VOCALOID What's Wrong with the Western Community of Vocaloid?

TheStarPalace · Jan 22, 2020

Wow and here I thought most people didn't like the western community because of the "edgy" songs and their personal dislike for the popular producers people are usually inspired by.
I personally don't like that abusive people are often enabled but that's the case in any close knit community. :(

Trevor · Jan 22, 2020

I think a majority of the overseas fandom just sees the Western community as a nussiance. It can get obsessive, language barrier, produces lower-quality content overall and has a bad reputation for starting drama (ex. Ruby). The Vocaloidotaku incident was an international joke.

Scarlet Illusion · Jan 22, 2020

Trevor said:
The Vocaloidotaku incident was an international joke.

What’s the Vocaloidotaku incident? I’ve never heard of that one before. :luka_move:

Leon · Jan 22, 2020

Trevor said:
I think a majority of the overseas fandom just sees the Western community as a nussiance. It can get obsessive, language barrier, produces lower-quality content overall and has a bad reputation for starting drama (ex. Ruby). The Vocaloidotaku incident was an international joke.

This may be exactly what the JP side thinks of the Western side, so I'm not coming @ you or anything. But if it is the thought process, then I find it completely unfair, and here's my reasoning:

A. The original 3 Vocaloids were English. I understand that Miku's popularity really drove the JP side to be more prevalent, but it feels unfair when English was always part of Vocaloid's original aims/designs/whatever.
B. I would argue that there are definitely as many, if not more, obsessive Eastern fans vs Western. It's much more niche in the West, and harder to get your hands on things vs merch and voicebanks being readily available in nearby stores. There are "crazies" in every fandom on all sides though :S
C. Language barrier is a bad reason to consider a side of the fandom a "nuisance" when that language was the original language that Vocaloids were made in--
Although by this standard, do the JP and CHN sides see each other as nuisances as well? Or is it only @ English, do you think? I'm not fluent enough in Japanese or Chinese to have delved in deep enough to know the sentiments surrounding that area orz
D. Not sure what qualifies lower-quality work. Most Engloids are difficult to work with to start, but also a lot of the older JP works that were hugely popular when Vocaloid took off, aren't some amazing high quality stuff (such as the tuning in the Evils series that even Mothy dislikes now)
E. Ruby stuff was ridiculous, and I think most fans would agree. It was Anders's fault for not handing over the image in the first place, and yet with all the confusion, there ended up being a witch hunt @ poor Bil. Agree that's an embarrassment all around, for the sheer amount of people who joined in on it.
F. If the VO stuff is Azure's NATA thing with Plogue, idk how that would be an international joke. A lot of the Western fandom "cancelled" him for it, and in any case he's just lost any relevance he had when VO was still running. Or was there another incident I've missed? :0

___ · Jan 22, 2020

imo there are things to criticize about the western community and there will always be something someone will be unhappy about, including me but thats given. I dont think this community is exceptionally terrible compared to others :miku2_move:

hamano · Jan 22, 2020

Leon said:
There's also just a lot of silly drama, and I'm sure there's also plenty of it in the JP and CHN sides that we don't ever see from our limited viewpoint

Sure there's sometimes drama in the Japanese community too, but at least 10 times less than in the western side. I've talked about this with Japanese fans as well as other europeans who closely follow what's going on in the Japanese community. The Japanese don't easily engage in drama. Also the puritan art police doesn't really exist in Japan, they just let it be if they don't like it, and not start harassing the artist (I've seen these cases sadly where an artist has ended up deleting their profile after intense bullying from (western) people who don't like lewds).

And some western fans think it's okay to label everyone you don't like a pedo or something else (and at best even fabricate "proof" to support). Also a lot of westerners seem to lack criticism, they just spread any drama without checking facts. Sure, this is not unheard of in the Japanese side, but far less common. A typical Japanese fan either ignores budding drama or at least checks facts and views of all sides before forming an opinion.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of cool people in the western community, but sadly toxic behaviour is all too common. I don't think it only applies to the Vocaloid world though, toxicity exists in a lot of online communities.

