No.4396
I have no idea what the best place for a normal conversation is about this is these days. Hopefully a little IB meta can be tolerated on /hell/.
I feel like nobody thought twice when hiro purchased 4chan from moot in ‘15. Things were flying off the rails. hiro had the social, economic, and legal experience to keep the site going and moot appropriately credited him with inspiration (even though hiro ripped off amezou).
What I think we missed (I certainly didn’t have any Japanese language knowledge in 2015. oh the things I was innocent to) was the perspective of hiro as a person. His edgelord-esque visage and his capitalistic inclinations, to me, seemed to be dwarfed by the fact 2channel was literally stolen from him.
In any case, it appears that GSC did invest a shitton of money in 4chan, and apparently dwango did too (although I can’t find a citation on that number.) My conspiracy theory is that the vtuber board, /vt/, was at least partially created as a way to drive economic interest in Good Smile products and *possibly* dwango’s investments. While I can somewhat understand GSC, dwango’s involvement somewhat eludes me, unless hiro was just very persuasive with his relationships at dwango. But other than the addition of /vt/ and the persistence of 4chan’s weeb origins, I honest don’t see what benefit they thought their investment would bring to them at the scale they invested.
A lot of the articles are talking about how hiro has turned a blind eye to hate on the site, and it’s true— but so did moot. So that much is nothing new. But hiro was definitely absent at the period of time the most was happening and affecting the real world. We’re living with the aftermath now, and the corruption of the idea of “the internet is serious business.”
Just hiro using his connections to prevent the site from hemorrhaging money? A more intricately planned investment? I’m just surprised. What does everyone think?
No.4397
>>4396good thread.
You may be right about /vt/ existing due to GSC's influence, but really, virtual youtubers are wildly popular regardless and /vt/ fits with the theme of the site, I think it would've existed anyways.
Something I feel is more directly inspired by GSC is the failed attempt by Hiro to make a 4chan themed vtuber. He had a contest for it and even selected a design, but nothing came of the project.
Really, I think GSC/Dwango invested with the intention of seeing some more serious returns on the project, and I think those companies have largely suffered as a result of Hiro being a shitty CEO who isn't capable of serious innovation on the platform. The 4chan vtuber incident shows that Hiro has no idea how to build whatsoever. 4chan could be so much more but it's been ignored and allowed to stagnate for many years because nobody knows what to do with it.
