Chibidoki’s life is a sitcom, and we’re all watching it in disbelief
Twitter: chibidokiChibidoki can be explained using many adjectives. The star indie VTuber and her unnerving stories are chaotic, hilarious, and mind-boggling. And now after winning Funniest VTuber at The VTuber Awards she has one goal: proving that she isn’t.
There’s a chance that even if you never watch VTubers, you’ve seen Chibidoki’s giant forehead somewhere.
Maybe it was a YouTube thumbnail, or a Twitter clip, or something on TikTok. Usually it involves the happy-go-lucky VTuber getting bullied by her chat in creative ways, or utterly failing at a game, or saying something incredibly cursed. There’s something intrinsic about her content that has a flair of virality. It’s the question of “Does this really happen to someone in real life?”
Well, you can just ask her that directly.
“I’ve never lied about a story in my life,” she laughed, reminiscing on all the times she’s affectionately purred Bowser’s name. Or told an incredibly embarrassing tale people would usually carry to their grave.
“I never realized how funny my life was until I had someone to share stories with. Just the other day my sister found my YouTube channel and showed me the thumbnail of me as a naked buff guy and laughed at me for five minutes. My life is a sitcom!”
Chibidoki has always wanted to live out her dreams of content creation. She has been uploading on YouTube for years. She still remembers the first comment she ever received on a Garry’s Mod video: “This is freaking cringe.”
While she wanted to run away at that moment, she persevered to push forward. And seven years later, those dreams are a reality.
Twitter: chibidokiEmbracing the cringe
The Chibidoki on stream is a very different beast from the one offline. She’s often found in “hibernation… a husk of a human.”
But it wasn’t until she started streaming in 2020 that she found a second wind. The energy of bouncing around on screen behind her avatar awoke something in her.
“You know how they say you have two inner wolves, I guess I have an anime wolf inside of me… that sounds bad but you know what I mean,” she explained.
On a more serious note, Chibidoki was one of the frontrunners of VTubing’s rapid rise in 2021. While many tried and failed, she cracked the code somewhat. There was some element of luck involved, of course, but a look at her viewership chart shows just how quickly her fortunes changed from the one view YouTube videos she used to upload.
“I was one of the people who was most consistent as a streamer,” she stated. “I have too much free time — I did online school at the time so finding time to stream was easy.
“I’ve been streaming 5 days a week for two years, and I feel like consistency really helped me. And spam uploading TikToks. It’s so easy to get noticed if you upload a lot of garbage.
As much as the consistency was good for her growth online, it also gave the chaotic VTuber a sense of stability offline. Locked inside with nothing to do except sleep for 12 plus hours a day, VTubing brought some routine. Having a stream at 4PM was no different to a 9-5 office job, but it got her motivated to “be awake when the sun is up.”
Routines are easy to fall out of though, so there was an extra element that kept her going. That was the community in both its forms — the wider VTubing space accepting her for who she was, and also a more dedicated fanbase that supported her emotionally, creatively, and financially.
“There will always be people who don’t like you and think what you do is cringe, but in the content creation world, there’s so many people who will like you for you. It was a part of me that I never had the capability to understand that it existed in the first place. I’m so weird apparently, I thought I was normal. My chat is like ‘that’s totally fine’ though. Over time it’s gotten worse since I’m trying to find where the boundaries of weirdness are.
“If you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning and you’ve got a pet to take care of, you’ve got to get up regardless. Chat is kind of like my pet. I’ve gotta get out of bed and hang out with them. Also they pay my bills so that helps a bit too.
“I enjoy it, but it’s nice to have an extra reason to do it as well. To take care of my family, to make sure my viewers are doing okay. It’s nice to have those reasons.”
Surely Chibi isn’t that much of a ‘girl failure’… right?
Chibidoki refuses to admit she’s a ‘girl failure’. Well, kind of — she knows the stars align, and that her life is full of more tragedies than a Greek play, but it’s still hard to stomach.