I can't really say anything about the Chinese community though, not familiar with it. Every year I just see some Japanese Miku fans on Twitter complaining about Chinese fans at Magical Mirai queue-jumping, being noisy and just generally behaving badly. BUT I haven't seen any problematic Chinese fans myself though, I've only met nice and friendly Chinese fans.

lIlI · Jan 22, 2020

I believe there's just as much rivalry, drama and bitterness in every part of the fandom. The grass looks greener thanks to observation bias: we're part of the English fandom, and we speak the language, so we encounter (and understand) more English drama by proximity. But our drama can often look quite tame, thanks to our smaller size. After all...

In China, a company CEO was accused of embezzling Vocaloid funds on prostitutes.
In Japan, a producer was accused of abusing someone who was mentally ill.
In Korea, a voice provider went to jail for blackmailing one of the country's most famous actors.

And of course, we only know about these events because they were big enough to be translated. Who knows how many petty Twitter fights between Japanese producers most of us miss out on, either because we don't understand the language or the culture....

I always chuckle when I remember this quote from an interview with Wowaka and Deco*27 about what the Vocaloid community was like in Japan:

"Everyone was a rival, and wanted to beat the crap outta everybody"

And if that doesn't sum up a group of creatives, I don't know what does!

Every group of passionate people has drama, no matter how relaxed the subject matter. For modern examples, take a gander at Hobby Drama on any given day to find the nail polish community in flames, furby fans going to war, or the criminal underworld of tickling.

But this isn't something us dastardly millennials invented, nor exclusive to fandoms. Punches have been thrown in academia about what to classify certain plants and insects, while life long rivalries have driven Victorian scientists to subterfuge. You call a back and forth on a forum an argument? Try releasing a series of papers over a decade to disprove a theory by your enemy. And who can forget the Miltonists literally flipping a table over when discussing whether or not the snake in Paradise Lost bounced.

Name a topic and someone, somewhere is having an argument over it.

cafenurse · Jan 22, 2020

lIlI makes a good point. Literally every single fandom I have ever seen says "oh there's just SO much drama in our fandom, we're THE WORST with drama. This community is so toxic and awful"
This isn't just a Vocaloid problem / western community Vocaloid problem. It's a problem with everything.

Blue Of Mind · Jan 22, 2020

RoboCheatsyTM said:
What’s the Vocaloidotaku incident? I’ve never heard of that one before.

Leon said:
F. If the VO stuff is Azure's NATA thing with Plogue, idk how that would be an international joke. A lot of the Western fandom "cancelled" him for it, and in any case he's just lost any relevance he had when VO was still running. Or was there another incident I've missed? :0

As a veteran/refugee of VO, there was so much drama on that board that they could have been referring to anything, and chances are I could remember the gist of it.

Scarlet Illusion · Jan 22, 2020

I'm not very involved with the JPN fandom or anything due to not knowing enough Japanese to actively engage but, there were people who drove both Wowaka and Ryo to quit because they were either insulting the producers or crediting Miku only for the song. There's a comment from NND featured in PD's video for "Odds and Ends" that I've seen translated into "he's an ass in a lion's skin", which I take to mean they are accusing Ryo of taking credit for Miku's greatness or something like that.

I'm with Leon here about It being silly to act like the western fandom is a nuisance because of language barriers.

Basically, ANY part of ANY fandom will have drama. (I'm just glad I've yet to see anything in the Vocaloid fandom that's as bad as what some groups of people in the SU and Pokemon fandoms have done to some artists. I will never not be disgusted by the actions of those people.)

Aia · Jan 22, 2020

I really don't like it when I see posts of people complaining how "the western community is the worst" or "Everyone is so mean here! >~<", for I feel like they're making things worse than it should be. The use of the words "toxic" and "drama" really don't rub me in the right way. (I got a really bad feeling just typing those out)

I remember back in the summer there was some discourse on Twitter in which some people were furious over the jokes (which I thought were actually pretty harmless tbh) someone made about Miku. I'm sure that they thought they were doing good by pointing out the problem, but the way they delivered it really went against what they were trying to say. I remember reading them that day and was like. Yikes.

It's seeing stuff like this that kinda keeps me from interacting with older fans knowing that people can be like this. As some of you have said, it'd be better sometimes we just ignore the things we don't like. I think this is because a lot of westerners (especially those in the US) that are taught to always stand firm with their beliefs, no matter what you have to do. Whether we want to or not, I think some of our beliefs are carried on to how we behave in fandoms.

I think people just need a reminder that what ever happens in this fandom, it's only Vocaloid. While whatever people may say over a certain thing, it's usually just the nature of internet culture. Nothing to be shocked over really.

