Hope my question makes sense. I’m gonna be honest, I’m not really a learner (maybe one day, I’d like to, but I don’t have the time or energy), but I’ve picked up one or two things from watching Japanese content and mostly I’m just really curious.
I’ve been watching a jpop boy group’s youtube videos and I noticed that they’ll sometimes just use different pronouns even though nothing about the setting has changed – still the same level of formality, talking to the same people, not quoting anyone, not seeming like they’re putting on an act. I’ve heard most of them rotate through ore, boku, watashi, watakushi in the same conversation. I’ve heard of people using different pronouns depending on the context but if nothing’s changed, is this still normal?
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It’s still normal. I sometimes use different pronouns when I talk to the same person. For example, when I want to exaggerate the Kansai dialect for fun and jokes, I use ‘wai,’ but I mainly use ‘boku’ or ‘ore.’ Some people use ‘ore’ when they talk to their kohai (younger people than they are) and use ‘boku’ when they talk to their senpai (older people than they are). I’m not entirely sure what you’ve watched, but we often casually change pronouns.
‘Watashi’ can be used often when a certain person acts as a host for their own content in a video, as it makes it obvious and clear who the host is.