Navigating Controversy in the VTuber Community

Join Malcolm and Simone in an engaging conversation with Leaflet from the YouTube channel 'Leaflet and Asari.' They delve into her experiences in 'nerd culture,' her career at iconic companies like Riot Games and Blizzard, and her creation of popular game characters like Lux and Pantheon. The discussion covers Leaflet's beginnings in streaming, the challenges she faced, and how she transitioned to YouTube, along with her involvement in various game projects and novels. They also touch on controversial topics, cultural commentary, the differentiation between streaming and YouTube audiences, and the exciting release of her free-to-play game, Lyrian Chronicles, by Angel's Sword RPG.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Malcolm and Simone and I have a guest here today, who is one of the channels that I actually watch the most outside of our own, which is Leaflet from Leaflet and Asari, and if you haven't seen her channel she does cons well, I'd say, like, right leaning by today's standards takes, maybe not by old standards takes, takes place.

Bye. On a lot of topics, but she has a lot of experience in I guess I'd call it nerd culture. Early in her career, she worked at companies like Riot Games and Blizzard. I know you design

Leaflit Mitsuha: lux. Lux is One of the ones that I, that's probably the, that's probably the one that most people know about. Yeah, looks.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah and then the Spartan looking one. Yeah, Pantheon. Look for the rework, yeah. And I really like you in one, as an example of, and I wanted to talk with you, as well as, as through your evolving fan base as somebody, I think you started in streaming, right?

Like, like, like streaming video games and

Leaflit Mitsuha: stuff. Mostly video games. I started actually I think [00:01:00] 2011, 2012. Holy moly. Yeah. There is a site called own 3d back then. It was like before there wasn't Twitch, Twitch became, Twitch is just in, but their competitor was own 3d. And then They folded and then I, I messaged Justin.

I was like, Hey, can I get like partner? Cause it was partner on own. They're like, nah, I'm like, so then I kind of just stopped streaming for a bit. And then, yeah, it ended up coming back later.

Malcolm Collins: So you built your audience on streaming and now you've, I don't know, is YouTube like your main goal right now, or do you mostly stream and YouTube's like a secondary thing for you?

Leaflit Mitsuha: The funny thing is, is there, they're, they're kind of separate because I do the live streams, but I actually don't. Manage too much on YouTube I don't really have time for it because I'm, as you know, I'm working on, like, the other, the game projects and we'll also have, like, novels coming out and stuff.

So we're working on all I'm working on that stuff because I'm like, the lower person for the [00:02:00] company. So I'm working on that. You're doing like a

Malcolm Collins: game. We had Archon recently. He's also doing a game. We're doing a game. I like this. I like this new thing. Everyone is like all the, all the like, based influencers need to be making games because this is where we're going to get like interesting ideas.

What is actually, before we go further, I want you to talk a bit about this game because I'm, I'm just interested in like sure.

Leaflit Mitsuha: It's a, it's basically, I, I play a lot of like tabletop, a lot of Dungeons and Dragons Pathfinder. And some other Japanese games, and I want we wanted to make, like, our dream game.

So our idea was to make that game, but, like, free to play and constant updates because, like, 1 problem that, like, like, Dungeons and Dragons has, for instance, is. Everyone has to get the book. So sometimes you have people that don't have the book and then updates like say, there's like a really broken mechanic in the game.

They can't really update it. You have to update it in like a magazine. Right? And then now nobody has the same rules because not everybody saw the magazine. [00:03:00] So the idea behind our games, everything's online. And we patch every like two to three weeks. So it was like new classes, new items, new races being added all the time.

Okay, wait. So what, what, what's the theming of

Malcolm Collins: the universe?

Leaflit Mitsuha: Actually, everything is linked to the stream. Like, like me and like my mom and. The novels, they're all linked in the same universe.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, I don't know the novels, so tell me about, is this a fantasy universe? Is this a generic fantasy? What's the twist on the generic?

What's the

Leaflit Mitsuha: It's kind of like, like a, it's fantasy, but it has like high power, and like high, high magic. Sort of, people that like things like anime would like it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah yeah. Okay, I think I know what you mean. When you say high power, do you mean sort of like high elf culture, i. e. like high culture high power fantasy?

Like, there's

Leaflit Mitsuha: a lot of, like, magic and like, like, some abilities are super ridiculous. Like, there's like chronomancer class in our game and they can just stop time. And like, they can, they can just completely stop like a non So that we have a differentiation between like [00:04:00] Heroic units, which are like the like player characters, and then the non, one's called grunts and almost all the enemies are grunts except for like bosses and grunts are basically susceptible to like these big, like magics, like insta kills and like time freezes and stuff like that.

Malcolm Collins: So like the DND world before the I forget that event.

Leaflit Mitsuha: I don't actually, the truth is I don't know much about the DND lore itself because I've always homebrewed. I've always been like that person to homebrew everything. So like.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on, you, you at least played through that recent D& D game. I did, I

Leaflit Mitsuha: did, I played that one, yeah.

Baldur's Gate, okay, so,

Malcolm Collins: so it was implied in Baldur's Gate. Sorry, I just, I'm sorry, I am a nerd for lore. I love deep lore stuff. Me too, I love it. Okay, okay, okay. But D& D, actually, the lore is not that good. There's some, like, really good lore. If you're, like, into lore, I can be like, Oh, you gotta go into this lore.

