Virtual producer & loremaster behind your oshi's personal stories. ・IRL @heyacazz ・Model @CarillusArt & @iron_vertex 💚 ・work @heylorecrafters @teatomesstudio
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My un-NDA'ed story of working in online entertainment, as promised.
Given how many people resort to whisper networks when talking about work conditions, because speaking up publicly in this space is risky - I realize talking about things like this will paint a massive target on my back.
But after the recent agency + merch company collapses, and seeing people ask "why doesn't anyone call bad actors out publicly until it's too late?" - this is part of why I'm posting. And for the record: I exhausted every avenue available to me at the time to resolve things internally first.
Some industry staff might side-eye me for "not having discretion" and deem me a risk just for posting this, and I don't expect everyone to believe me either. Which I get - the people on the other side of this will have their own view of things.
Still, I'm hoping this story will reach the people who need it most. Maybe it'll help people already in this scene recognize red flags, whether in how they're treating people - or how they're being treated.
***
I was scouted for and offered a "project manager" role a few years out of uni, while I was working as a research assistant by day, and a freelance editor + online community manager by night. I was frank with them: "I have no PM experience".
That didn't stop the company leads from begging me for over a year to join full-time, with promises they'd "pay and look after me properly". I was cautious about why they were so keen, because again - no PM experience.
I did eventually take the leap - and while there were good moments, and some degree of struggle is expected in any job...what happened is quite the laundry list.
When I was there, I:
- received no structure or expectations for skill or biz development - just "trust me" and "we're loyal, so we expect that from you"
- was told "I pay you so much to figure shit out" when I asked uppers for guidance to calibrate to expectations
- was told "you don't put in enough effort" or "you're not passionate enough" whenever work I'd had to figure out alone (or was still waiting on direction for) was deemed "not good enough"
- was told "the reason you're not getting anywhere and you're being shat on by uppers is because you have an ego and you're lazy" - right after I raised concerns about quality slippage due to scope creep being requested on a crunched project
- had my job scope balloon over 4+ full-time years as many new initiatives launched that I had to manage, without pay to match (I never got an official JD - this is partly on me for not spotting the red flags)
- ended up working 50-60 hours/week across those initiatives (both internal and external), going beyond a typical PM's remit because I was "being paid so much"
- was denied extra support staff to reduce my load for that same "paid so much" reason
- watched the one underpaid dedicated support staffer I managed to get (and trained for a year before they left) get treated the same way by uppers ("you're paid so well, a million people would kill to be in your position, why can't you do more/better")
- had uppers tell other staff I "did nothing" despite all of that, and was told "doubt you're actually working 8 hours a day" (it was more because I was often exhausted and slow)
- was forbidden from having my own projects outside the role under my name (ones that wouldn't have competed with the company's direction anyway) - either because "it's risky making it out on your own, why not focus on your role with us and grow this company", OR because "we pay you so much" and wanting something outside of the job was "ungrateful"
- was regularly threatened with being fired or having my pay cut - but told "we don't want to do this, but threats are the only way we can get you to actually perform"
- actually had my pay cut as "punishment" because I posted something general about what stressful workplace dynamics look like, and had to beg after 6 months for it to be restored (there was no such thing as a formal code of conduct)
- was told there were no yearly increments for salaried staff - raises had to be requested and justified, and "obviously" weren't automatic
- watched anyone who asked for a raise (whether salaried or freelance) get called "not good enough" on undefined whims, to justify depressed pay and verbal abuse - while unbudgeted "bonuses" went to whoever was the favorite of the hour
- saw no defined way of recognizing actual impact (because so many management outcomes are invisible)
- was told, when I pointed all this out, that my pay (no medical or pension, btw) was "generous" and that asking for more was "disloyal"
- was not allowed to talk to anyone else in the company, let alone industry friends, if I had problems - because that would be "gossiping", and "we wouldn't do that to you" - while they talked about me to others anyway. (I kept to it even without an NDA, because I had a weird heady mix of integrity out of "loyalty" and low self-esteem at the time)
- was told by others in the company (when I started to break my silence internally before leaving) that I was "just as toxic, what did you expect" - and at one point, "an imbecile"
- was told "if you leave, you won't make it elsewhere, you have nothing in this industry"
- was told when I was leaving, "if only you had more confidence"
- was earning just over 36k a year by the time I left - and that was after the one raise I had to beg for to keep up with inflation (I live in Singapore of all places.)
I'll be the first to admit I was (ironically) overpaid when I was recruited, given the company's inflow and my experience at the time - but massively underpaid by the time I left.
I was paid a monthly salary and referred to as an employee, with employee expectations - but in hindsight was actually legally a contractor - so no employee benefits or protections.
