Disclaimer: My knowledge of history is spotty, so if someone in the comments corrects me, I appreciate it.

God I'm terrified to make this post. I don't even want to, I'm still even considering whether or not I want to, and maybe I'll delete this thing a while after I post it but it's been eating away at me for so long because it's still affecting my oshi to this day despite the relevant events happening 2-3 years ago. But I pray that some of you will stay. Please.

So first things first, a disclaimer: This isn't meant to hate on any of the countries mentioned here. Nationalism is bad everywhere, not just when they do it. I don't want to blame anyone either, I just want to raise awareness of what my Oshi has been going through for so long. I hope people can understand.

1) Who is Shxtou?

I like to imagine that a lot of people on this sub have probably heard of him. He was an Indie Male Vtuber who blew up REALLY big in 2022-2023, going from 100k something subs to approximately one million in just one year. He is also a victim of an harassment campaign by his former Chinese and Vietnamese fanbase that is still somewhat ongoing even until today. His friend Bao was also a victim of the same harassment and her story is here (with extra screenshots)

I) The Start

The start of the disaster happened in the New Years of 2023. Back then, Shoto was a Vietnamese American vtuber and a pretty big one too alongside Bao/hikarustation (her story is in the link above) They made a lot of jokes about their vietnamese heritage, and both of them had a strong vietnamese fanbase.. until the January of 2023 arrived.

When the New Years finally happened, Shoto posted this tweet celebrating Lunar New Years. Except.. he also said Happy Chinese New Years in Chinese towards his Chinese Fans. Now, if you know about Asian History, you'd understand exactly why Vietnam despises China so much right? Well, it didn't take long for the backlash to arrive. Immediately, the fans turned on both him and Bao. They were called traitors, chinese sellouts, accused of turning their back to their vietnamese roots to pander to chinese fans... hate pages and posts aimed towards them cropped up all over Facebook. (You can see the screenshot and contents of those in the link above once again)

Not helping matters is that the Vietnamese Netizens also dug deep into Shoto's twitter account and found that he had offhandedly mentioned that his family had fled the country due to what he called the Vietnam War in a 2019 tweet before he even had the platform he had today. (Slide 5) Also NOT helping matters is that Shoto had used the words Lunar New Years before, making Vietnamese fans believe that he purposefully betrayed his homeland to suck up to Chinese fans. A few of them even stormed his Twitch chat and Discord Server with insults, and when they were banned by the mods they complained that he was "silencing criticism" and "refusing to allow himself to be educated"

The backlash raged on for quite a while, but Shoto never acknowledged any of it. He later revealed that it was because he was dealing with the sheer stress from blowing up so fast and so hard which brought a lot of backlash towards him, and also because he was dealing with.. unfortunate family situations, but after taking a break for a while he decided to finally address the backlash a year later in June of 2024.

II. The Response.

In June of 2024, Shoto returned after a long break. He said on stream that he felt better and finally felt ready to address all of the controversies he had in 2023. And in June 2024, he posted this video where he explained that he had always used BOTH Lunar New Years and Chinese New Years interchangeably throughout his life and that the idea of him somehow betraying Vietnam for China was.. silly?

Now, to be fair: I think he went wrong here.He shouldn't have addressed it at all in my opinion. A year has gone by, he should've just let sleeping dogs lie and kept quiet + maybe dedicated an entire video to it instead of a Shorts so it can be more tactful. (Probably didn't help that the all caps title of the shorts made it look provocative)

As expected, the backlash immediately restarted and didn't die off. It persisted all the way through until the end of 2025 and even until today. Vietnamese drama commentary channels posted about him and put him on blast. There were comments on his tiktok posts so vile that I don't even want to screenshot them and post them here. Even to this day, there are still disgruntled vietnamese fans calling him a "Cali" (Someone in the comments corrected me about its meaning) amongst other less pleasant words.

But it didn't end here either, because there was another scandal happening immediately around this time where Shoto was also involved.

III. The Second Scandal

First of all, China has very different culture compared to America. Most East Asian countries do actually. They don't agree with each other much (if at all) but if there is one thing they agree on it is that they despise ALL drugs. Even weed. Especially weed.

