>>103482986
I've seen several people in /freak/ and they arguably sound like grifters taking advantage of a small niche. Not all of them, definitely not, some of them have very visual evidence that they are not, depressingly so.
The type of issues that can lead to that level of self-deprecation and harm are sort of related, but way harsher on the bullying and abused sides of things.
Bullying and abuse itself doesn't inherently lead to people becoming suppressed, in fact it can sometimes lead to the opposite.
Neglect and zero social skills, however, tends to do way worse to a persons mental state than even outright bullying does.
Vtubing itself opened that window of "would consider streaming" to a massive number of those people who would typically never stream due to the expectation of a webcam feed.
This is speaking of averages of course, this isn't representative of even most, just the types who would consider streaming in any capacity, a large chunk of either of those groups self-isolate to extreme degrees that they become social hermits, usually entirely dependent on family.
We never hear of those people, outside of rather sad news stories at some point...