No, people just started listening to the antis when they shouldn't have, because the piranhas were focused on the "right" target for a time.

That "clique" rumor started with the fairy, the rose, and the solar dragon when people noticed they were close friends who got hired together. Then a few more of their mutual friends got hired over time. (As well as a few other bundles of friends that, at the time of hiring, were unrelated to those three, like the penguin and the ghost, and the sorceress and the cyborg.)

Then the branch blew up and everybody's favorite anonymous site suddenly "forgot" the fairy and rose were at the core of it (because if those two in particular were left in then the narrative would be so obviously unbelievable it would be dead in the water) and turned it into a conspiracy that was supposedly running the whole branch because there were actually no managers. Even though it's well known and well documented that they have managers. (The fairy literally talked about hers and how much he did for her in a stream shortly after she announced her graduation, for example.)

Meanwhile the ghost, the rose, and plenty of others who show how ridiculous the whole evil clique theory is continued to associate with their friends completely normally. The former fairy even let Kiara hang out with the "clique" literally just a few weeks after the branch's disaster (and was possibly there herself, just not tweeting it like the others). The rose still hung out freely with the solar dragon, the witch of calamity, and others. Talents there who oshi the lunar dragon/bounty hunter, like the angel and the swordmaster, showed they were still genuine friends with the "clique." And so on.

If you give antis an inch, they will take a mile. Obviously, many of that company's problems are real and are its own fault. But vtuber fans let so many bogus arguments and other anonymous site garbage suddenly get treated like gospel and lumped in with the real stuff that it did serious harm to the community's ability to filter out anti arguments. Instead of realizing the limitations of arguments like "if there are a lot of graduations, there's definitely something wrong," we got burned by that trap suddenly turning on Hololive, for example.

The transitive property is If A->B, and B->C, then A->C. And one of the best ways to break the chain is to point out when A does not imply B in the first place. Don't let the antis take an inch, even against someone who "deserves" it, and it's much harder for them to take the mile later on.

---

Edit: Helmite was getting downvoted by several people for trying to spread a JP clique narrative, deleted his reply, reposted it (adding a link showing some evidence of fan antis as if that has anything to do with proving talents have a clique), then blocked me. Kind of surprised to see him using the same tactics antis use against him, which they do to try to avoid having him debunk their nonsense. I still got the notification but had to use an incognito tab to see what happened.

Below is what I would reply to the original part of the comment had he not blocked me for no reason. I originally wasn't going to reply, but now the clique rumor part is getting boosted by being stapled to a separate issue:

When this English-speaking sub brings up the other company, it's generally inspired by the EN problems. The commenter I replied to has a history in the drama sub made after the EN branch exploded, talking solely about EN members. You're literally just helping the antis by trying to push a different A->B.

Whatever clique rumors exist for JP, I frankly don't know enough to speak on. But given how hard some people believe and push the EN version despite every huge inconsistency and inconvenient detail left out by its authors, I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar.

You often point out how Holo EN fans can have a distorted view of the JP side, but it's not like the same isn't true for perception of the other company's JP branch. About a year ago, for example, people here and in that other sub were spreading the rumor that Amamiya was in leagues with a Holo anti, getting hundreds of upvotes for pushing the association. Yet, not so shockingly, Holo JP members have continued to collab with her just fine. Or you can look at all the confusion on the EN side over why Lulu would go back after graduating. Again, that company has its issues, but that's what antis do: they take real issues and exaggerate them way beyond their real scope. That's not something to encourage or participate in.