Like, this lore is great. D& D lore is Top tier lore is either gonna be Vampire the Masquerade, Absolutely top tier lore, Or who else has top tier lore? Warhammer 40k has top tier [00:05:00] lore. Not Warhammer Fantasy. And but anyway, so in Deity, they mentioned it a few times in this is that the world used to have like tons of magic and then the god of magic, I think her name was Mithra, she's the one that Wes's face like had a crush on or something.

Anyway, like the world somebody cast like a too high level spell and it ended up breaking. Oh yes, to try to like take her power or something, and it ended up removing her for a split second, but then that ended up like causing all the cities to crash because they were all floating, and then she made it so no one could use top tier magic anymore.

People will probably draw that comparison to your world.

Leaflit Mitsuha: It's possible. I mean, like the whole world actually came about from D& D games. So we played D& D for like years. Like, this, this campaign, I think I have, I have some ridiculous amount of hours in like world 20, but I DMed multiple campaigns in this world.

And then that world became the foundation for like the streams and then the novels. And then, and then we're like, let's just make a TTRPG of it. So we have. Like all of it is like kind of the same interconnected world.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What I [00:06:00] really find interesting about what you're doing here or what we're doing or what arcs doing at the moment is right.

This really interesting part in terms of gaming media history where there's this huge market opportunity. Because you look at what you're doing, right? And like, for example, D& D, Pathfinder, stuff like that should own this market. But D& D has like, you know, made orcs, like orcs were racist, so we're gonna have them be like normal.

The Pathfinder guy said that he learned that like, JD Vance is like apparently like a super nerd and like into Magic the Gathering. And the guy who created Pathfinder or something thought that he might play his game. So he was like, well, this isn't a game for him or people like him. And I'm like, if you're just like killing like, like The huge part of the nerd audience, they've created this huge opportunity.

You and I look at video games in this there was this article in Wired this last year, 2024, the year that killed gaming. And then I like go and look at the charts and I was like, did people spend less in gaming in 2024? No, it went up. In fact, they spent double what they spent 10 years ago. So how did it kill gaming?

Oh, you just mean that all of the big players got wiped off the table in one year, [00:07:00] like, could there be a better year to go into things?

Leaflit Mitsuha: Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy. Cause I remember when we were developing the game, we were like, The Dungeons and Dragons just blow themselves up, like, in the middle of work.

Just, like, all the, all the stuff that, like, they've been doing, and, like, there was, like, that like, wheelchair accessible dungeons. It just allows for that, kind of, takes you out of the fantasy and tries to, like, inject, like, like, Some real like people play games like Dungeons and Dragons, because you want to experience like, you know, something else, right?

Yeah, because sometimes life sucks. You want to get away from it, right? And it's like, they're trying to, like, re inject, like, the same things. And I think a lot of it is at least in my observation, it seems like there's a certain subset of people that have to play literally themselves. And like games and it's, it's so weird to me because,

Malcolm Collins: because their life is a power fantasy when you can force it.

No, I mean, I think that there's a [00:08:00] class of people that has learned certain hacks. I mean, what do we all want in life? But validation. And there's a certain like, like for other people to see us the way we see ourselves. And there's a certain class that has learned social hacks for us. forcing validation, but once you have fallen into a category where you can force other people to validate you in the real world, like it's very hard, I think, to break this way of seeing yourself within a game setting because there's no point for a power fantasy or anything like that.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Are you guys familiar with like Tumblr?

Malcolm Collins: Tumblr. Yes. I used to, I used to, I've Tumblr in action. I was obsessed with, but I was also like into Tumblr, like unironically as well. Because I love like nerdy subcultures. Like we've done some recent videos on stuff like the Omegaverse and stuff. Like that's how much I'm into like.

That's a hilarious one. Okay.

I want to hear more about Tumblr. Continue.

Leaflit Mitsuha: So like, it's kind of funny because I wasn't personally like into Tumblr other than just like kind of joking around. But my brother was so I [00:09:00] got to see, like, kind of all of this stuff kind of forming and like bubbling up to the top. Right. You know what I mean?

You saw, like, all the, all that stuff happening and you're like, yeah, this is crazy people on tumblr. Like, there's no way and then all of a sudden started to become, like, more and more mainstream. Like, wait a minute. What's going on here?

Malcolm Collins: It was like one of those like, pools that you hear about in like those, those stories about early life or it's like bubbling and like you hear about all the organic compounds and everything.

And now it's like dinosaurs. Yeah. Walking around like eating people. I didn't think that would turn into dinosaurs.

Leaflit Mitsuha: I remember distinctly like the time, like I know the exact moment I was like, I was like. Oh, what the hell is this? And it was when my brother got into an argument with someone and he comes out of it and he's like, how can they argue with me?

I'm you know, I'm gay and I'm a person of color. So how can they even, how can they argue with me? And I remember thinking like. What does that mean? Like, what [00:10:00] do you mean they can't argue with you? That doesn't make any sense, right? Like, that doesn't make your argument, like, automatically correct or automatically wrong.

You know? And it was so weird seeing, like, that kind of intersectionality just kind of like Sneak its way into like, you know,

Malcolm Collins: I agree, but I think it's so natural to human thinking. You know, I think a good games can really help you understand different time periods. And I'm, I'm playing through a game again right now, expeditions Rome, which I played before.

But it takes place in, in Rome and there's all this stuff around like the words you use for people or talking to people at different classes. And, and it just sounds like so much, Oh, you know, I'm of the Praetorian class. How dare he question anything I say? Like, and I think that people in human history always did this.