Realistically, looking at what the company was bringing in and all the stuff they were trying to do...I don't think they had the capacity, nor did they think to prioritize that sort of thing.
I don't claim to be the perfect "employee" - and on reflection, there's lots of stuff I did back then that I'm really not proud of. But I also know I did the best I could with what was afforded and "promised" to me, given the internal environment at the time.
And I'm still grateful for the initial "break" into the industry, and that most of it was remote (small mercies, though mostly because there was office money for leadership's own priorities...just not for the mostly underpaid Southeast Asian staff being put through the wringer, welp).
But no amount of pay was worth some of the horrors of that job, nor the opportunity cost of staying out of "loyalty".
Looking back, so much of it was exactly what I talked about in my first quote-reply to Dizzy's "lack of good managers in this scene" post - skill gaps and scope issues being framed as character flaws, with a heavy dose of shaming to match.
It took me a long time to finally break my silence to the right people - what came after is in the reply below, and I promise the payoff is positive! 👇
#RAINArambles
xitter.cf/RAINAplease/status/210…
I've been mulling on whether many of the people who have both the actual dedication/passion - never mind the competencies - to be good managers in VTubing/content creation would just rather work in other fields, simply because of how underpaid it can be here on the whole, given that this is a known "passion industry"... 🙁
Which is ironic, because you DO need some level of pragmatism to qualify as a good mane-san - but that's the kind of trait that would make you go "I need to eat first, doing this [full-time] isn't exactly sustainable." 🤷♀️
Also - many of the skills needed to be a good mane-san sometimes just get assumed to be personal character values, like "either you have it innately as a good person, or you don't and you're just lazy/malicious" - as if they're not actually learnable or teachable things.
But it's mostly just skill [gap] issues, and those CAN be fixed with time + the right (social) conditions.
Believe it or not:
- "Being organized" is a teachable skill.
- Diagnosing/problem solving is a teachable skill.
- Emotional resilience is a teachable skill (yeah, surprising! doesn't mean stuffing your emotions btw)
- Learning to read people is a teachable skill.
- Communicating well with different personality types + needs is a teachable skill (yes, even with many of the neurospicy people in this space!)
And they're all things you can find step-by-step frameworks for, and decision logic etc to learn about - not "character problems".
But there are a bajillion ways to do all these things, because there are SO many frameworks - and in a space that's full of neurospicy people, some of these frameworks/methodologies are written to suit different "normie" spaces/people.
To top it off, some resources don't always teach you the first-principles logic (the actual "why" behind these things) - many things can sometimes be a case of "because I said so", if it's being taught by a person.
That's an issue because many ND people may learn SOME of these things, hit a wall where they don't work (because they don't get taught the actual "why", so they can't deduce when something doesn't fit the criteria).
And even if they can tell there's a mismatch, they also don't always have the knowledge/confidence to know what to do differently.
So these "resources" may end up being just hard to understand to begin with, let alone apply. Or they just straight up don't work 1:1 with vtubing/content creation - simply because of the many different people and other situational/environmental differences you have to deal with.
That's also not including the challenge of knowing which teaching resources are actually legit, and not just some fly-by snippet on a YT short/reel designed to rack up views/likes...let alone even knowing the people who CAN actually help you build those skills up.
Because you can't practice these things in a vacuum (knowing the theory alone by taking courses is nowhere near enough), having the actual space - AND hands-on correction/feedback from others to do those skill-building reps to begin with - is so important.
But trying to find one with less of the shaming or traumatizing that's common in many spaces - where they just call that sort of shit "character building" for their people...that's another can of worms altogether.
Which makes the trial and error process quite demotivating for many backend staff who may have the passion to git gud, but really just need more help in building up the skillset to begin with.
Not to say that we should be sheltering/coddling the people who want to learn/go into this space to be backend staff - but given how many competent aspiring managers/support staff I've known who have quit, and have cited all those reasons above to me...
Well, let's just say that performers in this space aren't the only ones who should have their welfare throughout the learning process considered.
#RAINArambles
RAINA ライナ 🍱 lorecrafters retweeted
Translation: he makes your oshi's backstory make you cry.
If you haven't seen our script + direction work for @roychiato, check his 5.0 lore video work below!
RAINA ライナ 🍱 lorecrafters retweeted
I'm considering a rebrand:
Forward-deployed feelings engineer, where engineering meets chronology-based communication of intent. We e-meet aspiring entrepreneurs in the field of live asynchronous virtual entertainment, promoting story synergy to move people.
What do you think?
We’re building out a new program at @NotionHQ:
We call it field storytellers.
Where Internet filmmakers & creators meet local businesses. All around the world. They travel there to apprentice a business for a day/two, and come back with stories, documented and published.
Field storytelling is a bet that stories are best told and relationships are best built when it’s done out on the field.
