i think i first discovered vocaloid in either late 2008 or early 2009? i was a freshman in college for sure, because i remember sitting in the computer lab at school listening to vocaloid on niconico and youtube! i'm pretty sure i discovered it through touhou fandom songs. the cirno's perfect math class to triple baka pipeline. then i quickly found out more about vocaloid, and got into all the Classic songs and producers; i was a huge fan of supercell from the start (including their non-vocaloid music). i kept exploring and listening to different producers after that, and i've been listening to vocaloid a ton ever since.

vocaloid was something my partner and i bonded over before we started dating, too (i distinctly remember a party in 2019 where the two of us just sat in a corner on their laptop and swapped song recs). we had planned to go to hatsune miku expo in 2020--i bought tickets and everything--but it tragically got cancelled on account of the plague. but we got vocaloid concert redemption last year; i mentioned this on discord, but we went to see kikuo on our first date last august. we still want to go to a miku concert with the hologram and stuff, but we both love darker vocaloid songs so seeing kikuo for a first date was amazing!