And if anything. The equality that we enjoyed growing up was a historic anathema. And I think that if, if anything, like society might be benefiting because the class that chose to assort their authority other others choose to be like inefficient and [00:11:00] witless. And is quickly being deposed. Mm-hmm

True. One of the people said to me, and I just can't believe that we're living through and it's so true that the, if you think about it, like yes, we lived through like, as we call the urban monocultures control of our society. Mm-hmm . You know, the past, I'd say like six, seven years maybe, maybe a little bit longer, but in terms of like a cultural force dominating the largest empire in the world at the time.

Mm-hmm . It's the shortest any has ever held power. That's true. The most astronomical margin ever.

Leaflit Mitsuha: It's, it can't, the problem is it can't hold up. All it needs is a little bit of light. Once you actually see it and you understand what they're talking about, of course it doesn't hold up to anything.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, but we need to worry about this as well.

And it's one thing I always point about. Like you don't like all this complaint about woke right stuff, but I think people need to call it out. Like these people on the right who are like, now we've won. Now we need to like Matt Walsh recently. He did a thing saying that like guys who are into video games are like gay.

And then he said, [00:12:00] yeah, or like a feminine and then he was like in the guys, not that there's anything wrong with being gay. He meant that to mean like a feminine and less than masculine. And then there's, there's the other one that was like last year, he did one on like how guys who are into anime are all like pathetic.

And yeah, I remember that.

Leaflit Mitsuha: I remember that

Malcolm Collins: one. Yeah. Just need to be expelled. Like we need to, you know, push back or we're going to end up exactly where they were.

Leaflit Mitsuha: This is, I actually wanted. To make a video on this for the longest time about how one of my biggest worries coming out of this is just like the pendulum swinging way too hard.

The other side, the other way, because again, like, I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm not like, even though people might say I am, I'm, I don't really consider myself to be that far. Right. So I don't want to see the, the, the pendulum come back and swing and hurt a bunch of people that had nothing to do with any of this, you know?

Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. But I would say that you're actually like watching your content. You're, you're pretty centrist, right? These days.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I wouldn't even say that you're like, you're to the left of the right. You're pretty [00:13:00] much like JD Vance. Oh, yeah.

Leaflit Mitsuha: It's like, it's like the meme with Elon Musk. It's like, it's, it's like, you're, you're kind of there in the center and then things pull so far to the left that now you find yourself.

More on that side, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I think we're in a good place because I don't remember when the left was gaining power, like anybody saying like, Hey, are we going too far with this? Whereas I hear this sort of across the board and sort of my influencer friends now.

And I've seen very little willingness to budge actually, sorry, zero willingness to budge on stuff like the new rights.

Position on things like gay rights like absolutely nothing like the alt right. They're like, okay, and now you're gonna change your position on gay rights F**k. No, i'm not changing my position on gay rights. Like what what are you smoking? So hopefully we can maintain the position, but we'll see so hold on I want I want to do what I originally wanted to do Which was like do a study of your career And sort of what it felt like starting as a streamer because you didn't start with political intentions at all Yes, and how you moved the various controversies [00:14:00] how they moved you etc.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Okay, uh So, so the thing is, is a lot 1 sentiment that I, I've heard is like, oh, like, you know, now that trump 1, she's like this. But the thing is, I've always talked about these things. It's usually during, like, a late night session where I'm playing a different game and then we'll, we'll be talking about this stuff.

So I've always. Kind of talked about this stuff and always kind of held the same beliefs. It's, it really is kind of just coincidence because what happened was again, like I said, because I'm working on the game and I'm working on the novels, I didn't have time for YouTube. So, 2 of my, my mods, 1 of 1 of which is my producer approached me and they said, hey I want to learn how to edit videos.

So, like, can I can I run the channel because you're not using the channel that much? And I said, okay, sure. I, you know, fine. So, they basically take whatever I put up and then they take it. They edit it. They, they, they throw it up. They do all the thumbnails for me and then we split it. That's

Malcolm Collins: [00:15:00] that's the.

Pause on this before you go further because earlier you're like, I don't pay much attention to YouTube and I was like, you do daily, fully edited videos. Don't just throw this, I don't pay much attention. Now I'm learning it's one of your Discord. Okay, that makes sense.

Leaflit Mitsuha: I, I do, I do. Some, like, sometimes I'll do an edit on the video, but it's mostly like, it's mostly You know, my, my editor now, who's originally just one of, one of my mods from Twitch and and one of my producers that are kind of working on it and they're, they're, they're helping me out with it because I just, I just.

Because I'm, I'm taking care of so many other projects and, and also like we have like a company, like, like our company, like angel sword studios is like, we actually, like, we actually manage like another talent as well. Are we getting a new one? Like, like soon. Yeah, like, like, yeah, thank you. But it's, it's, it's again, it's like so much stuff that is really kind of a godsend that they were like, you know, you're not really using the YouTube channel.

And like, you know, you could [00:16:00] probably expand on that. Just talking about what you like talking about anyway. And plus I mean, my, my, my editors are, are, you know, they're kind of more politically aligned with me. So they're like, Oh, we want to see more of that stuff. So then they wanted to help create it.

And that

Malcolm Collins: explains so much. That also explains why you don't see yourself because, so I know you from YouTube only. And in YouTube, you are 100 percent of political commentators. The way that they chose to pull your clips. It's 100 percent political commentary.