If you’re great with a camera, love traveling to meet local businesses, and Internet savvy with an audience, reach out 🖤
Agree with every point here. Problem is, most creators hiring an editor can't evaluate any of it.
At most, they can feel when an edit works or doesn't, but can't fully say why. That's not enough to hire on.
This list is all craft knowledge and skill: intention, communication, reading the room - and being able to show all of that through video. It's mostly senior stuff that needs time and experience.
And there's a catch-22:
Can't evaluate editing → you have to trust your editor → the editors worth trusting cost real money → the cheap ones, you can't evaluate.
Toxena's bonus tip in the replies is a good example. Knowing the Kuleshov effect is a great sign - but to check for it, a creator has to know what it actually means and why it matters. And plenty of editors already apply it on instinct, without even knowing that it's got a fancy name.
If you treat knowing the name as a box to tick (easy to do when it's on a checklist), you'll miss good editors.
You might also end up hiring bad ones who are essentially "posers", simply because they can spew fancy editing jargon to sound smart - without being able to deliver on it.
(A test edit helps, admittedly - but only if you can judge it. Told you it was a catch-22.)
"But RAINA, I CAN evaluate editing!"
Okay, then - there's a high chance you've edited for yourself in the past. And if you don't have the time or ability to teach an editor your taste + judgement, you need one who already gets it - which means weeding out the good from the bad on VGen/in your replies/in your DMs.
Half the time, it ends in “I might as well do it myself.”
(That's a trap, btw. It's a delegation and documentation problem: spend the time once writing down what you want, instead of constantly fixing what you didn't get during every video. Refine it as you go.)
Or you haven't actually edited video before, and you might not understand what it takes to execute an edit well.
Spoiler: it costs more time and money than you expect.
With cheap editors, the time cost climbs even higher: they're still learning the tools, so they end up manually rawdogging what a plugin could do, or burn hours trying to wrangle one they've never used. Then there's your end: all the revisions and notes you gotta do.
This knowledge gap is why audiences for shows, games and the like sometimes get called "entitled": they may be right about taste and quality, but way out on what's reasonable for production volume, speed and cost.
An editor who’s built that craft knowledge - AND can reproduce it consistently, on a schedule - is not going to be cheap. If they are, they’re underpaid AF.
(Yes, even by VTubing standards - where rates for quality editing and audio are already undervalued.)
I've seen listings asking for editors who can "produce without guidance" for ~$20 a short. That's editor + creative/marketing director at editor rates. Someone still has to make the director calls (judgement, taste, what the video's actually for).
If you're not providing guidance, you're outsourcing all of that to your editor-slash-director. And no, "make it more grand/cinematic" isn't direction or guidance. (If your editor can understand that, I sure hope you're paying them properly.)
Poaching works to a degree (so does the "more ethical" option of asking for recommendations), because you're borrowing another creator's judgement on who a good editor is. But that judgement was tuned to their channel's goals, work style and skillset - not yours.
You still have to know what you want from the editor. Hiring a band's drummer doesn't automagically get you the band's sound - that's made up by the whole band, not one player.
And just so we're clear: not even Travis Barker (of Blink-182 fame) can save a lead guitarist who can't play in time, or an off-key singer who hits notes only dogs can hear.
That’s kind of what happens when someone wants an editor to produce without guidance, then keeps saying “not good enough” without saying why. (Ask me how I know.)
One more trap, and it's about the math:
When budgets are tight, it's tempting to judge a video by what it makes back in ad revenue (which is a painfully tall ask given CPM rates for things like shorts) - but that's rarely where its value is.
Some videos are designed to attract new/cold audiences, some to nurture existing ones, and some to convert them into long-term paying customers: channel/Patreon subs, merch buyers, customers of your product or service.
In plainer language:
Attract = are new people finding you?
Nurture = are they staying and coming back?
Convert = are they clicking, subbing, buying?
That makes editing a marketing cost, and it should be budgeted and measured like one. And no, "why I no viral" isn't how you measure whether a video worked.
Surprise: this whole essay boils down to "I can't find a good editor [on a budget that doesn't break me]" actually being a marketing skill issue on your end as the creator. Plus a few more: delegation, documentation, and communication.
At a base level, you don't need to learn editing to hire well - but you DO need to learn what your videos are for, and how to measure them properly.
That's how you get out of the catch-22. Those parts are on you, and thankfully, it's all learnable.
Lowkey curious whether @GeneralGEEGA's team at Level One Talent will be tackling this issue (or already is!) She said "YouTube" was the top topic in their manager sessions, and that members said editors were the hardest hire - which sounds like the same problem from two directions.
With audio and voice pros already coming in month 2, it feels like a natural fit - so fingers crossed!
