Affective liquidity, synthetic bonds: VTubers as posthuman mediators of digital intimacies

Abstract

This study explores how VTubers, or virtual YouTubers, redefine digital intimacy by blending human performance with digital artifice. Through a 9-month digital ethnography and 21 interviews with VTuber fans, we identified two key processes. First, the affective liquidity of VTuber personas, facilitated by vocal modulation, avatar aesthetics, and technology, blurs ontological lines between human/non-human and real/virtual. Second, the screen acts as both an immersive portal and a protective buffer, allowing fans to explore non-normative desires and subvert heteronormative gender performativity. We argue that VTubers, as embodiments of posthuman becoming, cultivate synthetic relationships that prioritize fluid belonging over biological essentialism, challenging traditional intimacy models. While acknowledging their transgressive possibilities, we caution against techno-utopianism, highlighting the ethical risks of platformed intimacies. This study advocates a critical posthumanist lens to map the contradictions of digitally mediated relationality, balancing optimism with scrutiny as human-technological assemblages redefine intimacy in the (post-)digital age.