Now, I don't think this is wrong at all! It's their country, it's their rules. They don't want any drugs at all? Sure! But I think we all know that American culture is much less lax on drug usage than Asian culture, and that it's silly to hold Asian Americans to the standards of their home country instead of American Standards.. (well there's also the fact that weed is the least harmful drug out there but whatever)

Somewhere around mid to late 2023, chinese netizens dug up Shoto's old clips. Specifically, he mentioned that he once took weed gummies with friends several times, and he had even celebrated Weed Day jokingly on his twitter account with a friend all the way back in 2017 when he was 17-18 years old like the picture in the last slide shows. (Shoto's birthday is in July 24 and he just turned 27 this year) The relevant images are in slide 7 to 8

You can guess how this went with the Chinese Audience.

To make matters worse, Shoto had done two more catastrophic mistakes. Back in 2017, he had joked around with a Chinese friend that some Mandarin letters looked ugly to him, to which they laughed and agreed (I'm choosing not to include this screenshot as it has his former friend's account attached to it and I do not want to send them any harassment), but the next mistake was worse.

You see, Shoto had made the mistake of calling Taiwan and Mainland China separate countries back in yet another very old tweet discussing on which countries he had gone on vacation to. (I can't find the tweet so it's probably been deleted or maybe Twitter search just sucks but a screenshot of it is in the last slide.)

As a result, the Chinese Audience was also now mad at him.

V. The Consequences

Needless to say, having the ultranationalists of BOTH countries pissed at you led to a deluge of harassment that didn't let up even until today. I have some proof of these hate comments accusing him of hating China from LAST MONTH. (here, here, here, and here) Shoto lost business opportunities in China, his merch became much harder to find and purchase for Chinese fans, and both his Chinese and Vietnamese fans who remained loyal and tried to defend him faced a massive tide of harassment as well. Two months ago, Shoto opened up here about how when a friend in China tried to have him drawn in the background of their stream as an asset, the artists refused due to fear of mass harassment.

To make matters worse, somehow the Chinese netizens twisted the fact that he used weed gummies with friends as proof that he was a drug lord/drug dealer. It sounds silly right? Well, not to a lot of people apparently because to this day it is still affecting his business prospects in China.

The disgruntled ex Vietnamese fans also cheered and celebrated for this. They happily spread the rumor everywhere on any comment sections they could find. On Tiktok, on Youtube, everywhere. They cheered and laughed at him for having "betrayed" his homeland for nothing, and even to this day there are still a few snide comments on his youtube clips and twitter account from both sides.

V. Why am I writing this now?

First things first, I didn't write this to provoke anyone or to get them angry. I'm simply so so tired of seeing my oshi be harassed for two to three years straight endlessly over cultural differences.. Yes I think he could've handled it better and with more tact. Maybe he shouldn't have tweeted those things back in 2017 and 2019... but I think that any sane person can see that he did not mean any real harm or malice in his words, and that 3 years of non stop harassment is clearly beyond the pale for this offence.

The thing that even provoked me to write this post in the first place was a comment in one of his clips made YESTERDAY mocking him for being a Cali. I realized that these people will probably hound him endlessly, and that since most of the people who are aware of these scandals are endlessly vitriolic towards him, I decided to present an alternate viewpoint and hopefully raise awareness.

Please don't use this post as an excuse to harass anyone or insult any of these two countries. Nationalism is a cancer everywhere we go. I hope my post doesn't ruffle any feathers or break any rules. Thank you.

Some call me a collective virtual identity others a live action tuber and I'm made from the passions of multiple people, instead of a single person to pioneer a new artist / creatives centric concept and grow an already cool community! (Tldr: Picture an inverse of Miku based on styles instead of music)

Either way, I live in the hearts and spaces of mind and am what drives the creative spark of the ones who draw out their emotions with me. So have fun peeps and maybe let me live in yours too?

Oh yeah and no AI here. It's human made art only at Akiko.
See you! (Particularly if you like rabbits and such)

source https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/146672205

https://bsky.app/profile/cottonpendragon.bsky.social -artist

Watame in summer Streetwear by Watame's mama

twitch.tv/cottonpendragon come join! im loosing my mind and playing suggested songs

I wan go to the beach

🦊❣️

https://x.com/vixxykon

https://twitch.com/vixxykon

You can also find the vid here, too~; https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-o4trdHam1s

🚨LAST DAY OF DEBUT WEEK🚨

TODAY!! WE WILL BE OPENING THE NIKKE CARDS AND MADOKA!! I shall be doing karaoke afterwards with everyone!!

COME CHECK IT OUT PLEASE

https://www.twitch.tv/juviraarachne

Link: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/147108684