right now rather than portioned out over several weeks or months instead.

This is stupid. You've mostly considered rewards, and downplayed risk.
Positives:

• Extra subs
• Boosted in algo
• Boost in (front-loaded?) income
• Extra donations, esp from people who don't normally donate (maybe)

Barely stated negatives:

• Do them sparingly (you didn't define what sparingly is or why)
• Front-loading, some might stop donating normally (no concrete #s and you downplay it by saying they'll just double donate)

I'll rephrase it again but call it a "i will do some work in the future-o-thon" and think about how that works with mentally ill vtubers. "I will give you money now and you do some shit in the future" is stupid. In a lot of countries it can be considered fraud. It's also a huge risk. What if the person gets sick? What if they die? Your company now has to deal with that shit and it costs staff time which costs you money and focus. And supposedly these "donothons" give _all_ of the money to the talent, so you're siphoning money from the business to the talent in a way that isn't super visible.

Edit to prevent myself from double posting: Ask yourself why Hololive doesn't have donothons? Presumably with the amount of talents they have at least one talent should have probably asked for one? Reason is it's probably banned and was decided against after some people who have functioning brains realized that asking for money from shit tons of random people and then delivering on vague promises and subsequently having to unwind the cash payments due to unfulfilled promises _is not worth it_. It's why they have very limited ones like Cali doing the drawings (which probably had staff assigned to her to force her to keep to it).

 

[Nigel Nigerman]

It's good that Aviel managed to turn a major disaster into a minor disaster, but this really should not have happened in the first place. A hands-off approach really didn't work for Aviel or Pochi. Instead, there should have been clear communication far beforehand that previous donothon goals need to be completed before starting a new donothon. Oh, and Idol Corp should have set aside a portion of Pochi's part of the donothon money that she could draw from when she had invoices to pay for stuff for donothon goals, and that she would receive the remainder once the donothon was complete.

And that's not even considering how Pochi didn't fulfil her donothon goals in her past life. How did that not raise a giant red flag with Idol Corp management?

Aviel's too busy sucking his own cock and drinking his cum to be ready for these kind of things. He's too busy preaching "Muh corpo is sooooooo much better because we pay the girls right and muh talents freedumbz, hur durr" that he forgot to practice what he preach. I am somewhat happy that they didn't "Niji'd" the graduation announcement (fucking hell, that term fits so well) and cooler heads prevailed.

Though I worry for the girls right now. Idol is in their stumbling phase like Hololive was in 2019-2022. Another Riro-level yab in the coming months will erase the momentum they had built up. Aviel should be in manager-hiring mode right now, God know when another menhera moment happens with the girls.

 

[Thomas Talus]

This is what happen when you dont give me Idol ES aviel, i will continue to use Shamanistic rituals to get every talent until Idol ES debut

You best keep your plantain-picking hands off of Roca.

 

[Hff201]

I'll rephrase it again but call it a "i will do some work in the future-o-thon" and think about how that works with mentally ill vtubers. "I will give you money now and you do some shit in the future" is stupid. In a lot of countries it can be considered fraud. It's also a huge risk. What if the person gets sick? What if they die? Your company now has to deal with that shit and it costs staff time which costs you money and focus.

I don't entirely disagree, but it's worth considering that up-front crowdfunding isn't a new thing by any means, it's the very foundation of services like Kickstarter and Patreon where rewards are offered for reaching donation thresholds. I know Kickstarter at least has some legalise clauses stating that donating doesn't a guarantee a reward, and while I haven't followed Idol's donothons closely, if Aviel's not retarded he'll have done the same - so it's not fraud in a legal sense, but it's obviously a huge ethical faux pas not to deliver on a promise to a fan.

What complicates it in this instance is that with a company backing them, it's honestly anyone's guess whether it'll be the talent or corpo who catches the public scrutiny that day. Given the murky situation I think Idol have done the right thing in promising refunds.

I'm sure we'll definitely see the Spoony movie one of these days, right

And supposedly these "donothons" give _all_ of the money to the talent, so you're siphoning money from the business to the talent in a way that isn't super visible.

Just to clarify, the thing about donothons giving them all the money means that Idol cover the costs of producing the donothon rewards; they still take their usual 60/40 split from the donations themselves, so while the company are still taking a bit of a hit if they've already paid out for the WIP donothon projects, trying to take the money and run like this wouldn't be a particularly reliable way to skim their cut like it might seem.