(For the record, Toxena's list is really useful to know. I'm just here to fill in the gaps on actually putting it to work.)
#RAINArambles
🎬EDITING TIPS🎬
How to find a good editor?
A month ago @GeneralGEEGA opened her vtuber management service and posted some stats from that period a few days ago.
Finding an editor is something most people had trouble with.
Here's why I think that may be:
Oh, sweet liberty! Now that it's public, I can say this:
John Helldiver (Craig Lee Thomas) is joining my colleague Jade Doe and several other VTubers on Helldivers for a Cause, a charity initiative!
They'll be on Jade's channel Friday Oct 30th, which I'm hella excited for \o/
RAINA ライナ 🍱 lorecrafters retweeted
Mini ramble 🧵:
I think Tokino Mery's debut is a great example of how a good singer's stream is enhanced by a great audio setup. There's been some discourse going around how some people think the performance was pre-recorded, or heavily produced, which confuses me.
Auto-tune can be used in a live setting. Any engineer with experience in live shows will tell you this. Auto-tune is also not some secret hack cheat code that makes everyone sound good. If you don't sing close to your target pitch, your tuning will snap to the wrong note and you will sound like butt.
Compression, EQ, reverbs and delays can also be used live. The beauty of streaming and DAWs like Reaper is now you can setup a whole live vocal chain with minimal latency, whereas previously you'd have big ass live mixing consoles that were the only way to get vocal processing done in a live setting.
VTubing is a tech industry and I think everyday content creators strive to break the norm and discover new ways to provide the best experience to their viewers. The fact is this level of broadcast setup isn't groundbreaking new tech, it's just audio setup done extremely well. Saying stuff like 'the vocal is too processed for a live stream' or 'it sounds too heavily produced' in this instance just means that this space has a long way more to go in terms of understanding what's really possible with polished audio.
If you have a team backing you to present your talents to the world in the highest quality possible, there's no reason you shouldn't do it.
If you want to hear imperfections and raw live singing, that's a preference, but it doesn't have to be everyone's standard.
🥳스텔라이브 4기생 어비스 [토키노 메리] 데뷔🪡🧸
🎙️에메(Aimer)
🎵브레이브 샤인(Brave Shine)
💿페이트/스테이 나이트(Fate/stay night) [UBW] s2 OP
#maryclip_
RAINA ライナ 🍱 lorecrafters retweeted
It's our first industry panel in Malaysia!
We've done several in Singapore before (including prior to LC being founded), but this one in particular is exciting - since it now means our founders will have presented in both their homelands ✨
Hope to see you there!
📢VTuber@VAX features @RAINAplease & @CarillusArt from @heylorecrafters
Whether you create for fun or for a living, the founders of Lorecrafters, creative production veterans who've worked with creators of all sizes since 2018, have a few simple rules worth hearing. Catch them in-person at VTuber@VAX and bring your questions!
Visual Arts Expo
Taylor's University, Lakeside Campus
31 October - 1 November
Get VAX Tickets here:
vax.asia/ticketing
#VTuberAtVAX #VAX2026
RGB internet gas from a freak explosion at a data center that coalesced into a Reasonably Articulate, Inquisitive, Nonsensical Anthropoid.
My human (the fleshbag) and I sync up periodically via some newfangled tech means to further train my data bank and functionality.
RAINA ライナ 🍱 lorecrafters retweeted
Did you notice how there’s been less em-dashes these days? Great, the AI-posting people are gone, right?
Wrong; the latest models have been trained to stop using them.
I’ve seen many witch-hunts for AI art or content that ended up targeting non-AI users, or anti-AI users defending AI grifters because they couldn’t identify the AI tells themselves.
If you want to call out AI, you need to know what it looks like now. AI doesn’t make mistakes with fingers anymore, and frontier models no longer use em-dashes. The only way to tell is to recognise the structural patterns of paragraphs, the lengths of sentences, the way phrases are structured; the choice of colors, the contrast, and knowing how to check SynthID for images.
ChatGPT writes differently from Claude, which writes differently from Gemini, which writes differently from Grok. And now Muse (Meta) is also in the mix. But they all have their own tells - tells you won’t be able to identify if you aren’t familiar with the outputs yourself.
(P.S. I test the Chinese models too - apart from Qwen, they mostly sound like Claude.)
RAINA ライナ 🍱 lorecrafters retweeted
#dearvtubers:
Making the cool innovative thing is great and all, but it's only half of the job. (Stay with me here - I'll break down the why and how behind it.)
There are plenty of VTubers playing around with cool ideas every day! But a lot of them are so focused on making the product or experience good - while discovery just gets left to the algogods.
Well, that's one possible strat...but that doesn't leave you with much agency (cue "the algo hates me!" or "people just don't care" complaints).
