It’s just part of the “coder” subculture these days. To quote @SwiftOnSecurity:

“I said that all furries are programmers. I have been contacted and am issuing a correction. There are three furries who are not programmers.”

https://x.com/swiftonsecurity/status/511043756788043776?s=46

Shrug. It's certainly unusual by the standard of programmers-as-geeky-yet-professional-folks, which is what most people expect these days.

However, programming has, for most of the last 60 years, attracted many people from the weird, misfit, or cringe-du-jour segments of the population. This is nothing new; plenty of hackers in the '80s and '90s had public personas that were weirder than this.

For some, vtubing is capitalizing on a trend; for many, though, it’s a way to express and experiment with developing one’s identity in a way that transcends the physical limitations of both presenter and audience - and for those for whom that freedom to experiment can unlock unbounded creativity, it’s an incredible way to “limit break.”

A bit saccharine from an aesthetic perspective, but it’s something that would be entirely familiar (if old-school) to denizens of a cyberpunk universe, and I don’t think there’s a better way to articulate how it’s connected to a broader vision.

I choose to see that as the cyberpunk future that we are living in. Everything ends with your avatar, just like Gibson foretold. What an amazing time.