>>103281216
This whole VTuber thing in and of itself is quite unsustainable beyond a point.
It requires thousands of people to spend their time doing nothing productive, which isn't going to work when the world returns to reality after the dollar funded high.
Watching your favorite chuuba after work to relax is one thing, but if you're spending your entire day watching VTubers, then you are either being funded by your parents or the state.
And that's not really sustainable.

There's a reason Cover moved on to IP-based monetization rather than depending on streams for revenue.
Because merch doesn't require you to spend thousands of hours in front of a screen. You can just watch 5-10 min clips and buy someone's merch off of that. Long streams just maximize the spreading of clips.
And unlike Japan, there's no merch craze among masses in EU or US.
Especially with the upcoming decoupling, EU is deindustrialized & America isn't making anything, so after the upcoming economic crisis, non-digital stuff from Japan will continue becoming more and more expensive in the West.

For those holos who know the pulse of the community, this is already obvious, which is why most of them have been either straight up moving to Japan or doing more activities with JP members and trying to absorb some of the JP fanbase rather than relying on the unreliable nature of the Western audience.

Obviously things will have to change in Japan as well, but due to where their society is at, it will take much, much longer than the West.