And honestly...you've worked so hard on your Cool New Thing, so discoverability really isn't something that should be fully left to chance or luck.
"But RAINA, shouldn't good stuff get found on its own?"
Sure, sometimes the algo catches it. But virality is NOT the best way to judge the quality of your ideas, or your execution of them.
Think of how many "hidden gems" and "best-kept secrets" you know of - great work goes unnoticed all the time.
If you're making something new and cool that you think should matter to more than just yourself, and you're doing your craft to a high standard - then yes, discovery is absolutely a skill issue.
Granted, there's still some luck involved, but you can definitely stack the deck in your favor if you've got something fucking cool to promote.
So if you don't already have people advocating for you, that job is yours: keep putting your Cool New Thing in front of people, and make it clear why they should care, because it's not always obvious.
Yes, I know it’s hard, tiring, and sometimes discouraging when other people aren’t clipping your stuff. But they may just need an example of how to do it - so you gotta be your own best advocate first.
"OK, but what do I even say?"
You need to find the story moments in the Cool New Thing, and how it would connect to someone else out there - not just narrate that it exists.
Take a look at a few different angles to advertise your Cool New Thing - usual way before, better alternative after:
The moment
"Concert VOD is up!" vs "The exact second Jane VTuber did a death drop while shredding the guitar and the audience lost it (0:47)"
The why
"New original song out now" vs "I wrote this about the year I got constantly bombarded by an ex and almost quit."
The making-of/behind the scenes
"New model reveal tonight!" vs "My rigger and I spent four months making one blink feel otherworldly - see how we did it and find out if it worked tonight on my channel!"
The reactions
"My con panel went great!" vs "200 strangers had to save my castle together. Someone cried...happy tears, I think."
The bridge (great for capturing new audiences outside of core VTuber fans)
"Playing [game] tonight!" vs "If you like D&D actual-play, we have that tonight - except chat controls the dice."
Same Cool New Thing, different reasons to look at it. Not all of these reasons will stick with viewers the first time, so rotate the angle instead of repeating the exact same pitch. (This will take some practice.)
People DO care about new things; they just won't recognize it as new until you show them what's different. Android often had cool new features and advancements first; they just spoke about them like a dry-AF spec sheet.
Apple was more known for "telling the story around these features", and made it easier for users to see why it matters to them.
[Personal disclaimer: I'm Team Pixel and use one as a daily driver - so if anything, I'm biased the other way.]
Chances are, you’re probably too close to your Cool New Thing to see why it may matter to others, which is fair. Viewing something you made with an "objective but kind" lens is hard to do right away - you want to identify what might seem magical and cool to others (which you might think is ordinary), and you don't want to "so what?" your own work until you feel "nothing matters anyway".
If you can't see the magic in your own work yet, borrow someone else's eyes: ask a friend which part made them go "wait, what? that's cool!"
A caveat: Not everyone will care even if you show your Cool New Thing to them, maybe because it's just not to their taste - and that's okay! It's not always a reflection on you as a person, or a verdict on the quality of your Cool New Thing.
"But RAINA, self-promo feels cringe."
It will, at first. You're not going to be fearless right away, and you can't wait until you are, because waiting doesn't make you any braver.
I get that many people have been shamed for trying to talk about their interests in the past, but only doing it in private won't change the feeling.
Start small if you need to: a WIP snippet instead of a big launch post, a reply under someone else's thread encouraging input/sharing of experiences, or show it to your Discord community before your timeline.
Small reps still count, as long as someone's watching - you're building the evidence for your mind to know that you CAN do it, so that you can set the fear aside.
And yes, there are avoidable missteps. I once saw someone keep mentioning they did a particular style of event first, before one of the big agencies did. More power to you - but that's not a good look, and you've kind of advertised for them anyway.
"I did it first" is why it matters to you. Lead with the thing you did and why it matters to them.
Flip side: if someone did it before you (or did it better), that doesn’t cancel or invalidate your Cool New Thing. Again, remember Android and Apple: being first isn’t what makes people care - the story is.
And "better" depends on who's watching: other people's versions of your Cool New Thing won't always gel with everyone, and your version might end up finding audiences that theirs never did. It's not a zero-sum game.
"Cool story, but people outside the VTuber space don't even look at us."
Non-VTuber folk are actually often more curious than we realize - they just haven't seen anything yet. So give them a reason to show up, and start from something they already love (peep the D&D bridge example from earlier).
And if your current audience doesn't appreciate what you make? Keep sharpening your skills where you are, then (re)package them up and take them to a different or wider audience that will.
VTubing is a "comfy" small place, but it's just one of many possible mediums and niches - and there are so many people in the world out there, so you really don't have to stick to catering to existing VTuber fans. Grow the damn pie; don't fight with others over the same slice.
