Anyone with a modicum of perception can realise three things: when trolling is occuring, who's doing the trolling, and why they're doing it. In the case of /vt/, said obvious trolling is so insultingly obvious that it's a wonder how the moderation is so inept as to not notice. However, I have evidence that even if a portion of moderation is inept, another portion of the moderation team is complicit or even deliberately responsible for said trolling, essentially being planted janitors or moderators (and thus, a complete liability). Regardless, there exists a childish ironically-laced meme that can be summarised as pushing Annoying Orange (a 2009 youtube live-action webseries and cartoon that has long been irrelevant) as a VTuber. This meme has origins from the same mentality and demographic that also pushed the likes of Cory in the House as anime. These "memes" both follow the same basic format, the punchline essentially being that you state a falsehood and then spread said falsehood until it snowballs and others parrot it, so "x series is y medium". Naturally, since the internet has been populated by normalfags, impressionable children, and other assorted low e-value people, this falsehood does indeed snowball extremely easily, and quickly becomes misinformation. While it may seem strange that an obvious lie would somehow delude people, there are many people out there who eat up any rhetoric they're exposed to so long as they haven't already thought about the subject said rhetoric pertains to prior. Even the most gullible of normalfags are unlikely to fall for rhetoric they already oppose, which is why it's harder to push these kinds of falsehoods with subjects like politics, which seems to drive the formation of concrete stances from them immediately, preventing rhetoric from having much effect like it would if they were just disinterested or neutral. As VTubing is a new medium where most people don't bother to remotely research the definition of "VTuber", misinformation they're exposed to passively is extremely influential.

However, this falsehood isn't just spread by children for the sake of entertaining themselves, it also has the ulterior motive of undermining the VTubing medium through what is defined as infiltration and then subversion. As the internet has seen its communities homogenised by higher traffic, less extensive gatekeeping, and increasing commercialisation; normalfags who otherwise wouldn't often venture outside their containment centres (such as Twitter and Facebook) are exposed to various mediums, communities and circles they otherwise wouldn't think much about. Because said normalfags are reactive and impulsive people, if they're exposed to a medium that contradicts their normalfag mentality, they will become uppity and irrational, and are likely to begin an aggressive effort to destroy this medium that contradicts them with its existence. VTubing is a Japanese medium defined by a person using a computer-generated, animated virtual avatar as a persona to engage with viewers, rather than their actual face or camera footage. VTubing usually also encompasses use of anime-style avatars, motion-capture models and streaming, but these are not relevant to the basic definition, just the form they most commonly take. There are two things in this reality that irritate normalfags; and that is it being a Japanese medium, and primarily involving an anime artstyle. While normalfags have a fondness towards regular streamers as they naturally gravitate towards 3D (given their lack of fantasy), they generally hold an aggressive stance towards Japanese 2D media, and anything associated with it, such as VTubing. You may be inclined to protest this statement by claiming that normalfags do watch and post about anime with regularity since the 2010s, but this is around the same time that the scourge known as ironic "humour" began to pick up steam. Normalfag "interest" in anime is very much tied to their ironic detachment and cynicism regarding it, where they derive thrills out of the atmosphere of joking about the more metaphysical aspects of anime with fellow normalfags, their interest in following the medium as a whole and legitimately digesting a series is next to non-existent. This is reflected in "meme-worthy" series like Jojo and seasonal releases being all you will see them post about. Occasionally an e-celeb who fancies themselves a virtual commentator and "critic" will sift through the internet looking for niche anime that they can spin some controversy from, and make a video about how controversial they think it is to them and their eager audience of fellow normalfags. This may lead them to being exposed to anime that isn't necessarily meme-worthy or seasonal, however, it will only be so that they can attempt to virtually boycott its mere existence by complaining about its contents. VTubing is somewhat similar, and has various normalfags you might think are fans of it from a surface glance. However, you'll quickly notice that their interest revolves around the tertiary association of it with memes and their supposed self-aware embarassment about being such a "weeb"; a notable ironic detachment from any real commitment to the medium or any individual VTuber, the chances of them keeping track of any one of them for any sort of interest in their content is slim. Like anime, they'd be more in it for the atmosphere surrounding it, being in-the-know about all the latest events and memes like the politics and news they love so much. These are fickle and shallow people who can just as easily be turned to spiting and complaing about VTubing whenever they see legitimate interest in the medium for the actual material, and may even become indistinguishable from the other section of normalfags who just outright hate VTubing for being another medium their 3D streamers/political idealogy/mentality has to deal with. In that regard, the spam of the likes of Annoying Orange on /vt/ reflects that perfectly. While on other corners of the internet it may be commonly spammed for the unfunny ironic joke of claiming it's something it clearly isn't, on /vt/ it's done so flagrantly out of spite while simultaneously being completely off-topic, purely because the petulant children doing so are angered by this anime-style mediums' existence. You would think it wouldn't be a problem because Annoying Orange isn't a VTuber at all, and is a live-action webseries and cartoon that exclusively uses real imagery and camera footage super-imposed over inanimate objects; not an individual with a computer-generated, animated avatar. Some of these spasticated children would try to make the case that the animation sets are re-used; this is wrong, as there are no animation sets, it exclusively uses pre-recorded live-action camera footage imposed onto real images of objects for each "episode", there is no smoothing or blending and those claiming otherwise attempt to fool people through attributing the "seamlessness" (which isn't actually seamless at all) to blending rather than it just being high resolution. Hypothetically speaking, even if it were to use blending (which it doesn't), it wouldn't make a difference because it still isn't a computer-generated avatar (or character). However, despite knowing this, the mods refused to delete these threads.