Exemplar · Jan 22, 2020

There is rotten apples in EVERY community. Heck in one fandom was in had a really bad incident. Two girls was stalking this one singer so they're drove out to her house, tricked the contractors working on said singer's house to let them into her basement, took a youtube video of the whole thing and then sent that video to the singer's sister on social media. Things got really stupid and cringey fast.

I also want to add to what @lIlI said about producer drama in japan. Supposedly Hachi (Kenshi Yonezu) called out Giga & Reol in the video for Dune, but i'm not entirely sure if it's just wild guesses and fan speculation. Consider that on top of Hachi's negative feelings towards the vocaloid community over there before he left it with the one time exception he made for making Dune which he did kinda called it out in the music video for it haha.

Scarlet Illusion · Jan 22, 2020

Exemplar said:
Supposedly Hachi (Kenshi Yonezu) called out Giga & Reol in the video for Dune, but i'm not entirely sure if it's just wild guesses and fan speculation. Consider that on top of Hachi's negative feelings towards the vocaloid community over there before he left it with the one time exception he made for making Dune which he did kinda called it out in the music video for it haha.

Whoa, really? Have Reol and Giga done something particularly bad that I'm not aware of? Not trying to start any drama or anything; I'm just curious what would have warranted that if the speculations are true. (What part of the song is this supposed "callout" in? :O)

Also, did Hachi receive flak from the fandom for something? Or does he overall dislike the behavior of some people in the fandom?

Exemplar · Jan 22, 2020

RoboCheatsyTM said:
Whoa, really? Have Reol and Giga done something particularly bad that I'm not aware of? Not trying to start any drama or anything; I'm just curious what would have warranted that if the speculations are true. (What part of the song is this supposed "callout" in? :O)

Also, did Hachi receive flak from the fandom for something? Or does he overall dislike the behavior of some people in the fandom?

The Giga/Reol thing was speculation that looking back on it, was kinda nebulous. There was a part in the Dune video (at around 3:31 in Kenshi's upload) where two desert people split off from Miku's group (a girl with flowers on her hood meeting with a guy from Miku's group). Or was it the two folks who left the group (at 3:17) when they came to the signpost. I dunno, even back then those fan theories was too vague for me to actually believe.

Kenshi had said in a interview that he thought Miku was getting too much attention in his work and he was not getting credit for his own work. You know, how some fans give the vocaloid credit for the song and not the producer. I think it's also an issue over there too. That's what lead him to make music under his own name and voice.

Rylitah · Jan 23, 2020

All of my thoughts have basically been said. There's toxicity everywhere, and honestly I think the lowest point of the western community was when VO was still around, aha. That site was a mess -- the only unfortunate thing about it being gone is that there were a lot of resources/help that would be useful today for issues or errors people encounter, and now it's all gone. Ah well, I hope for VVN to be just as good of a resource as VO was in the future; we've already got many wonderful guides and help here as it is.

RoboCheatsyTM said:
Also, did Hachi receive flak from the fandom for something? Or does he overall dislike the behavior of some people in the fandom?

I don't know if it's really a "fandom" thing, but I know many people dislike Hachi/Dune/Sand Planet for the message it tried to get across (that Vocaloid as a whole was "dead"/empty desert). This did actually upset the Japanese community as well -- I know Kurage-P as a specific example was angry over it and talked about it in an interview. iirc his words were "how dare he act like he knows what the community is like when he hasn't even been involved in it for years." You can take it how you will, but that's the controversy regarding Hachi/that song.

edit: This was the interview. His exact words were "How can someone who hasn't been in the scene for years suddenly come back and talk like he knows anything?" -- he says a few more things about his feelings towards that song and the Vocaloid community as a whole as well that I agree with; it's an interesting interview overall.

tonio stan account™ · Jan 23, 2020

there's a certain thread about this and whenever the western/overseas comm is brought up you can almost sum it up to west bad, japan good
i'd chalk it up to weebs being weebs, but it's really disheartening to see preemptive disregard for overseas content producers just because they weren't from the right country. i've never seen this much self-loathing

Eviltreat16 · Jan 23, 2020

Honestly the Vocaloid fandom is one of the tamer fandoms I'm part of though that could be because my only major Fandom interactions are here and Youtube. The only reason we perceive the western community to be generally "bad" in comparison is because a lot of us are English speakers and/or in the western community and can't understand/read stuff as well from the rest of the communities (whether it's Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc, etc.)

