Before VTubing, I just streamed art and stuff with/without webcam! And then right at the VTuber boom of 2020, a couple of my friends told me I should try to be a VTuber since I already had experience doing stuff in Live2D. So I just made a joke character, and then I eventually just... kinda kept doing it, since I really like not having to deal with lighting/camera stuff and also trying to look at least semi-decent on camera!! It was also super nice since I involved myself into a couple different VTuber-specific communities, and made a lot of streamer friends that way.
I am just getting into it. At first I was weirded out by the sexualization of the characters but some people are just monsters or stuff like that.
I want to stream and I think people gravitate more to streams when expressions are on camera but I don't want to show my face for privacy reasons. So that seems like a good compromise.