Being that /vt/ was created on 29/01/2021, the spam took off immediately since then. The spamming originated from /qa/, /pol/, /tv/ (all notorious for being boards that don't really serve any function besides being a hive for newfags and normalfags to export their low-effort trolling to other boards) and assorted Discord servers, that had the dual purpose of indirectly expressing their displeasure at another "weeb" board being created instead of the generalised e-celeb board they wanted to troll in, and derailing actual VTuber discussion out of spite. About 17-20 off-topic Annoying Orange threads were made that served no purpose other than to clutter up the catalog, though the assorted electionfag migrants made a particular effort to keep these threads up by necrobumping them whenever they hit page 10. Naturally, children can't keep this many threads up forever, even in an organised trolling effort, as they'll inevitably be made to go to bed to wake up for primary school in the morning, or get distracted by the newest episode of Teletubbies or the like on the television. After a few weeks they were then reduced to just one general after being unable to necrobump these threads, though said "general" is still off-topic and existing only for the sake of trolling/spam/vandalism etc. The entirety of the existing population of trolling electionfags then elected to try and keep this one thread alive instead. Various people who had some remote observation noticed this is blatant off-topic trolling and rightfully took issue with it not belonging on the board, as well as hypocrisy and double-standards in what threads were allowed. A few threads for Engineer Gaming and Den of Tools were also made, and while being obvious shitposting threads, they were at least on-topic

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/3858066/#3858066
https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/3864488/#3864488
https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/3876537/#3876537
https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/4003810/#4003810
https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/4117382/#4117382

These threads above correctly pointed out that the spam was such blatant trolling that it could and should be deleted for breaking about every rule on the site (off-topic, spam, low-quality, trolling and so on), yet the moderation still wasn't seen doing much besides sporadically deleting the odd image or post that offended them in some capacity. Some of these threads even pointed out that the moderation deleted threads for individuals like Senzawa who were much closer to being a VTuber than the likes of Annoying Orange ever was. While these threads did get flooded by the same incoherent trolls responsible for spamming /qa/ and /vt/ in the first place, they couldn't actually delete the thread, so their point remained. Regardless, the moderation did not delete their off-topic "general" on /vt/, leaving them a base of operations for spam, trolling, vandalism and other assorted bad faith activity with no real intent to hide it.

