Dark Side of Obsession

You know, once upon a time, I thought that the crazy otaku culture as represented in Megatokyo was a tad too much exaggeration.

Recently, I spent some time looking through some imageboard websites. I have heard of the types of toxicity that they have, and frankly, have been used to it before no thanks to being alive and active [in lurking] on such websites in the late 2000s. The boards that were on VTubers were quite alarming---despite much of the entries being quite polite and sticking to facts, there were a few that were more unhinged, and seemed to demonstrate the type of uncontrollable otaku behaviour that Megatokyo caricaturises quite satirically.

In particular, the so-called ``idol culture'' is pretty unnerving, and that's coming from an Internet veteran. I understand somewhat why someone would want to have some kind of celebrity worship, but how that level of fan-dom degrades down to the depravity of wanting absolute control over their idol's behaviour, clothes is a little beyond me. Stalking, doxxing, and the like have their incidents raised in the mainstream media every now and then, with the usual demonisation of video games and whatever the latest trend in hating describes.

Ultimately though, they don't ever come close to the root of the problem---how to help socially maladjusted people develop less perverted social/parasocial relationships.

I mean, I'm a fan of some of the VTubers, but to me, they are just another type of artiste, with their entertainment artistry based on their Let's Play-esque streams, conversations, and in-universe lore, and all within what they want to project into their performance persona. Outside of that, I have little interest in knowing what colour underwear they have, whether they are married with children and the like, because such information is completely irrelevant to the entertainment they are providing. As far as I know, they are humans, and with that come the usual trappings of what being a human means; I am well aware of what that means despite all my rants and ramblings, and knowing specific information is just minutae that doesn't add to anything of the entertainment.

I get bits of it: some people like knowing that the cute anime girl avatar talking on-screen has her voice actress not wearing any underwear, but to me, that's literally putting on more ``entertainment aspects'' that the VTuber isn't really selling. There are some VTubers who play the lewd card quite heavily as their gimmick, and with those, I respect their choice, and they are usually aware of the consequences of such choices. But there are many who play it straight, and to have themselves be put in such an awkward position is just wrong.

I want to say that curious speculation is par for the course for any celebrity that we know, but then there's that line of decency that separates naughty speculation from being a true menace. And I think that line of decency is defined by the amount of effort being placed in taking action to speculate more, or to confirm said speculation. Most people aren't that unhinged, but in terms of harm done, all it takes is just one bad actor to make everyone look horrifically bad.

It has happened before, and it will happen again.

Because such bad actors are excellent scapegoats for society to act seemingly responsible and push out all the evils onto the things that they dislike. It doesn't matter if the bad actors could have been saved had they been provided with a way out---salvation has never really been part of the modus operandi for much of society, which explains why much of what we call human justice has been largely based on punitive and retributive principles instead of rehabilitative ones. Slapping a fine, a jail term, or execution is just so much easier than going through the process of diagnosing/correcting the problem before offering continual support and observation to ensure that the problem doesn't return.

The price borne by society for each of these possible outcomes though... it is not as obvious.

No, I'm not advocating for/against death penalties---that is out of scope. What I am advocating is for society to treat its members better. We are out of the woods with respect to basic survival (for the most part), and we should start thinking about improving the quality of life instead of just focusing on industrial output alone. The simplest way to think of this is that for a producer to succeed, he/she needs to have consumers to sell to. If there are no consumers left to sell to, there won't be a market left, and with that, the producer must fail.

People who cannot differentiate between idle discussion from perverted obsession are likely to have an underlying issue that is not looked at. Help should be readily available for such people, and social stigma against getting such help should be minimised so that we, as a society, obtain a net gain.

But that won't happen without some kind of revolutionary occurrence. Remember that it is easier to slap on more rules than to take a step backwards and reduce them.

Till the next update.