Edit to prevent myself from double posting: Ask yourself why Hololive doesn't have donothons? Presumably with the amount of talents they have at least one talent should have probably asked for one? Reason is it's probably banned and was decided against after some people who have functioning brains realized that asking for money from shit tons of random people and then delivering on vague promises and subsequently having to unwind the cash payments due to unfulfilled promises _is not worth it_. It's why they have very limited ones like Cali doing the drawings (which probably had staff assigned to her to force her to keep to it).

Realistically, it's probably not a conversation that comes up as much within Holo since, from the outside at least, it seems like everyone's financially comfortable. I don't have exact figures to hand but Idol's a small-mid corpo pulling small-mid corpo figures, while the most superchatted channel list on Playboard etc. compromises almost entirely of Holo channels. Not to mention a Holo talent who needed to pull in some extra cash for one reason or another could just pick up an extra brand deal or two rather than committing to more work, since they'll have far more lucrative sponsorship offers available to them.

 

[MerelyTourist]

TLDR: Girl successfully soft-extorted money from the jew. Jew is sane person and understand that by taking a stance he will lose many times more than donothon sum.

 

[fipet11842]

I don't entirely disagree, but it's worth considering that up-front crowdfunding isn't a new thing by any means, it's the very foundation of services like Kickstarter and Patreon where rewards are offered for reaching donation thresholds. I know Kickstarter at least has some legalise clauses stating that donating doesn't a guarantee a reward, and while I haven't followed Idol's donothons closely, if Aviel's not retarded he'll have done the same - so it's not fraud in a legal sense, but it's obviously a huge ethical faux pas not to deliver on a promise to a fan.

What complicates it in this instance is that with a company backing them, it's honestly anyone's guess whether it'll be the talent or corpo who catches the public scrutiny that day. Given the murky situation I think Idol have done the right thing in promising refunds. Just to clarify, the thing about donothons giving them all the money means that Idol cover the costs of producing the donothon rewards; they still take their usual 60/40 split from the donations themselves, so while the company are still taking a bit of a hit if they've already paid out for the WIP donothon projects, trying to take the money and run like this wouldn't be a particularly reliable way to skim their cut like it might seem.

I'm sure we'll definitely see the Spoony movie one of these days, right


Realistically, it's probably not a conversation that comes up as much within Holo since, from the outside at least, it seems like everyone's financially comfortable. I don't have exact figures to hand but Idol's a small-mid corpo pulling small-mid corpo figures, while the most superchatted channel list on Playboard etc. compromises almost entirely of Holo channels. Not to mention a Holo talent who needed to pull in some extra cash for one reason or another could just pick up an extra brand deal or two rather than committing to more work, since they'll have far more lucrative sponsorship offers available to them.

Hope I don't come off as combative but you don't know what you're talking about. Kickstarter/Patreon do not allow LLCs (acronym may vary based on country but the concept is the same--an entity to limit liability) on their platform. This is for very good reasons. You're trying to compare separate legal entities in ways that aren't comparable. Kickstarter/Patreon witholding money from a "sole proprietor" vs Idol witholding money from a contractor are completely different. Also the size of the companies and their ability to deal with reversing payments is different.

Just as an example, let's create a simplified """donothon""":

• 5 donors
• 5 tiers of Dono promises
• The promises are from $1/$10/$100/$1,000/$10,000
• The actual promises don't matter, you can make them up
• One person donates $1, second donates $10, third $100, fourth $1,000, last $10,0000
• Total donated is $11,111
• 3/5 promises get delivered and the talent leaves/dies/terminated/whatever

How do you refund the money?
40% back to each donor? What if it was the promises that the $10k/$1k/$100 guys donated to that were delivered? How do you handle that?
Is it 40% to each donor, or 40% back each indiviudal donor?

This is why if you have a brain you don't do donothons. The way 99% of financial transactions in the professional world work are that some work is done and then afterwards you bill for that work. At best you have something like a retainer payment. Outside of that you would have extremely large highly legalized contracts for things such as multi-billion dollar investments for things such as factories or other capex heavy investments.

I think I'm going into too much autism by this point but maybe someone finds it useful.

 

[MerelyTourist]

Usually you pay materials before, work after. Or do monthly/weekly/hourly bills for your time working on the project, regardless of result. Not applicable to dontons.