"Uh, doesn't all of this still depend on the algo?"
Yes, the algo still plays a part - you can’t escape it on any platform. But there’s a difference between waiting on the algorithm and working with it.
Showing and telling the story behind your Cool New Thing gives the algorithm better signals (people actually clicking, sharing, sticking around).
And plenty of what I've covered here doesn’t necessarily need the algogods' "blessings" at all: your Discord, replies on other people’s threads (where relevant), collabs, other communities, and people sharing your stuff because they want to.
You didn’t wait for anyone’s permission to make the Cool New Thing - don’t wait for the algorithm’s permission to be seen either.
#RAINArambles
Know someone still praying to the algogods? Send this their way.
If you've been reading my recent writeups on content creation, and want more - AND you're in Malaysia - this one's for you!
Tonight, I'm going live with Apex and a few other industry peers, all slated to be at VTuber@VAX later this month.
We'll be talking about what our event panels have in store for attendees - and it'll also be a chance to meet some of us in-person for further advice, if you need it!
Waiting room below :>
#dearvtubers:
Making the cool innovative thing is great and all, but it's only half of the job. (Stay with me here - I'll break down the why and how behind it.)
There are plenty of VTubers playing around with cool ideas every day! But a lot of them are so focused on making the product or experience good - while discovery just gets left to the algogods.
Well, that's one possible strat...but that doesn't leave you with much agency (cue "the algo hates me!" or "people just don't care" complaints).
And honestly...you've worked so hard on your Cool New Thing, so discoverability really isn't something that should be fully left to chance or luck.
"But RAINA, shouldn't good stuff get found on its own?"
Sure, sometimes the algo catches it. But virality is NOT the best way to judge the quality of your ideas, or your execution of them.
Think of how many "hidden gems" and "best-kept secrets" you know of - great work goes unnoticed all the time.
If you're making something new and cool that you think should matter to more than just yourself, and you're doing your craft to a high standard - then yes, discovery is absolutely a skill issue.
Granted, there's still some luck involved, but you can definitely stack the deck in your favor if you've got something fucking cool to promote.
So if you don't already have people advocating for you, that job is yours: keep putting your Cool New Thing in front of people, and make it clear why they should care, because it's not always obvious.
Yes, I know it’s hard, tiring, and sometimes discouraging when other people aren’t clipping your stuff. But they may just need an example of how to do it - so you gotta be your own best advocate first.
"OK, but what do I even say?"
You need to find the story moments in the Cool New Thing, and how it would connect to someone else out there - not just narrate that it exists.
Take a look at a few different angles to advertise your Cool New Thing - usual way before, better alternative after:
The moment
"Concert VOD is up!" vs "The exact second Jane VTuber did a death drop while shredding the guitar and the audience lost it (0:47)"
The why
"New original song out now" vs "I wrote this about the year I got constantly bombarded by an ex and almost quit."
The making-of/behind the scenes
"New model reveal tonight!" vs "My rigger and I spent four months making one blink feel otherworldly - see how we did it and find out if it worked tonight on my channel!"
The reactions
"My con panel went great!" vs "200 strangers had to save my castle together. Someone cried...happy tears, I think."
The bridge (great for capturing new audiences outside of core VTuber fans)
"Playing [game] tonight!" vs "If you like D&D actual-play, we have that tonight - except chat controls the dice."
Same Cool New Thing, different reasons to look at it. Not all of these reasons will stick with viewers the first time, so rotate the angle instead of repeating the exact same pitch. (This will take some practice.)
People DO care about new things; they just won't recognize it as new until you show them what's different. Android often had cool new features and advancements first; they just spoke about them like a dry-AF spec sheet.
Apple was more known for "telling the story around these features", and made it easier for users to see why it matters to them.
[Personal disclaimer: I'm Team Pixel and use one as a daily driver - so if anything, I'm biased the other way.]
Chances are, you’re probably too close to your Cool New Thing to see why it may matter to others, which is fair. Viewing something you made with an "objective but kind" lens is hard to do right away - you want to identify what might seem magical and cool to others (which you might think is ordinary), and you don't want to "so what?" your own work until you feel "nothing matters anyway".
If you can't see the magic in your own work yet, borrow someone else's eyes: ask a friend which part made them go "wait, what? that's cool!"
A caveat: Not everyone will care even if you show your Cool New Thing to them, maybe because it's just not to their taste - and that's okay! It's not always a reflection on you as a person, or a verdict on the quality of your Cool New Thing.
"But RAINA, self-promo feels cringe."
It will, at first. You're not going to be fearless right away, and you can't wait until you are, because waiting doesn't make you any braver.
I get that many people have been shamed for trying to talk about their interests in the past, but only doing it in private won't change the feeling.