Leaflit Mitsuha: I mean, we weren't doing that before too, right?

We were, we were already kind of making that kind of content before the, before the election and then the election hit and then it was like, there was just so much news, right? Like there's news every, every hour and I'm sure you guys know about it. Like as content creators in the same space, there's just like rapid fire news over and over and over again.

So there's always something to talk about.

So, if you are not a YouTube commentator, you will not understand the struggle of this. Simone and I really want to maintain a channel. Oh, by the way, if you're wondering why she's not talking much in [00:17:00] this video, it's because the kid's crying really loudly. She'll mention that at the end of the video and you'll be like, Oh, that's why she hasn't been talking.

But Simone and I really want our channel to Engage with philosophy, engage with religion, engage with science, engage with demographic trends, and engage with politics. And yet, so much is happening so quickly, it feels like we can only afford to engage in politics right now. It's like, okay, so for example, Yesterday we did a video on the USAID controversy.

That's huge, right? Like, that definitely needed a video. But today, what? I'm skipping doing a video on shutting down the U. S. Department of Education and the U. S. Department of

Consumer Protection. Like, that just doesn't even deserve an episode because just so much is happening so quick. We literally might just end up not doing an episode on that, which is wild.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so I want to keep going. You doing it with your mom, because we plan on doing this with our kids as they get older. Can you talk about how you got pulled into that?

Leaflit Mitsuha: Oh, yeah, sure. So, me and my mom have always played games together, like [00:18:00] MMOs, and like, we've always watched anime together. And as you guys know doing content creation, it's like such a busy job, like you barely have time to do anything. So it got to a point where I wasn't able to, I wasn't able to spend as much time with my mom as I wanted to.

Like we, again, we used to play games together all the time and it just became like, oh, I can't cause I have to work at the stream. I have to, you know, edit videos or, or whatnot. And then one day. I had a suggestion. I was like, what if you just stream with me? And so she was like, you know, I'll give it a try.

So we got her a little picture. She put it up there and she actually enjoyed it. So after that, I was like, okay, well, we'll just get you like, you know, your own, your own setup for it. And then like, we can scream together. We'll do a thing on Sunday. And so that's why we play every Sunday together. And sometimes she streams on her own now because she actually likes it herself now.

So

Malcolm Collins: yeah, that's awesome. Okay. Okay. And then talk about the early controversies that begin moving you potentially more politically.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Sure. So probably the biggest one was the discord [00:19:00] one, which I did a video on that one. Yeah. I did a video on that recently on the monkey one. Yeah. It's funny too.

Cause when I released that video, a bunch of people were saying like Oh, that was me. That was me. I was the person that like that they were getting mad at. And then you, you stepped in and he was like, that was crazy. And it's, it's so wild. Cause I didn't, it's crazy how much impact one person can have.

Like one person that just has bad intentions. Yeah. Okay. So I'll

Malcolm Collins: play you strip. So I'll do a quick summary of this and then I'll tell you a quick story. So the event she's talking about was essentially somebody that's during the BLM riots. With like they're acting like monkey like literally meaning not like like the black people or anything, but just like the rioters, you know Chimping out, right?

Like what, what, what does that word mean? Right. And you know, people attack the person, you defended them. I think courageously, I don't know if I would have taken that risk. And then you never, you never walked back from that position. And then like a crazy person decided to try to ruin your life and like got your Discord [00:20:00] taken down.

But like we have a lot of, do you know Razeeb Khan, by the way? He's a famous geneticist. Anyway, he used to work for the New York Times and now he does like a genetics blogs. He talks about well, the types of things you're not supposed to talk about in genetics. He's been on our show before.

He's done like he mostly talks about differences in ethnicities, but like down to like really granular levels like different castes in, in, in India and stuff like that. Anyway. So he yeah. He has this one crazy person where whenever he gets a new investor or whenever he's working at a new company, they will call the company.

So he always warns someone when they hire him, they go, you're going to get a call from Rebecca. Here's a script of most of what she's going to say. And this is just something he has to live with his entire life.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Yeah. It's such a pain, like having to, having to deal with that, like.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, what's worse is for some of my friends.

So there's this thing called the rationality wiki. I don't know if you've heard of it They figured out how to do like really well in like SEO results

And so for a long time a lot of my friends could they would always come up first [00:21:00] in search results Even though it's just one by like one crazy former neo nazi Actual former neo nazi by the night way who's now like the same but like woke.

And so he just attacks all of these people and he gets it to come up very first, like all of the sins they've ever committed. Oh my goodness. And that would just like destroy your career. Like I'm so lucky Wikipedia article before that happened to me because now I can never be trounced by it.

But just like, wow. That's scary. Continue, continue. So this happens to you. How do you like. Internally, in terms of your, like, ideology respond to this event,

Leaflit Mitsuha: It's kind of rough because I'm not going to lie. I would be lying if I said that it didn't affect me. Of course, like, you know, you work so hard on on your content and building up your community and then, you know, seeing it kind of all just evaporate because of 1 person is kind of.

It was, it was distressing, but at the same time, it's like, I'm not going to let someone [00:22:00] say that. I'm not going to I'm not going to admit to something that I didn't do. Right. And they were trying to, they were trying to get me to say, like, oh, yeah, I, yeah, I'm sorry for being racist. I'm like, I'm not racist though.

