Shaking Out the Ants

The chat was drowning in spam and mockery.

There wasn't the slightest sign it would settle down.

If I begged the viewers to please, please stop, they'd only get more excited and thrash even harder.

I wasn't stupid enough not to know that.

So what was I supposed to do with them?

If someone picks a fight, the natural thing is to answer it.

I was going to fight fire with fire.

All right, then.

From this moment on, I was going to educate these little monsters.

I cleared my throat and opened my mouth.

"The French sociologist Gustave Le ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Bon put it this way. 'In a crowd, the intellectual faculties of the individual are leveled, and unconscious instinct takes their place.' Now then—take a look at the chat. People who, in real life, hold down perfectly ordinary jobs and attend perfectly ordinary schools, the moment they put on the mask of anonymity and join the collective known as a crowd, begin spouting irrational nonsense as if their frontal lobes have simply ceased to function."

The reaction wasn't quite what I'd expected, but I pressed on without missing a beat.

"According to Le Bon, the first defining trait of the crowd is the anonymization of responsibility. Alone, a human being is accountable for their words and deeds. But the moment they hide inside the vast anonymity of a crowd, that sense of responsibility disperses across the whole mass until it becomes vanishingly thin. That is precisely why, right now, you can toss around words like 'boar' without a shred of guilt. The comfort of being one anonymous face among countless others. Of this, Le Bon said…"

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠lecture rolled on without end.

To keep this one-sided seminar from stalling, I even opened TreeWiki and bought an e-book of Le Bon's work on the spot.

Forty minutes like that.

I talked without rest.

There was no interaction with the viewers whatsoever. I simply ignored the chat completely and kept my mouth moving into the microphone, one-way only.

The chat that had been blazing so fiercely at the start began, little by little, to slow. The scroll speed dropped in a way you could actually see.

The reaction I wanted was starting to show…

The problem was that this was a wide-area attack that didn't distinguish friend from foe.

Still, I trusted that anyone who had stuck with my streams this long could endure this much.

Not yet.

There were still four hundred viewers left.

To get back down to my original numbers, I needed at least a hundred and fifty more to peel off.

Eyes skimming the e-book open in the corner of the screen, I continued in a dry, flat tone.

"…Returning to the main point. The second trait of the crowd, as Le Bon describes it, is contagion. Within a crowd, emotion and behavior spread like an epidemic. One person shouts 'boar,' and it propagates to the person beside them with neither logic nor evidence. The third trait is suggestibility, which is akin to an individual fallen into a hypnotic state…"

I don't know how much longer it went.

At last, the moment the viewer count dropped to two hundred fifty, I closed my mouth.

Just as Le Bon had said.

A crowd surges in on a single emotion, and it surges out on one as well.

"Hmm. That should be sufficient."

"You've all worked very hard."

I huffed a quiet laugh at the viewers' reactions and went on.

"Well then. Now that the atmosphere has settled… for those of you who endured that dreadful boredom, I would like to propose a rather interesting empirical experiment."

In my opinion, it wasn't boring content. If anything, it leaned interesting.

"I am referring to the Schrödinger's Boar hypothesis so many of you have so tirelessly advanced. According to those individuals, I am a hundred-kilogram wild boar who has been weeded out of reality and is hiding behind a flat panel."

"But consider this carefully. If I truly were a complex-riddled boar cowering in a corner of my room, terrified of other people's gazes… would I be able to leave this safe nest and step out into a world where countless eyes would fall upon me?"

"Precisely. In order to prove that I am not a boar… I intend, before long, to step briefly out of this two-dimensional world you are watching."

I needed to try new content anyway, and if I could shed the disgrace of being called a boar while I was at it, that was two birds with one stone.

"Yes. I am planning an outdoor stream in the near future. And you will be able to verify for yourselves that I am not a boar."

"I have no intention of revealing my face. However, the way people treat me will be more than enough for you to form a reasonable estimate of my appearance."

"I'll take my time deciding what to do for the outdoor stream content. Well then—now that things have calmed down somewhat…"

I picked up the squeaky mallet resting on the desk.

Squeak—!

"The Philosophy Court is now in session."