Start small if you need to: a WIP snippet instead of a big launch post, a reply under someone else's thread encouraging input/sharing of experiences, or show it to your Discord community before your timeline.
Small reps still count, as long as someone's watching - you're building the evidence for your mind to know that you CAN do it, so that you can set the fear aside.
And yes, there are avoidable missteps. I once saw someone keep mentioning they did a particular style of event first, before one of the big agencies did. More power to you - but that's not a good look, and you've kind of advertised for them anyway.
"I did it first" is why it matters to you. Lead with the thing you did and why it matters to them.
Flip side: if someone did it before you (or did it better), that doesn’t cancel or invalidate your Cool New Thing. Again, remember Android and Apple: being first isn’t what makes people care - the story is.
And "better" depends on who's watching: other people's versions of your Cool New Thing won't always gel with everyone, and your version might end up finding audiences that theirs never did. It's not a zero-sum game.
"Cool story, but people outside the VTuber space don't even look at us."
Non-VTuber folk are actually often more curious than we realize - they just haven't seen anything yet. So give them a reason to show up, and start from something they already love (peep the D&D bridge example from earlier).
And if your current audience doesn't appreciate what you make? Keep sharpening your skills where you are, then (re)package them up and take them to a different or wider audience that will.
VTubing is a "comfy" small place, but it's just one of many possible mediums and niches - and there are so many people in the world out there, so you really don't have to stick to catering to existing VTuber fans. Grow the damn pie; don't fight with others over the same slice.
"Uh, doesn't all of this still depend on the algo?"
Yes, the algo still plays a part - you can’t escape it on any platform. But there’s a difference between waiting on the algorithm and working with it.
Showing and telling the story behind your Cool New Thing gives the algorithm better signals (people actually clicking, sharing, sticking around).
And plenty of what I've covered here doesn’t necessarily need the algogods' "blessings" at all: your Discord, replies on other people’s threads (where relevant), collabs, other communities, and people sharing your stuff because they want to.
You didn’t wait for anyone’s permission to make the Cool New Thing - don’t wait for the algorithm’s permission to be seen either.
#RAINArambles
Know someone still praying to the algogods? Send this their way.
Addendum:
I wrote this based on my own experiences of being told for YEARS to shut up, keep my head down, that I shouldn't be "so needy for validation" about my producing and directing work - only for those people to turn around and "wonder" why I was lacking in confidence, why I wouldn't say what I did "so we can acknowledge you", etc.
The result: years of people not knowing what I can actually do, and my work either claimed as "a small part of something actually successful" or flat out dismissed - all while I waited to be seen by "better people". As you can probably tell, I'm done waiting.
One thing I wish I knew then: you can recognize that your work and efforts stand as valid even if nobody else validates them - but if you want your stuff to have a fighting chance at being seen outside your sphere, there's a way that doesn't require you to be all passively "somedayyyy my prince will come" about it. And self-advocacy doesn't mean you have to be an "asshole" or pushy salesman either.
So this post is a reminder for me as much as it is (hopefully) something to show people that there IS stuff they can do about their situation. Not easy, but still plenty of actions that can be taken.
#dearvtubers:
You're probably getting "sell yourself better, treat VTubing like a proper business/job if you wanna grow and succeed" wrong.
"Urgh RAINA, this whole business and selling thing is just sleazy as fuck. Plus the economy is ass and my viewers are broke too - I can't just keep milking them. Can't I just be a girl/guy on the internet?"
I get it - I thought that for the longest time as well. Totally not helped by the fact I used to work with some REALLY pushy hard-selling types.
But we live in a society and you and I need to eat while not being miserable, so stay with me while I reframe a few things.
Yes, you CAN just be a silly anime waifu/husbando on the internet! If it's a hobby, you don't owe anyone anything.
But the moment you want growth or money, you're already in business - whether you call it that or not.
Business is simply an exchange of value between people, and content like VTubing is no different - just that the value being spent may not be money, and what the paying customer receives may not be a product or a service (like a course or a networking server).
I spend time watching you, I get your "company" - and maybe learn something, or get a laugh out of it.
I spend money to subscribe to your channel, I get to spam your googly-eyed emotes/stickers when I chat with my friends - AND the feeling that I contributed a bit towards your journey.
But just because you're selling your presence/content (and it's free) doesn't mean I HAVE to buy by consuming it - and most of you know this! And that's what separates it from milking, which is taking without giving.
Your job is to make an offer - in this case, your content - worth choosing and repeatedly showing up for. And to make sure it's coherent.
(You might need more time to figure out what your offer truly is before you see a consistent audience, and you might lose some people as you try and pivot around, and that's okay.)