So I'm like, I'm not going to say that. And it's, it's kind of,

it's so weird. Just like how. How it went and like, you know, they, they, they basically told me, Oh, you should go look into some you know, KKK and Nazi sites to find out like what, what racist terms are like, what are you talking about? It's like, how do you know, like, like what you can or can't say when the context doesn't matter.

Malcolm Collins: Right. It is. It is so interesting to me. And there's, there's a few examples of this that like are very, very confusing to me. So here's one example. And who knows if I get tarred and feathered for this, but it's the term tar baby. So people will say that tar baby is a racist term for black people. And I'm like, yes, it [00:23:00] is a racist.

It was for a brief period in like, like an American history of racist term for black people, but it hasn't been for a long time.

Huh. But the reason why I hold so much hatred to the people who want to remove the term from the lexicon is the term Tar Baby comes from the stories of Briar Rabbit, which was a Black, traditional African children's story that we captured in the American lexicon.

And is a truly African contribution to the sort of American history. Whenever somebody talks about being thrown in the briar patch or whenever somebody talks about a tar baby, they are referencing a traditional African. Songs and and and and and myths that people fought so hard to bring over on the slave ships The people fought so hard to give to their kids and give to their kids In the most brutal of conditions and after all that that that can just be erased by like a woke person Is [00:24:00] to me really really hurtful because somebody at one point decided to use that as a racist hurt

Leaflit Mitsuha: I mean, it's it's kind of funny because you saw the same thing with a lot of branding, right?

Like you've got the The chiefs, for instance, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, all of these things that were being kind of erased from you know, not even you know, with the case of was it the Redskins? They even, they even. Wanted that, right? The, the local tribe did want that.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Leaflit Mitsuha: So it's, it's kind of funny how it's, it's sort of just like a, a crusade.

That's not even for them.

Malcolm Collins: What are the, yeah, no. One of the craziest examples of this is when the BLM movement was like, we need to protect. Black culture and as such, we need to like d denormalize the nuclear family, like denormalize the idea of a husband and wife raising kids together. And I was like, did you know that in the 1970s black people had a one half the rate of unmarriage as white people in terms of kids, the kids born out of wedlock were at [00:25:00] one half the rate of white couples.

That this. Current idea that it's like somehow black culture to be unmarried. It's just a completely modern phenomenon and completely downstream of wokeism. And it's, it's messed up that now they're trying to like cauterize this change anyway.

Leaflit Mitsuha: And I mean, I mean, the, the fact of the matter is like, if you distill it down, it's a disservice to all of those communities.

Speaker 3: Like,

Leaflit Mitsuha: it doesn't do anyone anyone better to kind of promote, like, you know, that kind of that kind of behavior because it's it's not good for people, like, financially, spiritually, emotionally. Like it just it dehumanizes like everyone involved.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, okay So here's one that I haven't heard that much about and I am actually very interested about is your hogwarts controversy

Speaker 3: Okay,

Malcolm Collins: because it sounds like you you personally at least haven't really crossed the like trans skepticism rubicon yet and so you that that that puts you in a position where I had assumed that most of your audience Wouldn't be [00:26:00] particularly surprised Given the stuff that I hear you say You would watch something like a Hogwarts or say, like, I'm not going to boycott this, but apparently a significant portion of your audience was surprised by this, or at least a sliver enough to cause a hubbub was, was that what caused it?

Or was it like the VTuber community that caused it? Or like, how did this get started? And why was it seen as weird?

Leaflit Mitsuha: So like the, the there's in the VTuber community and just like kind of online on like the loud vocal minority of like gaming. There's a lot of people that you know, they, they, they have, they have interests and their narrative not being tampered with at all.

And you know, they, they kind of spread the whole J. K. Rowling is evil and she's selling these bad things. And I think it's. Sorry, I'm trying to formulate, like, how to say it. No,

Malcolm Collins: it's difficult. You're entering a verbal trap right now. Yeah,

Leaflit Mitsuha: yeah. I have laid down on the floor and said, Dance [00:27:00] for me, leaflet!

It's like, it's And the thing is, I really The funny thing is, is like, I have friends who are trans. And like, I have nothing against Against that, I draw, I draw a very strict line of like, when it comes to, to children because, you know, there's, I mean, there's, there's, that's a whole different thing. Right.

But just in terms of, of Hogwarts, I think it's just the, the vocal people, like, who just don't like JK Rowling. They just went out of their way to like, attack anyone that was that was into it. And there were particularly a lot of those types of individuals in the VTubing community because the VTubing community is like, kind of, honestly, it's like, kind of like a big hug box, so like, super positive vibes all the time and stuff, you know, so it's like, anyway people, people.

I think they got surprised because I didn't talk about this stuff as openly before. Around that time when Hogwarts came out. I, I ha I have a manager and he's like, maybe don't talk about this stuff. I was like, I [00:28:00] really wanna talk about, maybe don't talk about that stuff. And it's kind of like that.

But I, so I would talk about it like late at night, like, like late at night. I'd be doing like late night gaming. I, I play with this bounty hunting game and then I'll talk about it then like, different topics. Along those lines, but

Malcolm Collins: you know, one thing you've mentioned there that I, I often feel so we've had hope not hate, which is this UK thing.

They did this like undercover reporter, like in our organization for like a year plus, year plus trying to find us saying anything racist or bad or anything like that. Couldn't find anything, which, which I'm really thankful for. But like, we, you know, we've been numerous guardian pieces on us, everything.