It's worth noting that beyond this general having nothing to do with VTubers or VTubing, it also instantly outed every single person posting in it as an electionfag who started using 4chan in 2016 earliest. There are some obvious mannerisms that reveal this.

The first way they reveal themselves is an ingrained obsession with trannies. Electionfags are well known for being obsessed with trannies (being one of the three subjects they post about on /pol/, the other two being American politicians and race), and being such a high-traffic board, this means that when /pol/ fails to contain them for whatever reason, they bring their tranny fixation with them en masse. This means that whenever they land on another board either with curiosity (uncommon) or intent (much more common), they are not comfortable until they have brought their board of origin (/pol/) with them. For that reason, this obviously means they have to derail every thread on this board into being about trannies, regardless of what the thread is actually about. They do not need much in the way of context or justification for making these threads about trannies, and simply adopt the fallacious tactic of calling anyone who takes issue with their off-topic thread derailment a tranny. In this Annoying Orange "general", similar behaviour can be observed. Being composed completely of electionfags, they are convinced they are getting back at the "holotrannies" by spamming off-topic shit. While you may think the "holo" portion represents Hololive, they are actively enraged at the existence of all VTubers, and they think Hololive presides over all VTubers, as they are not well-versed in the medium, or anything at all really. Additionally, anyone/anything that contradicts them at all will be labelled a tranny, as electionfags have since diluted "tranny" into being a catch-all insult in the same way "fag" or "retard" are. Interestingly enough, they have gone one step further in revealing themselves to be electionfags by now calling anyone who contradicts them a leftist and SJW, which would seem odd given the abundant lack of any sort of politics on /vt/ outside their troll general. This is because they are once again bringing /pol/ with them, and projecting their perceived enemies on /pol/ onto their perceived enemy on every other board as well.

The second way they reveal themselves is through wojak, pepe and "gigachad" edits being the type of file they post besides the web series itself. Wojak, pepe and gigachad are extremely low-effort ugly template memes that are charmless and devoid of any purpose besides crossboard trolling and undermining the quality of discourse on any given thread, and are exclusively posted by electionfags, normalfags and other underage people who are a net-detriment to any website they post anything to. So with all that in mind, they are accordingly very fond of posting these template memes, as low-value content attracts low- value people. As they are driven by spite and talentless in the art department, this always takes the form of sloppy MS Paint "work" with simply taking the colour orange and smearing it haphazardly over the source template, then copy-pasting any given characters' face from that web series onto the head of whatever wojak/pepe/gigachad they're using as a foundation. Sometimes, you'll have a directed edit where a strawman caricature is formed through copy-pasting the accessory of a Hololive VTuber onto a crying wojak edit, in contrast to a smug/smiling gigachad edit with an Annoying Orange face copy-pasted on. That is the extent of the content in these threads.

The third way they reveal themselves is through electionfag and newfag lingo. Beyond the usual newfag slang like "based", "sneed", "seethe", "cope", "cringe" and other low quality posts being present, there are other exhibits of trash vernacular being thrown around. "Peared" and "knifed" are two examples of this, both being founded off "based" as a format, essentially consisting of noun-ed. "Peared" is the exact equivalent of "based" and means "I agree", "knifed" is the exact equivalent of "cringe" and means "I disagree". They serve no purpose other than to indicate that the person posting them is an underage troll and is angered by the existence of /vt/ and/or VTubers. Beyond this, other electionfag buzzphrase formats like "x hands typed this" are exceedingly common.

The fourth way they reveal themselves is through post formatting. Posts are either completely devoid of content (just being "based", "peared", "bump") and made to keep the thread from archiving; middling length posts whining about the existence of /vt/, VTubers, anime, Japan, anything that isn't politics or 3D e-celebs etc; or copypasta paragraphs sarcastically or ironically "detailing" how random Annoying Orange character raped them (one-to-one based off the "Shrek is love, Shrek is life" copypasta), and inane conversationally written longposts with fake emotional investment designed to be shitposts.

