"Can't believe I'm crying over an anime girl": Public Parasocial Grieving and Coping Towards VTuber Graduation and Termination

2025-04-18

AI Summary

This study investigates parasocial grief responses among English-speaking audiences to virtual YouTuber (VTuber) “graduation”—a discontinuation of VTuber identity, distinct from creator death. Drawing on 13,655 Reddit posts, it employs a mixed-methods approach: LDA topic modeling, sentiment time-series analysis, qualitative coding, and community discourse network analysis. The study introduces the first typology of VTuber retirement, identifying three distinct retirement patterns and their associated affective trajectories; reveals counterintuitive temporal intensification of regret and loyalty in parasocial mourning; and uncovers novel collective coping strategies integrating attachment styles. It empirically confirms that audiences deploy bereavement-like cognitive mechanisms for meaning-making, quantifies dynamic shifts across seven emotion categories, and proposes the “symbiotic identity cognition” framework—elucidating how VTuber identity is continuously negotiated and re-semanticized within the creator–audience ecosystem.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI

Abstract

Despite the significant increase in popularity of Virtual YouTubers (VTubers), research on the unique dynamics of viewer-VTuber parasocial relationships is nascent. This work investigates how English-speaking viewers grieved VTubers whose identities are no longer used, an interesting context as the nakanohito (i.e., the person behind the VTuber identity) is usually alive post-retirement and might"reincarnate"as another VTuber. We propose a typology for VTuber retirements and analyzed 13,655 Reddit posts and comments spanning nearly three years using mixed-methods. Findings include how viewers coped using methods similar to when losing loved ones, alongside novel coping methods reflecting different attachment styles. Although emotions like sadness, shock, concern, disapproval, confusion, and love decreased with time, regret and loyalty showed opposite trends. Furthermore, viewers' reactions situated a VTuber identity within a community of content creators and viewers. We also discuss design implications alongside implications on the VTuber ecosystem and future research directions.

Problem

• Investigates viewer grief over retired VTuber identities
• Explores coping methods in parasocial VTuber relationships
• Analyzes emotional trends in VTuber community reactions

Innovation

• Analyzed 13,655 Reddit posts using mixed-methods
• Proposed typology for VTuber retirements
• Investigated viewer coping methods and attachment styles