So the news is always trying to get us. And the funniest thing is, is that like if you just sat down and listened to our actual content beginning to end, even just like three episodes, you would find so much more worse stuff than you've been able to find in all of your like dredging expeditions. Um, And it's like the best place to hide something is like deep in a stream.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Yeah, like [00:29:00] late, late at night. Eight hours in, 12 hours in.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I gotta be honest. I think this no, but then somebody's going to cap you one time, you know? Oh, who is that person who I I felt kind of bad at because they were a streamer. Okay, so it was a twitch streamer who worked for Sweet Baby Inc. And it was a woman or something.

Do you remember when this happened and her stream got capped? Was it She had like Like 15 followers or something. And so she thought like nobody would possibly be capping her.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Oh, I know what you're talking about. It was, it was a VTuber, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it was a VTuber.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Yeah, I, I, I remember what you're talking about.

They said a bunch of stuff and then like people found it, of course, because people were trying to dig up stuff on, on Sweet Baby Inc.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Damn. was like AI, what are they going to find me saying, I mean, my, my positions just get more extreme as I go on. So I don't, I don't think I'm like you, I think that like, I've been maybe moving more and you've been, have you?

Have you feel like you've been pretty politically stable or do you feel like you've been sort [00:30:00] of,

Leaflit Mitsuha: I mean, I, I, again, like I used to be kind of more libertarian. And I think. As, as I've gotten older, I've kind of found that the social fabric matters a lot more than I used to think. So I do, I do see a little chipping a little bit like over just from the ridiculousness.

Like, I don't want to deal with it. You know, it's annoying. It's, it's, it's annoying. It's just like people screaming at you all the time and like, who wants to deal with that? Right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's funny. I'd actually say like, I used to be libertarian, but like, I'm not as libertarian anymore because you got people like JD Vance and I'm like, yeah, whatever, whatever he does is probably okay.

I don't know. Simone, you got to talk at all. You've been completely quiet. Why don't you talk about countryside stuff with her?

Speaker 4: Yeah. You moving to the suburbs. I had to

Malcolm Collins: force you

Speaker 4: 30 minutes straight and she just stopped. So your time is actually great, but yeah. So have you moved to the countryside?

Wait, wait. Yeah. Like, I mean, yeah. I actually moved from California

Leaflit Mitsuha: to, [00:31:00] yeah, it was funny when I first, when I first moved I first moved to Texas and my neighbors are like so where, where are you guys from? California. And they said, y'all keep Texas, Texas. Okay. I was like, don't worry.

That is so

Malcolm Collins: good. By the way, Simone grew up in San Francisco. Moved to Dallas before moving out here.

Speaker 4: Yeah. When I told everyone that I was going, I was in the San Francisco Bay Area and they freaked out when they realized I was moving, especially to Dallas. They're like, at least you can move to Austin.

Like they sort of thought Austin was like, well, at least they're liberal there. And they were just terrified. Like as if I, you know, was

Malcolm Collins: tell her your gun story. And by the way, wipe your teeth. They're covered in makeup. Very nerdy. I like it.

Speaker 3: No. Okay. So anyways,

Malcolm Collins: The gun story is so she moves to Texas and her friends from San Francisco are like, you are going to be shot.

Simone, you cannot move there. She goes, you know, they're like shooting people in the, they've [00:32:00] got guns everywhere. Simone had to like explain it was not like a public shooting rage and they, they did not believe her. They were terrified for her life.

Leaflit Mitsuha: You know, I, I had a, I have a similar story to that. Do you want to hear it?

Oh yeah, go,

Speaker 3: go, go.

Leaflit Mitsuha: So like, Man, it's kind of a sad story, but my, my grandpa he used to be super conservative, super conservative. And then what happened was as he, as he grew older, he ended up being in the care of like more liberal family members. And they cut him off of like Fox, they only forced him to watch CNN.

And it was like, like he would tell me, like, I just want to watch my Fox leaflet. I just want to watch Fox. They won't let me. And so like, it was kind of like, then it was kind of weird. It's really sad. And then I remember just, they just slowly, like they would, they would tell him like, like, like for instance, he was going to vote for Trump in I think 20, 20, 16, he was going to vote for Trump and they basically told him like.

If you vote for Trump, we're going to lose our job and all of our money [00:33:00] and all of our livelihood. And so, like, he got guilted into voting for Hillary. And he told me, like, this is like a big regret. Like, I regret it. I didn't want to vote for her, but like, I did. And so this kept going. It kept going on and on.

And the last conversation I had with him before he passed was he goes, he goes, Leaflet, do you still carry a gun? And I was like, yeah, I carry a gun all the time. And he's like stop carrying a gun Because when the police find out you're asian, they will shoot you and I was like who told you that? What's going on?

It was so there's the last conversation I ever had to my grandpa.

Speaker 3: That's so

Malcolm Collins: sad Right. Yeah weird that that does make me very angry at I don't want to say But like the wider But I, I also, oh, by the way, just, just for audience who, like, doesn't know, it's, it's for safety because of, like, the weirdos on VTubers and stuff like that, and, like, you, you, you even, like, stream with a gun, from what I remember.[00:34:00]

Leaflit Mitsuha: Oh, yeah, I've, I've got, I've got lots. I, I, I just like guns, I have a lot of them. But I always carry a gun for protection.