The fifth way they reveal themselves is deliberate spread of misinformation, vandalism and spam, something that has a very high correlation with electionfags, as they are impulsive and low-inhibition people who don't possess any particular humanity or code, and will generally engage in destructive behaviour both online and offline for their own thrills without thinking of the long-term impact on them or anyone else. This will have the karmic effect of leaving them suffering and dying in the ruins they created, but they compromise other people in the process, so it's not particularly desirable. Although it is uncommon as they're almost always preoccupied with desperately trying to keep their off-topic troll "general" alive, they occasionally deliberately enter on-topic threads for the sake of both spreading falsehoods, and gaslighting people into believing it. They may attempt to take the facade of not being obvious trolls responsible for posting Annoying Orange in the first place, but this is only so that they can attempt to avoid any accusations of bias or intent. As they are not very intelligent or astute, they fail at wearing this "disguise" miserably. One method they'll use in attempting to gaslight threads is to find any negativity in said thread regarding a particular VTuber, then try and slide in a mention of Annoying Orange while stating that "even it is better" or it is "less bad" than either the thread or the VTuber themselves. This is done for achieving two things; creating the narrative that Annoying Orange is a VTuber (it isn't and never will be), and attempting to neutralise otherwise negative reception towards it by means of subversion. They believe that if they keep pushing that anything else is worse than it through the veneer of a third-party observer/spectator, they can get people to "warm up" to its presence, and make their self-anointed task of ruining the board through normalising reception to it in their trolling efforts that much easier.

The sixth way they reveal themselves is through outing themselves to hate any Japanese based media. To elaborate, they take particular offense to anime (which they take to calling "tranime" harkening back to their electionfag obsession with trannies once again) and seeing VTubers as what is essentially anime girls interacting with the viewerbase in some capacity, they get particularly uppity. Electionfags are well known for forgetting that 4chan is an anime website based on a Japanese imageboard, and this is reflected in their complaints about "tr/a/nnies" (people who post on /a/, also electionfag tranny fixation again, you might be noticing a trend now), "weebs", and Japanese culture in general. You may notice than in the worthless thread linked below, there are posts made of this nature
https://boards.4channel.org/vt/thread/5795422
Namely, one of these posts states: "I am very sorry but I simply cannot accept the opinions of a (((person))) who has an an*me avatar."
This is a perfect example of all of my previous and proceeding points, illustrating the use of election tourist text habits such as misusing both brackets and asterisks to express their disdain for whatever the subject of the word pertains to. In addition, it's also an open admittal to hating anime, which exposes the poster as a newfag election tourist who got lost here on the way to whatever social media hive they usually browse, as anyone who had been here before waves of tourists swarmed in after Gamergate would realise that 4chan is and always be an anime website.

The seventh way they reveal themselves is through contrived, embarassing Roman larping. Despite not actually caring about the Romans or knowing a lick of Latin, being the election tourists they are (a group well known for obsessing over supposed Roman "aesthetics"), they create poor portmanteau of anything fruit related in conjunction with slapping "-is" or "-ix" as a suffix onto the end of an existing term. This utter retardation and lack of anything resembling self-awareness is par for the course.

Beyond this, aware that their off-topic thread has no poster retention, low poster replacement rates and about the same 7 people necrobumping it while switching IPs to ban-evade and artificially inflate thread IP count; they are attempting a parasitic approach to attempting to keep their trolling efforts alive, trying to subversively inject their Annoying Orange refuse into any /vt/ meta board events, abusing the good faith nature of these events for ill intent, as they are not self-sufficient enough to keep their trolling alive without a host to leech off of. As some people are still perceptive and experienced enough to recognise this off-topic trolling, it's generally precluded from infecting said board creations, but the attempt is still made.

Sometimes, in an attempt to keep their thread alive, they will actively pretend to be falseflaggers with otherwise contextless posts like "We're dead" and "It's over" to hype themselves up into continuing to spam. At the point where this is necessary it becomes evident that your thread is on life-support.

