I thought about the whole thing regarding the "normalfags" appropriating the Denpa style of videos, which supposedly was a counter-culture, or at least it tried to be such.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding Denpa, but isn't "a guy going insane from watching too much anime alone in his room for years" the most mainstream and least counter-cultural thing you can think of? Maybe it wasn't at some point, but when Denpa videos started. Let's take an arbitrary year like 2015-2017. By that year, everyone was already going insane in their rooms from watching too much anime. Maybe not every person per se, but certainly every late Millenial, Zoomer, and now even Generation Alpha. I think there's already a consensus by now that "normalfags" don't exist, they're a strawman that exists in the heads of the majority of the people with each person having their own very vague feeling about that word. Is being a "girlfriend-haver, sex-haver, friend-haver, non-KHHV" a normalfag trait? Because everyone is isolated and the wizchan and r9k people just deceive themselves in that regard as if their way of life is any way special (and as a side tangent, they're being just as much of a normalfag as their the strawman in their head by defining themselves as their most important attribute to be if they have sex). Is suffering from some kind of mentall ill something that differentiates the Denpa from the normalfag? I doubt it, mental illness rates are rising constantly and have been for a very long time and long before 2015. Is the Denpa a Hikkineet Otaku? Well, you can guess yourself where this is going.
What defines Denpa that separates it from the common folks? Is Denpa a mindset maybe? If so, what does this mindset consist of? Is Denpa somebody who makes Denpa videos? Then most Denpas wouldn't Denpas. Somebody who enjoys Denpa videos then? Then Denpa is the same consumerist culture like somebody who defines their whole identity for watching Tiktok dances.

I think there never was a difference between the Denpas and the normalfags. The cloest definition of the Denpa culture would be my last guess, i.e. Denpa are those who enjoy Denpa videos, but I think this is a very pathetic excuse to just consume videos on Youtube and not something actually counter-cultural.

The otaku hikineet is one kind of damaged existence produced by modern capitalism. Counterculture was always commodified and exploitative so there is nothing actually countercultural. Punks were the ultimate consumers.

Denpa is embracing and accepting this damaged life but their audiovisual strategy is to accelerate at maximum speed and embrace the schizophrenia against a society that on paper at least calls for restraint and sanity. Its like your so unhappy you laugh and punch yourself in the head because what else can you do? You were born a slave.

feel like its always really been an embracement of where the world is headed, people stuck in their rooms, consuming to the the point of mindlessnes, but also what comes in the time when robots are doing everything for us, we can also learn whatever we want and make deep innerworlds in nieche bits of the internet.

True denpas are not on social media. They don't have discord friends. They spend all their time in their room but in a truly antisocial way. Rather than engaging in the psuedo social spectacle, they have truly drawn inward. Their only interaction with media is for the sake of pure education. They have largely left the computer for paper books. No one knows their name. They do not have an identity online.

for me denpa was never counterculture in the sense of a reaction to social pressures, denpa is pure pro action born from people who were raised on the internet. counterculture means that you aim to invert ( or at least heavily alter social norms) denpa is the epitome of not coming in contact with social norms. in the sense that you come in contact with them through the internet just like in a museum you “come in contact” with culture through the built environment around you. i’m sure people here understand that socialising could help them but having grown up on the internet, a platform predominantly solitary and globalised, simply don’t find it “socially acceptable” for their own “societal norms”. tl dr imo denpas are people who don’t care about mainstream culture, not because they are counterculture, but because it’s simply not their culture

>>1
I don't know that anyone ever claimed "denpa" was counter culture, or that it even exists in a clearly defined way. But setting that aside, I think you have a bit of a strange view.

By that year, everyone was already going insane in their rooms from watching too much anime.

I'm not sure why you think this, the average person, even millennial or gen z or whatever, hasn't seen much anime at all. Even something we might think of as fairly mainstream such as k-on, well I think it's unlikely that the average person has seen it or is even ware that it exists. We may have a classic xkcd 2501 moment. Bishoujo anime is still mostly unpopular outside of otaku circles. Beyond anime, the average person has never played a visual novel, read a manga, and they don't know what a drama CD is, etc. But of course, all of this is just otaku subculture rather than denpa subculture.

Regarding your primary point, could you point to a real counter-culture? The prime examples might be hippies and punks, right? Punk was invented by the fashion industry and the british music press, hippies grew up to become literally boomers. You seem to be heavily invested in this concept of counter culture as if it somehow is really important. I don't know you OP but your post gives me a sense of adolescent angst at the discovery that the world isn't how you thought it was as a child. You seem to believe that culture stands on it's own, and that something real and authentic is just over there, just out of reach. I'm sorry to break it to you OP but that reality is always deferred, you will never find it. And what would you do with it if you did find it? It seems that you think cultures are out there, born of individual choice, but actually choosing a culture is merely a consumer choice, and therefore can't be counter culture because it's commodified. Either you are too young to be using this site, or you've taken far too long to notice this. You thought you could solve the world's problems if you found a niche enough label to put on yourself.

I hope you will forgive me for psychoanalyzing you OP, but this is what it looks like to me. You came here looking for a trendy aesthetic you could put on, so you could feel cool. You thought you had found something obscure and edgy you could claim in lieu of growing a personality. But then you discovered, this is not cool at all! These people are losers! I can't market this! So then you come here, to purity test us? You see the flaws in yourself, and you project it onto something you've made up (denpa counter-culture), and you attack us? To be honest with you OP, I find people like you pathetic and disgusting. Can't you just leave us alone.

>>6 one thing that your post brought up that i feel is rarely talked about is that the commodification of “culture” has made it so that people think that being of a certain culture is something of your choosing. the thing that i like about your response is that it makes one thing clear, there are people here not larping as neets, internet consensus has somehow fetishized being an “otaku” and that is unimaginably cringe on so many levels, if you choose to be a shut in for any other reason other than simply not wanting to do something else then you are ruining your life for no reason at all. culture has been commodified socially to the point that people think that even subcultures which by design are not supposed to be able to be boasted about, can be used to make you feel cool. shut in “culture” is literally being a “loser” socially, why the fuck would you want to larp as that