Speaker 4: That is awesome. What makes you decide to move? Like awake. I mean, cause most people get so used to California, like the idea of leaving seems incomprehensible.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Yeah, obviously a

Speaker 4: lot of other things changed either politically, but like, why did you decide to take the leap?

Leaflit Mitsuha: So it was, it was really hard because California has a lot of nice things, you know, a lot of bad things, but there's also a lot of family there. But what happened was. After COVID happened and Gavin Newsom, he, he did a lot of things like a lot of things where he had rules for other people. But not for himself and he just did general, like the general way that he handled COVID.

And so what happened was he got recalled and like Larry Elder went up against him and me and my mom were like, Oh, finally, like, finally, like, finally, like someone's going to kick this guy out because he sucks. [00:35:00] Right. And they voted to keep him in and my mom, like she said. Leaflet. This place is cooked.

Like, we're, we need to get out of here. This is, this is so bad. Like, if he can, if he can win after everything that happened, he can never lose. So, so we're like, okay. And then, so, you know, immediately, like, literally the next month, we started looking for houses. We're just, we're just out of here.

Malcolm Collins: If it makes you feel any better about him, one thing I'm really excited about for this next election cycle, cause you know, everyone thought that he was going to be like the guy to be the next presidential candidate.

I hadn't, I hadn't put this together yet. You know, and he had the Olympic games happening in LA right before that. Like, okay, f*****g half the city has burned down. Trump's not going to contribute any federal dollars to this, this Olympic cycle. The Olympics has become more and more corrupt every year.

Like this is going to be the disaster of disastrous Olympics.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Yes, it

Malcolm Collins: will be

Leaflit Mitsuha: entertaining.

Malcolm Collins: I am, I am here for it. I've got my [00:36:00] binoculars. I want to see the content goldmine.

And it's gonna have a big trans controversy right in the middle of it because Trump has recently announced that he plans to deny visas to the Olympic athletes that are going by a different gender and of course Gavin Newsom's gonna put his, his D on the table on the other side of this issue and it is going to be a hilarious fight.

Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. Where do you think the future of America is? Like, where do you see your friends and colleagues and other contacts building their lives?

If not, because it used to just be like all cool people would Typically gravitate to like LA, San Francisco, New York, maybe Boston. Are you seeing a shift in that among people that you hang out with and talk with a lot? Is it more dispersed now? Yeah. Well,

Leaflit Mitsuha: the problem is, is a lot of these big [00:37:00] cities are just not affordable.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Leaflit Mitsuha: It's, it's, it's impossible. And, and I keep. Telling a lot of people that live in these big cities. It's like, you're not really out of the tutorial of life until you own property because that's how they keep. That's how, like, as long as you're paying rent, you're literally just losing money every month and it's just not affordable to actually, like, own a place a million dollars.

Malcolm Collins: It's not even the right career path anymore. So if you're in like the entertainment space, for example I think we especially saw it after this election cycle is like, I used to want to be like a newscaster, right? Like on TV or something. And now it's like, why the, what I want to be that like they get like lower ratings than like, we did a thing recently and like we were worth, I think like during the election cycle in terms of view time each of us or our podcast alone, so, so together 14 New York times, full time Stafford.

Like, nobody watches like, like the mainstream news anymore. And, and because of that, [00:38:00] like, if you're on this pathway to become like a, an influencer or like a thought leader, and one of the things I've realized by talking to you is there's like these bubbles of thought leaders, like you're in the bubble of thought leaders that previously would have been actresses, I think, or voice actresses.

No, no, I mean like you're an entertainer, entertainer, right? Like, and like we're in the space that like, and you end up knowing everyone in that space really quickly. Like, and like with us, like we know, like, I, I think it's so weird that like, we're like friends with people like Curtis Yarvin and stuff like that.

And I'm like, it's weird, but like we're in the intellectual, intellectual space. And the question is, is, you know, can, can we continue to build from here? I don't know. It's difficult. Like I know some friends in the space who have built like really sustainable incomes. But outside of this, I think the real way to do this is to build sort of, I guess I'd call it like peerage networks and then release products that people was in our industry want whether it's games like the stuff that, because one of the things I was thinking about, like my game releases, I'm like, how am I going to get this?

[00:39:00] game in front of people, everything like that. And I'm like, Oh, all I need to do is piss off the games media. Then reach out to my friends. Like I've, I've been on side scrollers a bunch, you know, I have like no grums, like I can get them to cover this stuff and I'm sure you're the same way, right? Like, and I'm like, Oh s**t, like that's everything you need to do to like get in front of an audience these days.

Now I just need to make a good product.

Leaflit Mitsuha: It's, it's crazy just how things have shifted so hard. Like before only certain, certain people, certain. Like, larger companies had, like, the keys to all of the, you know, all of the kingdoms and, like, now it's kind of being more distributed amongst, like, you know, individuals, which is, which is great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but also the weirdly, like, isolated social circles has also been really weird. I don't know if you've bumped into this where, like, you see somebody who produces content that in some way is similar to you, but they're, like, part of a social circle that, like, you have never engaged with?

Leaflit Mitsuha: Well, it's kinda, that's a tough one for me because I'm pretty anti social, so I can't, I don't really, I don't really I'm notoriously bad at, like, collabing and, kind [00:40:00] of trying to reach out to people to, like, kind of, like, do things together. I'm, I'm just bad at it because I'm, I'm kind of, I just, I'm so, I'm sort of a person that kind of just likes to be alone and play games. So, it's like, I, I, I'm nervous around people very easily.