It's worth noting that there was actually absolutely no "interest" in Annoying Orange at all prior to /vt/ being created. On the one board where it's actually on-topic in /co/, no one has ever posted about it for any reason other than to bring up the fact that it's one of the worst series on the board, often being brought up in regards to an "Animation Dark Age". This is an indisputable piece of evidence to cement that it is only posted now in a childish trolling effort, and no one above the age of 9 gives anything resembling a fuck about it. If their "general" was moved to /co/ where it belongs, it would die instantaneously.

Some of them attempt to push their trolling as on-topic because of a screencap of Annoying Orange on a VTuber ranking list. They conveniently exclude that it was vandalised onto said list and then promptly removed because it isn't a VTuber, thus defeating that narrative.

In an effort to expose exactly what was going on with the moderation and their failure to delete these Annoying Orange threads despite them breaking the fundamental rule about /vt/ being a VTuber board, a few threads were created to test their deletion "policy", or lack thereof.

https://archive.nyafuu.org/vt/thread/2699248/#2699248
https://archive.nyafuu.org/vt/thread/2723727/#2723727
https://archive.nyafuu.org/vt/thread/2701311/#2701311

Now, these threads are not on-topic either. But the key difference is that they're less off-topic than Annoying Orange threads are, being similar to it in many ways while differing in ways that makes them closer to VTubers than it. These were made as a test, if they weren't deleted, that means the moderation team has such a liberal definition of VTuber that any video uploaded online with characters that aren't just unedited camera footage would qualify as on-topic; if they were deleted that means that the moderators have no criteria for being a VTuber at all, and simply just delete or protect threads based on personal preference.

Charlie the Unicorn shares a few similarities with Annoying Orange, both are YouTube web series with the name of the series being the name of the main character. The difference is that Charlie the Unicorn uses computer-generated characters; while Annoying Orange uses exclusively real imagery, camera footage of real faces, and none of the characters are computer-generated. So for all intents and purposes, Charlie the Unicorn is closer to being a VTuber than Annoying Orange is.

Harry the Hamster also shares a few similarities. Both are created with real imagery, and the name of the series is also the name of the main character. The difference here is that Harry the Hamster at least has a computer-generated mouth, isn't a web series, and addresses the viewer, all criteria for being a VTuber. Annoying Orange fails to meet these criteria.

All of these threads were deleted, which immediately exposed to me that there is a moderator and/or janitor responsible for protecting these off-topic Annoying Orange threads while other threads which are actually less off-topic still get deleted. For all intents and purposes, this means there is a planted moderator who somehow got such an authoritative position for a board which they actually hate the subject of. This is the diametric opposite of the sort of person who should be given any sort of moderation tools over a board for said subject.

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/4247044/#4247044
https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/4250359/#4250359

In accordance with this revelation, two threads were posted on /qa/ that raised an issue with this problem. Although it is obvious that moderators don't remotely bother to look at /qa/, as they have abandoned what should be a meta board for supplementing the feedback forum (which they also evidently don't look at) to children endlessly spamming mindless wojak trash (which is even visible in said threads, as if to hammer my point home), these threads still raise a very valid point with the poor moderation on /vt/.

You may wonder what should be done about these Annoying Orange threads then. The correct approach is to permaban every single person responsible for perpetuating them, but the moderation are unlikely to do this as that would be them doing what they're supposed to do. Another effective solution would be to delete these threads for being flagrantly off-topic, and the underage trolls responsible for spamming them would still be able to post about it on /co/ if they actually remotely gave a shit about it (they don't); but again, this is too much of a good idea for the mods to implement, as that would require them to do their jobs. There is no reason to continue to let them remain on /vt/ as they break every conceivable global and board rule while essentially being a base of operations for electionfags to openly, shamelessly conspire on how to shit up the board. I have zero reservations about insulting the moderators here as this is by far the most flagrant incompetence I've ever seen from any moderation on any site, there are maybe two good janitors or moderators on this board and they're clearly outnumbered by the incompetent ones. That this would be a complete non-issue if they just deleted those off-topic threads makes it even more insulting.

Edit
Pub: 04 May 2021 12:14 UTC
Edit: 29 Jun 2021 13:41 UTC
Views: 508