After the stream ended.

"An outdoor stream, huh…"

I sat in my chair, chin in my hand, and sank into thought.

Honestly, the outdoor stream had been something I'd blurted out on impulse, carried along by the momentum. Of course I had no plan for it whatsoever.

Judging by the viewers' reactions, a VTuber doing an outdoor stream was apparently pretty rare.

Had I gone and done something un-VTuber-like again…?

Maybe. But I still had to shake off that boar label, no matter what.

And beyond the outdoor stream, I had a fair pile of other things to deal with.

I created a new notepad file on the desktop and renamed it Immediate Tasks.

When my thoughts get tangled, the best thing is to line the problems up where I can see them.

Clack-clack-clack.

Keyboard sounds filled the silent one-room apartment.

That was about it for now.

Of those, the ones that needed immediate attention were outdoor stream prep, getting a handle on the VTuber industry, and building basic fitness.

I stared blankly at the items on the notepad.

Not a single one of them looked easy.

Outdoor streaming gear—well, a smartphone and a selfie stick would probably ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be enough. It wasn't as if I was going to stream exclusively outdoors from now on.

Next up…

"Let's start with number two."

During the day I'd gotten sucked into a keyboard war on BCInside without realizing it, and I'd completely forgotten both the VTuber industry research and my exercise.

I opened the main page of the streaming platform Vivid.

Then I found a VTuber who seemed to have a decent audience and clicked in at random.

"Kyaaah! They're coming from the right side right now! Unnie!"

An avatar with red drill hair was playing an FPS.

The VTuber's name was… Shirayuki Miu.

A completely Japanese-style name…?

Anyway, I watched the stream seriously.

Shirayuki Miu was not particularly good at the game.

She died, and died, and died some more.

Honestly it was a little frustrating, but…

There was definitely something fun about it.

The proof was that almost no one seemed to have left since I'd come in. Had the numbers even gone up?

I roughly understood why people watched this VTuber.

First of all, her voice was cute.

There was a sense that she was putting on a bit of a constructed tone, sure, but it was charming enough that you could easily forgive that.

And the avatar's movements were appealing. The lines Shirayuki Miu delivered and the way the avatar moved somehow… clicked.

More than anything, the audio never went dead.

She was talking with her teammates, reading the viewers' mischievous chat in real time, and answering every single thing.

Impressive.

They say there's no easy job in the world, but…

Compared to this person, I felt like I'd been coasting.

I ought to reflect on that.

Feeling a mild sense of awe at Shirayuki Miu's professional dedication, I clicked the donation button.

"Kyaah! Thank you for the ten thousand~! Huh? That nickname looks kind of familiar…?"

I left that stream and started poking around other rooms.

Every stream with a solid viewer count was the same.

A VTuber spinning a song roulette and singing and dancing without a single sign of fatigue. A VTuber who pulled out a different reaction and a different bit of aegyo every time a donation hit…

"They really are something."

It was a completely different feeling from my first day as a VTuber.

Back then, honestly, it had given me the creeps a little. I'd been embarrassed at myself ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for even watching.

But it was different now.

I was even feeling a degree of respect for them.

I donated ten thousand won to every VTuber I visited.

I wanted to go big like Hina and drop a hundred thousand at a time, but…

I didn't have that kind of financial power yet.

A few of them recognized my nickname and were startled, but I left each stream the instant I donated, so the conversation never continued.

They would have their own planned content, after all. Having someone like me barge in out of nowhere would only cause trouble.

By the end, nearly a hundred thousand won had left my account, but I didn't feel particularly bad about it.

If anything, wasn't that cheap for tuition?

If I joined Hina's crew, I at least needed the professional awareness of the VTubers I'd just watched, or I'd only be a nuisance.

Having finished my VTuber tour, I opened the notepad file again.

What was left were outdoor stream prep and basic fitness.

Outdoor stream prep was simple.

I ordered a selfie stick online.

As for fitness…

I'd really throw myself into it starting tomorrow.

It was already far too late today.

One in the morning.

So I could get up early and go work out, I crawled into bed earlier than usual.

Starting tomorrow, I was going to live seriously for real.