The issue is everyone has some sort of cursed Chibidoki clip for reference. It could just be a clip of her being very wholesome on stream before an inopportune sound alert. Or a random story about her sister bullying her. Or an embarrassing fail from high school.
But the funniest thing? It runs in the family.
“My family is hilarious and now that I can afford to live at home and take care of them, I can be around them being dumb to me all the time,” she laughed. “I have so many embarrassing stories I’ve locked away for my entire life, but now that I stream for a living I’m like ‘ayo? This would make a banger TikTok! I’m going to empty all my dirty laundry on stream.’
“I feel like I’m streaming to my friends so if something happens, even if it’s embarrassing, I’m going to tell them in detail. Why wouldn’t I do that? Also, I feel the bar is so low with the things I’ve told them so they don’t even judge me anymore.
“It’s like I’m a dancing monkey and [fans are] throwing dollar bills at me.”
And given all the stories she tells on stream are verifiably true, that means her love of Bowser, that many associate her with, is based in reality. Although asking her about it gets her pretty flustered: “It’s so fake, don’t check my Twitter please!
“Basically my first crush when I was six was on Bowser from Super Mario Sunshine. You’ve seen it, you get it right? He’s a good dad, he’s a scary monster… my lawyer has told me to stop talking so let’s move on!”
On a more serious note though, there is plenty of instances where ‘bullying the streamer’ is taken too far. Content creators have highlighted how microaggressions can take a toll on self-esteem. And if you view clips in isolation, you could be mistaken for thinking Chibidoki’s fans are vicious — hilarious, but they know how to push buttons.
Chibi says that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“If you ever stop by my streams, they will poke fun at me but it’s a mutual thing. I feel like I punch them in the balls more than they hit me in the head. I incentivize them to be mean to me. It’s like having an older sibling. Just because we punch each other doesn’t mean there’s a bad relationship all the time.
“If you don’t watch me live and see my real interactions with viewers, it’s easy to assume that because those are the clips that go viral — roasting me, throwing things at me. But most of the time we’re just friends hanging out. I’ve never felt any true negativity from them ever.”
Thriving in the chaos
It’s that chaos that got Chibidoki noticed, and recognized, at VTubing’s night of nights. The indie star took home Funniest VTuber at the inaugural VTuber Awards 2023, and was nominated for Most Chaotic VTuber too (won by Hololive’s Kobo Kanaeru).
“I was a little annoyed when I got nominated,” she said. “I didn’t bring up submitting my name to my audience at all. I brought up the awards and said ‘you don’t have to submit my name or anything.’ It was one conversation on stream.
“I’m really bad with competition and it gives me really bad anxiety. I get in my own head sometimes. I was a little embarrassed because I didn’t want people to see how unfunny I actually am!
“When I won it was so weird. I have never won anything. I got a participation trophy for tee-ball in second grade, that was my peak up until the award show. I don’t think I’m that funny!”
Despite shying away from the accolade, Chibi is happy she could finally bring joy to those with her content. But that doesn’t just mean her fans. It means her friends — she gets to brush shoulders with the YouTubers she once idolized like Ray Narvaez Jr. (previously of Achievement Hunter) and ChilledChaos. It also means her family, who she can now support full-time given her parents are retired and her sister is in college.
“They’re the main reason I view VTubing as a job,” she continued. “I don’t spend much money on myself besides from internet and rent and food. It’s nice to know my money is going to a place that helps people because otherwise I’d save it forever.”
With no signs of slowing down, Chibi is going to keep sharing her cursed moments online for as long as she has stories to tell — and there’s plenty more in the tank. Although she does have one goal for 2024: proving her supporters wrong about one particular fact.
“I told my chat the other day ‘you know what my new year’s resolution is? I’m going to spend 365 days making you regret voting me as the funniest VTuber because I’m going to be unfunny every day and you’re going to ask Filian for a refund, if I came with a return receipt.’
“That’s my new year’s resolution and it’s going to be great.”