Malcolm Collins: I'm the same way. I'm the same way.

You know, I mean, one of the things that we actually constantly talk about on our channel, is trying to normalize like we sort of talked about like extreme levels of introversion in our society. We've almost treated it like it's a condition or something to overcome. And the only reason that like, I'm good at socializing because I treat it like a job.

Like I would never, I look, I live on a farm with my wife and we leave like almost never. And most of my friendships are parasocial. Like. I'm like, I have a lot of friends. No, it's actually a really interesting thing. And I don't know if this has happened to you or like, I have a lot of friends where like, I talk to them once every three months or so, but like they watch my content and I watch their content.

And so I'm like, that's all I need. It's a

Leaflit Mitsuha: perfect world. So it's like, you're kind of like, interacting with, with, with people, but kind of at your own [00:41:00] pace. Right.

Speaker 4: Yeah. It's way more efficient. Everyone gets a ton more done. People are spending less time and money and yet they still have deep relationships.

And they, they often know each other. Like what we're seeing more and more, whether or not someone has a following is that there's a lot of parasocial stuff going on and often like while they're cleaning or working or other stuff, so it's not, this isn't time that's competing with like their few time, like hours off of work, for example and then occasionally they'll like go to a conference or a retreat or travel to a city and meet up with these people in person

Speaker 3: so they

Speaker 4: still get that.

In person contact. But you get most of the benefits of friendship. This is not a replacement for what community used to be, where like, you just lived and depended on people really closely. But in terms of like, loose friend networks, I think this is a way more efficient way to do it, and it's great.

Malcolm Collins: Final question then for her. Yeah. [00:42:00] So I want to focus on the question of, because I actually don't know this, you're the only streamer, like I know, like, all the other people we know are like YouTubers or sub stackers or stuff like that. Like, what is the streaming audience like when contrasted with the YouTube audience in terms of how you're producing content?

Leaflit Mitsuha: It's it's, it's a little bit. So. I think that the difference is it's more, there's a lot more interaction, right? People, people come to streams. I think this is really what it is. There's a lot of people come to streams to like spend time with someone, like feel like you're hanging out with people,

Speaker 3: Because it's,

Leaflit Mitsuha: because it's live.

Right. And like, people will comment and then you'll respond in real time. So it's like, it's kind of like you're hanging out in the same room with, with people and, and even like when, you know, you hear this a lot, like, oh, wow, you're just watching someone play games. It's, it's, it's more like you're playing games with your friends.

Speaker 3: That's kind

Leaflit Mitsuha: of like the, the, the kind of feeling behind it. It's like, [00:43:00] you know, you're, you're, you're chilling on the couch and you're playing, you know, Sonic the Hedgehog and your friends are watching you play. It's kind of like that, that vibe to it.

Malcolm Collins: So when you're putting something together how do you, I don't know how to put it, but like perfectly masturbate this desire or instinct, right?

Like, what are you thinking when you're doing that?

Leaflit Mitsuha: Well, for me, it's more like, I just, I try to pick games that people like, and then I try to just respond to them when they, when people talk. Like you, you have to always one eye on your chat. So it's like, it's like sometimes it's, it's, I was like talking about this, like.

Well, I'm streaming. I actually suck more at games because I'm, I'm constantly distracted, like trying to like, look for a conversation hook to like, talk about. Right. So, like, if somebody says something, it's like, oh, that's something I can talk about. And then, like, you clip into that and then you can have a conversation with everyone in chat.

Malcolm Collins: No, I actually, I find this really interesting because I think our audience as well will not know anyone like you, like you [00:44:00] represent a side of, I think this cultural shift that is aligned with a lot of our experiences, but completely out of anything that they have done.

Like, I would doubt very many of our fans, like they might like your YouTube channel, but I doubt you're going to get any. Like twitch subscribers from this you know, they're mostly like, I like, I know our fans. Like they mostly are like McKinsey. So they're like venture capitalists or they like work at McKinsey or they're like a different

Leaflit Mitsuha: crowd.

It's like, it's like a different different, it's streaming is, is it's a different audience than, than YouTube videos. And the thing is, it's like, I consume both, right? Like I'll, I'll sometimes I'm actually to tell you the truth. I, yeah. I actually don't watch that many streams. , I watch mostly YouTube.

I'm mostly like a YouTube person myself. But, but yeah, I mean, I get it. And it's a completely different audience.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm . Yeah. Oh, okay. Awesome. I love it. It was great talking to you. And I'm gonna stop, stop recording you

Leaflit Mitsuha: all

Malcolm Collins: and oh, wait, no. What am I saying? Okay. What's the name of the [00:45:00] game that people need to go to?

What's, yeah.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Game is, angel's Sword RPG Lyrian Chronicles is the name of it and you can find that at rpg. angelssword, like angels, but like possessive, angelssword. com. And it's free to play, anyone can play it, and updates every two to three weeks.

Wait, how do you monetize this? Patreon.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, okay. Lovely. What a great way to monetize like a D& D type thing.

Leaflit Mitsuha: Yeah, it's like people can support if they want. I mean, I mean, you know, it's just, it's just books. Like people don't always have the money to, to, to buy the books. So it's kind of like, we want everyone to be able to play.

So

Malcolm Collins: that's what we want. Really awesome. Okay, great. Okay.

Leaflit Mitsuha: All

Malcolm Collins: right. Thank you.