Quote Originally Posted by Rodin View Post
It’s the whole “superhero secret identity” business with streamers. If you look up most successful streamers above a certain popularity level (well below the supposed success level of Marigold) you can find their real name. It’s not a secret, they’re not worried about obsessed fans. I’ve seen them make appearances on late night talk shows with their real name (MitchFlowerPower went on Colbert).
Jeph referenced streamers Ouro Kronii and Nanashi Mumei in the comic. Those two streamers, like others contracted through the Japanese conglomerate Hololive, are cagey about their actual identities. This, however, seems to be a specifically Hololive thing, possibly because as contracted streamers Hololive owns the identities, not the actresses/actors who play them and could hypothetically replace the actual people behind the vtuber identities at any time if they wished. I don't actually know (you'd probably need to be an expert in Japanese contract law to figure out the particulars), but the circumstances of vtubers who contract through Hololive (or a similar agency) are clearly different from that of those who operate independently - at a guess it's probably similar to the differences between Japanese musicians who work for corporate-backed idol groups like AKB48 versus those who operate independently. Jeph, however, seems to have completely missed that distinction.