I will say, some of the drama I've noticed in the Western community is either something semi-serious or something weirdly petty/random compared to other fandoms I'm in...

razelberii · Jan 23, 2020

I apologize for going off topic here. I do want to express my gratitude with how this thread is being handled. We may have had our moments of drama in the community, but upon seeing this thread, it does seem we recognize it in a mature matter.
We're willing to point out our issues and wrongdoings in the past; whether we were a part of it or not. It is what it is, and there isn't much choice left but to move on.
I'll express further too that it's good to see that we are taking other communities to account. One example that comes to mind: The situation with MARETU from months/years before, although I know very little about it, did impact more than the Western community (I don't want to be a tattle-tale either, so I hope to leave it at that.).

As with every community, and as stated before, there may always be some toxicity that can be found; but there is also a silver lining there too. I've met a lot of nice folks in the community after all.
It's choosing what to focus on. It's unfortunate sometimes we end up getting too focused on the toxicity or newest drama. I think that's another problem: Drama doesn't always just go away quickly - we feed the fire, and want it to grow, or be the one to say the last word about it. It can't always be let go of or be considered something of the past. Do correct me if I am wrong about this; it's from my little observations.
Truth be told, this may just be my personal opinion, but the situation with emVoice could have been handled better. That is an example that comes to mind. I'm not siding with them or against them by any means, but I believe there wasn't any reason to smite them just for their decisions (such as their negative attitude towards Vocaloid); whether petty or not. Fueling the fire is rather childish and will not lead to anything beneficial. Rather, simply being quiet and refusing to pay for something you don't want to I believe is the more effective way. Being rude about their dislike towards Vocaloid is only going to encourage their dislike. (I want to emphasize that part as I believe that can be applied to far more than emVoice). Please know, this is only my thinking. I do think it was at least more tame than other situations of the past, and the frustration is understandable, just not handled the best.

I just want to listen to music and enjoy Vocaloid for what it is - but sometimes drama gets too emphasized. If producers (not just Western producers) could leave that part out, I wonder how different things would be. That may, however, mean producers being less open with other producers/fans, though. It is neat to see how open producers can be about their work. If there was a way to keep that and not have any drama from it...

Again, I want to apologize for potentially repeating posts. It's not my intent, and it has been a long past few days for me. I want to express my gratitude for this small community we have here on VocaVerse - it has reminded me of that silver lining.

mikusingularity · Jan 23, 2020

Rylitah said:
I know many people dislike Hachi/Dune/Sand Planet for the message it tried to get across (that Vocaloid as a whole was "dead"/empty desert). This did actually upset the Japanese community as well -- I know Kurage-P as a specific example was angry over it and talked about it in an interview. iirc his words were "how dare he act like he knows what the community is like when he hasn't even been involved in it for years." You can take it how you will, but that's the controversy regarding Hachi/that song.

Exactly, I didn't understand the popularity of the song (and all the fanart that came out) because of that.

peaches2217 · Jan 24, 2020

mikusingularity said:
Exactly, I didn't understand the popularity of the song (and all the fanart that came out) because of that.

Sand Planet came out around the time I got back into Vocaloid, and I'm going to say I think part of the reason it was so popular is because people, especially in the Western fandom, didn't realize what it was about. When I first listened to it, the YouTube comments were full of people warmly welcoming Hachi back and gushing over how badass and mature Sand Miku looked. I was in the same boat, honestly; I didn't realize it was supposed to be a dig at the Vocaloid community until very recently, but I still like it because, well, it's catchy. Knowing now what it was meant to be does put a damper on it, though, I won't lie. Like someone either upthread or in a status update said, it was kind of a slap in the face to the people in the community working to keep it alive and well.

VOCALOID What's Wrong with the Western Community of Vocaloid?

Hardcore Fan

?

Veteran

AKA missy20201 (Elliot)

‎

ミクさんマジ天使

⚡

Still misses Anri Rune

The world that I do not know...

Veteran

DDR-tist

Veteran

Veteran

Veteran

kiyoteru enthusiast

New Fan

Probably an Artist, Probably a Praying Mantis

Bless the Lord, O my Soul

Science and Futurism with Hatsune Miku

Give me Gackpoid AI or give me DEATH

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)