“It would be so nice to be faceless”

Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter used to have success on Twitch before moving exclusively to YouTube. The 31-year-old is one of the most successful streamers there, but her competitors all have something she doesn’t have.

This is the situation:

In a list of YouTube Gaming’s most watched female streamers, published on Twitter/X on August 29, 2023, Valkyrae appears in 6th place as the only “real woman” and the only American: the rest are Japanese vtubers. MMORPG streamer Asmongold has known for a long time that the time for anime girls has come.

What are vtubers actually? Vtuber are content creators who appear in the form of a digital avatar. Anime-style figures are particularly popular. Gestures and facial expressions of the real person are transferred to the character.

“It’s too late for me”

What does Valkyrae say about this? The 31-year-old explained in a recent stream that she came across this statistic. She’s somewhere in the middle, everything else is Vtuber. Valkyrae seemed quite surprised by this development and asked, “Where are the non-vtubers on YouTube?”

However, the streamer does not envy the Vtuberinnen their success, much more she regrets having missed this opportunity: “If I had had a brain 8 years ago, I think [eine Vtuberin zu sein] would have been a fun way. It would just be nice to be faceless.”

The 31-year-old seems to be thinking in a similar direction to her streaming colleague Asmongold, who once described virtual streaming as a “cheat” for women: Because they don’t have to dress up and can appear in a baggy look without make-up.

But it’s too late for her now, says Valkyrae, she can never be a vtuber.

Some viewers point out to Valkyrae that YouTube is not primarily a streaming platform. The 31-year-old agrees that this is actually a platform for “video on demand”. In fact, vtubing doesn’t seem to have the upper hand on the pure streaming platform Twitch yet:

Twitch: The 5 biggest German streamers in August 2023