Please Read. (Patreon)

I will be resuming content posting this coming week after Memorial Day. Commissions will resume posting as well and as you know if you’re doing monthly commissions, you’re still free to send them to me to be added to the queue. In the meantime, I’d like to say something, because I’m being put in comfortable situations and it isn’t fair to me.

I’d like to start off with asking a few questions to set the grounds for this conversation.

1. When someone taking your order at a restaurant is kind and encouraging, is that considered taking advantage of a parasocial relationship or is it just good customer service? Consider that the way they treat a customer directly correlates to their pay 90% of the time.

2. Do you treat an actor/actress as if they are the character they play?

3. Do you treat a writer as if they’re the characters they created?

If you don’t have any screws loose in your head, it’s likely that you answered these right. To clarify, the CORRECT answers are:

1. Just good customer service.

2. No

3. No

Now understand that ALL of these situations are directly the same as what ASMRtists, VA’s, and VTubers do. You are our clients/audience. You pay our bills. It’s customary for us to be kind to you, because it’s how we keep you entertained or paying our bills. Being kind to you DOESN’T mean we’re perpetrating a parasocial relationship with you.

We are also real human beings behind our screens, we are not our characters, nor are we robots. We deserve respect, not creepy attachments because you like a character. The same way a waitress is charming, we have to be. The same way an actress plays a character, we do as well. The same way a writer creates a character and portrays them, as do we with our personas.

We are very real people outside of this. Real people who do not know you personally. Real people whom YOU do not know personally, regardless of how transparent some of us are. You simply do not know us, so there is NO relationship between you and us. It’s strictly professional. We may have boyfriends/girlfriends/partners, we may have sex, we aren’t catgirls or other creatures, we’re not machines who pump out endless content without issue, we have feelings, we get sick, we want breaks, etc. Everything you go through and experience as a human— we do, too.

Please stop relying on us for romantic or friendly connections. We are simply creators. We aren’t your partners or friends or psychologists. This is our job. Grant us the same amount of respect you give to people you know in real life. Would you stalk someone in real life? Rest your mental health on their shoulders? Claim or act like you have a relationship with them without knowing them? Send them unsolicited nudes without knowing them? Would you sext them about cumming for them and tell them what you wanna do to them sexually? The answer to all of these should be no. So don’t do it to creators, either. No matter the nature of the content we create— SFW or NSFW. It’s not okay. It causes us stress, it creeps us out, it makes us feel objectified and owned.

Sincerely,

A VERY tired and creeped out Aomi.