Karamazov’s follower counts are kinda paltry, aren’t they? Plus, followers themselves mean little. How many people are watching each stream concurrently? They’re not being view-botted, are they? How many superchats are they getting? KAngel has a serious follower count, but how many of those accounts are still active? How many of them watch every stream? How many of us sometimes click to follow someone just to never watch any of their content again? It happens a lot. Nevertheless, Karamazov claims to have the momentum. Maybe they’ve been growing super fast. Sure, but that usually slows down greatly once you’ve breached a million subs. If you can keep the momentum up after that, then I’d say that’s remarkable.
But is this feud between them and KAngel even real? It’s hard to tell what’s an act and what isn’t. Lollipop is full of attitude right before she goes to confront KAngel, but she whimpers in front of the actual person. Onstage, she oscillate between a shy, little mouse and the typical tsuntsun persona. But that’s adorable in a way, isn’t it? The gap between her two personalities. This itself could be a ploy to endear herself to the audience. The upstart streamer who tries to take on the industry veteran only to cutely cower when push comes to shove.
It’s easy to look at KAngel and Karamazov exchange light-hearted banter and read more into it. Oooh, they really hate each other! But it’s all a show. For people who are looking for drama, they’re getting exactly that. Streamers sell dreams, after all. They metamorphose every night to deliver their goods. If you want a bunch of girls to bicker because you think women have crabs-in-a-bucket mentality, you can have that too. Whether it’s real or not is irrelevant.
KAngel tells a heartwarming story of when she got a superchat from none other than Lollipop. This was way before the latter ever debuted. The story ultimately wins the audience over, but did this moment really mean that much to KAngel? Or did she dig through her archives of livestreams to find anything to use onstage? You might think that sounds crazy, but she worries that she’s going to go mad one day, right? What could possibly be madder than going to such lengths in order to win a pissing contest with streamers who have less than a tenth of her subscribers? At the end of the day, even if KAngel cedes momentum to Karamazov, she should still be able to go home to an account with ten million plus subscribers.
The vast majority of us could try streaming now, and we probably wouldn’t even hit 1,000 subs by the end of the year. Even if a good chunk of KAngel’s subs are dead accounts, she should still have enough to rake in the money regardless of what happens tonight. She should still be able to live comfortably with her producer. But it’s never just about living comfortably. The mania lies within the all consuming, voracious desire for more, more, more. Like how billionaires hoard wealth, influencers hoard attention. If you’re not growing, then you’re dying. That’s life. We all peak at some point, then our remaining years is a slow but gradual descent to the grave. So the number must go up. There’s no other option.
KAngel probably gets a hundred times more positive comments than negative ones, but it’s the negative ones that stick with you. The problem is that positive comments can feel insincere. Maybe they’re just praising you to get your attention. There are tons of people who would show you love just to get a shout-out. It’s a quick dose of validation to them that ultimately means nothing to you. And even when they’re not being insincere, they might just be sycophants so their love still means nothing. If they love everything you do, is there any substance to their love?
But the weird thing about negativity is that it doesn’t feel insincere or as insincere. Every negative comment feels like it’s written with conviction. If you’re going to put such vile words down, it has to be real, right? Logically, we know this isn’t true. Logically, we know some people just want to troll. They just want to rile you up, get a reaction, then laugh about it. But you can’t help but take every negative like a stab to the heart. Or at least a small cut.
Ame takes a dump (or piss) and flushes the negativity down the toilet. Or at least that’s what it looks like. But I bet you she can’t. It doesn’t matter how big or small you are, the negativity builds up little by little. It’s death by a million cuts. If she ever goes crazy, it’ll be when she can’t take it anymore. The only real way to shut them out is to literally disable the ability to comment altogether, but influencers would never allow that to happen. Or they shouldn’t. Engagement is everything, so you’re shooting your momentum in the head if you don’t let them interact with you, for better or for worse.
But you could see this another way: KAngel gets all of the negativity, but it’s the person behind the streamer who has to process and ultimately deal with it.
Ame is always showering her producer with adoration, but we never see him. Is he actually there? Is he even still alive? Is he just us, the actual viewers and not the simulacra in the show? Then a small dose of reality comes through when Ame admits that nothing lasts forever. Not even the producer’s love, not her, not this anime.
Even if you stream for hours, however, this side of you is short-lived. This side of you makes up only a small percentage of your everyday existence. Or rather, it should. People don’t typically go live for more than twelve hours a day. For their health, they shouldn’t. But lines can blur. Maybe you’re no longer live, but you can’t turn the streamer side off. Maybe that’s KAngel’s worry. One day, she won’t be able to go back to Ame. But this assumes that being Ame is even a good thing.
Near the end of the episode, the disheveled, crazy woman finally makes it onstage to confront KAngel. What did KAngel actually do to her? Does it even matter? Does the woman even actually look like this? Or is this just our image of what a crazy person should look like? But even her dagger isn’t straight. She has no conviction. KAngel then stops her swing by directly grabbing the blade, not even caring that she just cut herself. She needs to get back to her producer, so it’s almost as if she doesn’t even notice the woman. She barely reacts to her. It’s one of those “who’s actually the crazy one” moments. But we don’t even know if the producer exists. It’s easy to assume that the person behind the streamer is the normal one, but Ame’s just as crazy. Maybe her mania for her producer is what propels KAngel to metamorphose and streams every night. Ame ends the episode by reaffirming her love for her producer. Someone must be filming this. But again, the person on the other side of the camera could just be us.
Stray thoughts & observations:
— Kache meets up with Karamazov to talk about authenticity. She almost feels like an aside in this episode. In any case, the girl can’t help but feel like she’s just selling an image. Even her youth is play for nostalgia. The streaming group, however, sees nothing wrong with this. There’s an agreed upon exchange of goods. The audience wants a false dream, so the streamers put on an act. What’s wrong with that? Only normies start crying about fakeness, insisting that they’re not crazy.
— No, Kache didn’t let her boyfriend have his way with her. She got raped. But she’d rather feel needed than be alone even if that need is toxic.
— I don’t like the songs for either the OP or ED, but at least they’re fun to look at. You could even get a great wallpaper or two if you cared about that sort of thing. In all honestly, however, I rarely ever see my desktop. I have no reason to close or minimize my windows/apps.
