버추버 인터렉티브_싸이코드

INTERACTIVE

버추버 인터렉티브_싸이코드

Try clicking each VTuber and their signs!

Variety entertainment group

OVERSLEEP

When VTubing culture first came to Korea, we came together under louiszzan and decided to gather up most of the people we knew who liked streaming and become VTubers. That’s how we got started.

GAMJAY

I didn’t actually know much about VTubing when we started out—louiszzan just said, “Let’s make a group. Let’s get some people together,” and it took off from there. It was pretty risky, since we sank a lot of money into it at the beginning, but looking at each member of the group, we thought we would be decent, so we didn’t have any problem investing even more.

OVERSLEEP

You know, there’s lots of instances where something from another culture comes to Korea and then it becomes the K-version of that culture. A lot of the Korean VTuber market is like idol culture, but we wanted to focus more on us as YouTubers or streamers, so we ended up becoming a variety entertainment group.

GAMJAY

It’s honestly sort of a bait-and-switch—we’re not talented enough to be idols and we don’t have enough experience.(laugh) By giving ourselves the variety entertainer label, we can do pretty much anything we want. No matter what we do, it’s fine. And since we say a lot of edgy things and talk about whatever issues we want to bring up, we figured streaming as a variety entertainment group would be better.

Casting call

GAMJAY

louiszzan and I have known each other for a long time. When we started talking about forming a group, we realized all we really needed was that one person you know you can rely on. We were focused less on finding someone unusual or extraordinary and more on someone we could rely on, who we could work with for a long time, and that’s how we ended up recruiting YEONI. As for HARUTO, louiszzan brought him in because we liked how he wanted to become an idol.

OVERSLEEP

I actually chose not to join the group at first—the reason being that it’s harder to get a group of streamers together to do something than it looks. We all had different ideas of how to move forward with it, for one thing. We don’t have a monthly salary—our income relies on the kind donations of viewers, meaning it can fluctuate. I was also worried I could cause trouble for the group without thinking because I have a tendency to run my mouth. So I said no, but after a few days it occurred to me that, if we got together, whatever we decided to do, it’d never be boring. It started less about thinking about the money or being successful and more about just figuring it wouldn’t be boring, and now I can confidently say it’s never boring. We can just chitchat together and it makes for at least one fun video, if not more.(laughs)

GAMJAY

Honestly, ever since OVERSLEEP joined the group, my workload’s gone way down. He might officially be the head of planning, but he really does handle a lot of it. Ever since we started moving things along according to a plan, things have been smoother and more efficient.

Motivation

OVERSLEEP

It’s the fate of every YouTuber that they can never stop doing what they’re doing. If our update schedule slows down or comes to a complete stop, all the viewers who were used to watching our stuff might think, Why did they suddenly stop posting videos? What’s up with them lately that they aren’t doing anything? That, plus, we naturally find it fun to continuously put out new things. It might sound weird, but I see myself as a kind of cyber clown.(laughs) I loved saying things that made my friends laugh when I was in school, so whenever we put out some new content or interact with people in some way and they write “LOL” or clap or something, it makes me love my work and feel excited for it.

GAMJAY

I mean, it’s our job, being creators. People who work in an office have to work quickly and have something new to show every day, and we’re no different. Everyone in Psychord’s at their most comfortable when they’re streaming. When we’re not streaming, we’re preparing for it, or a lot of the time we’re each working on our own individual YouTube projects. OVERSLEEP, for example, spends his time these days making his viewers laugh by venting, and I talking with mine while rattling on about whatever. We’re just being ourselves. In the end, if we show people who we are and people are into it, we’re happy, and if not, we’ll just, you know, try again.(laughs)

Workaholics

GAMJAY

It’s better to be busy than have nothing going on. I’m sure everyone in the group would agree they’re the kind of people who love to be the center of attention and to work on things, so it’s better being busy.(laughs) And being busy all the time probably keeps us from getting lazy. If you let yourself get lazy once, you won’t want to do anything else new, either. No one in our group, and that includes OVERSLEEP, really needs to keep making new content or their own personal vlogs—we could just stick with VTubing. The reason we keep making new content, though, is that, if we become the kind of group that takes breaks in between, then we’ll just spend that time goofing around and won’t want to work anymore. That’s why I almost always keep myself working—to try and avoid becoming lazy.

OVERSLEEP

And since we’re streaming, every day there’s something new. If you’re at an office job, you’re mostly doing the same work with the same people in the same place all the time, but we get new kinds of viewers and personally try something new every single day, so it’s kept us from falling into a stale routine the way you would doing the same work over and over.

Real me

GAMJAY

Actually, there’s been a lot of new viewers who show curiosity about my VTubing after they first see me streaming with a cam from the neck down, and it’s similar on our YouTube channel. But we get a lot of comments from people who can’t really get into us at first because we’re VTubers who say they’re into the VTubing aspect after they’ve seen the real me, so I’m going to keep working to find good ways of getting people to be familiar with who I am. And I’m still GAMJAY whether I’m VTubing or half on camera, and I’m GAMJAY, a member of Psychord, when I’m working with the group, so my VTuber side’s never going away. That goes for my Psychord side, too.

OVERSLEEP

There’s two main ways to look at VTubing: There’s people who are only VTubers and only ever present themselves purely within their fictional world, and then there’s groups like us, who are more up-front about there being a person behind the character. It’s like seeing “VTuber” on the menu at a restaurant and then it has a notice that says, “contains real person,” or, “sourced from reality.”

GAMJAY

Even with showing that there’s people behind the characters, we get a lot of love and hate, but we keep at it because our group wants to be people for them first.

OVERSLEEP

Actually, my parents think I just stream games. I mean, I do play games.(laughs) They found out I stream when I was still streaming just for fun and I was being noisy but there was no soundproofing in my room. Then, when we were having family dinner on the weekend, my mom very carefully said, “It’s no big deal these days for people to try seeing a therapist.” I figured there’d be a big misunderstanding if I didn’t say anything at that point, so I just said I’m a streamer. I called my dad to tell him when I hit 10,000 subscribers and he just said, “Is it really worth calling me over that?” And then he’d go around telling everyone, “Hey, my son’s a YouTuber.”(laughs) Then, when I got to 100,000 subscribers and got my Silver Button, he was really kind and told me, “I’m glad you’re doing something you enjoy and that you’re succeeding at it.” It was such a nice thing to say but I couldn’t figure out how to work it into my videos in a fun way so I just kept it to myself. Even now, he’s really happy for me. Of course, they don’t know who I am or what kind of stuff I stream.(laughs)

GAMJAY

Ah, OVERSLEEP cried so much from that.(laughs)

Fans

OVERSLEEP

Fans are like secret friends you can tell anything to, even stuff you can’t talk about in real life, but they’re also like glass slippers. Every fairy tale has that trigger that sets the protagonist down their path—the dwarfs in Snow White, or the glass slippers in Cinderella. The whole reason I can keep doing this thing I love—the trigger that lets me stream as OVERSLEEP—is my fans. Feeling that kind of pure love and devotion from people I’ve never even met is a new and amazing feeling for me, other than from my parents.

GAMJAY

There’s so much I want to say, but it’s hard to put into words, so I always just say they’re something in my life I’m thankful for. In order for VTubing to be a viable career choice, there has to be a lot of people interested in you and who love you. They’re the ones who make it possible for us to take what we love and do it as our job. There’s different ways to put it, but the exact way I said it isn’t important. They’re just something I’m really thankful for. And I’m sure everyone in Psychord feels the same way.