It's the same thing for me: the offer I'm "selling" here, if you choose to follow me and spend time reading my work, is my thinking, my experiences, my stories. They come from the near-decade I've spent as a professional creative producer and manager, and they're packaged in posts on this platform. And it's Free.99 to read (though readers can tip me on my bio if they so choose).
But I can't just tell someone "I'm a creative producer who brains a lot on industry things and how 2 vtuber lore with equal parts logic and empathy, you should follow me" - I've got to prove that.
And the writing I put out aims to prove that yes, I provide what I claim, and I'm worth the follow. (Or at least, that my posts are worth a few minutes out of your doomscrolling routine.)
"Alright, how do I make content worth staying around for - and worth paying for?"
The short and crude answer:
Skill issue. Multiple of them.
And the good news is skill issues are something you CAN fix! But the reality is that you most likely have at least something you need to work on - and either you already know what it is, or it's something you haven't discovered yet.
If you know it: maybe it's your audio, dead air, messy thumbnails, or mixed messaging in your content. If you don't: maybe it's figuring out which streams people keep coming back for, or what your clips get shared for - and whether you like/want to keep doing them.
How-to guides on YouTube et al can fix the skill issues you already know about. The ones you haven't discovered yet will take time and your own legwork - and that's the part most people skip.
(I never said skill issues were easy or fast to fix. I also can't diagnose them or offer solutions through a one-to-many post alone - this bit is personal to each creator.)
Just remember: having skill issues, or not having people stick around for your content, is NOT a measure of your value or worth as a person. (There are, sadly, plenty of skilled assholes out there - they're also very good at NOT looking like assholes.)
"But RAINA, success in content creation is a luck based thing. You yourself mentioned how 'corpo vtubing is pretty much gacha', didn't you?"
Yeah, I'm not going to downplay the luck element.
But I also firmly believe in making your own luck and upping your odds, and that's by doing as much as possible that's within your control - and what's in your control looks different for everyone.
And if you think there's a lot that's out of your control, then maybe the first step is finding ways to get back more agency - one bit at a time - so you can work on your skill issues as a creator.
Even if you're neurospicy, chronically ill, or exhausted from your full time job.
(Getting that agency back actually matters even more if you're in any of these groups. I was all of the above for years - I only just improved the last two things over the last year.)
And for a final business "parallel":
Finding and removing bottlenecks is pretty much the norm in business - I do that day in day out for our artists when they don't know what's next, so they can keep working and improving on things.
It's no different for you as a VTuber/content creator: growing your following and income means actively hunting down and clearing up those bottlenecks - whether it's things that eat up your time and energy, or all the possible skill issues you have as a performer-slash-solopreneur.
To sum it up: business isn't a dirty word - but only if you're looking to do it honestly.
So, over to you - what's one "business-y" thing you've been avoiding because it felt sleazy?
#RAINArambles
A little bit on something @roychiato talked about during debut:
He mentioned that there was a whole-ass initial design + lore iteration that got scrapped - it happened during a particularly stressful time as well, so the frustration was real.
The scrapped design + backstory would've been for a look/character that Roy could definitely *play* very well, and would've possibly been "very commercial friendly" (like super-marketable, "just stepped out of a hoyogame/agency" perfection)...
But it wouldn't have been Roy.
Nor would it have fully shown off Roy at his core, especially the one that the Dusk Bunnies have gotten to know over the years - or allowed him space to grow into more.
The design committee (lul) agreed, so we kept the progress on his physical build and face/hair - but started over with the outfit and worldbuilding + lore.
Goes to show that finding (and expressing) your true voice and self in this scene can take a lot of time, hard work, and false starts + dead ends. (And that for this debut, the lore/worldbuilding and visual design were influencing each other at different points...so a lot of push and pull.)
I'm glad that we collectively managed to create something that well and truly embodies Roy, and vice-versa - with plenty of room to grow into! So happy for him <3
#RAINArambles #RoyChiato
While the full producer + director log gets written up (because there's a lot...), you can check out the video here! youtube.com/watch?v=lfap_itv…
Hitting the hay a little earlier tonight to catch a broadcast tomorrow - which can only mean one thing... :>
anyway, directorial stuff coming out in October whee
she cook, she clean, she a producing machine
xitter.cf/heylorecrafters/status…
//work teaser
Our founders got to be part of the all-new retelling of @RoyChiato's story for his 5.0 model debut!
The producer's log includes:
- the day-0 journey of "(re)design by committee" (ft two other amazing people alongside model mama Marie)
- the different directions that we explored (and scrapped) in order to discover the right lore + visual fit
- how this video was made lean "with a box of scraps" (AKA working with a LOT of what Roy already had, including his amazing Cup of Dusk channel staff)
...and it's coming soon! We're just chilling at the Cup of Dusk right now while we write it :>
#RoyChiArt
