I've been trying to find discussions about a recently aired anime but all I ever see is drama, hype, grifting, tangents and inane 'memes' from people who blatantly and obviously are not into the niché it is centered around and are just there for shock value or some other secondary, maybe even tetriary thing. It's really getting under my skin. How long until the normies move on from a series?

There isn't really anything you can do about the tourists other than ignoring them I think. Not being on social media like twitter helps a lot.

this is why i watch stuff the season after no talks no oppinions everyone moved on

which series do you wish to discuss?

>>4
I didn't mention it partially because I don't want it to derail the thread and partially because I live by the rules of containment now since I lost one of my favorite chuubas to the normals.
But it's MahoAko.

the best you can do is ignore them. if you see them on social media- mute. if you go to a site with a lot of them- avoid that place. anime as a whole (in the west) isn't a niche anymore and that means a lot new different types of ppl are gonna be around. the non dumbass tolerance policy has worked a lot for me, but it sucks that it only helps avoid ppl instead of finding likeminded individuals.

Just give up and stop discussing anime. Maybe start your own website or youtube channel to discuss anime with a bunch of friends or on your own.

>>6

anime as a whole (in the west) isn't a niche anymore and that means a lot new different types of ppl are gonna be around

Yeah, I think this might be just 'culture shock' at the end of the day... or whatever the inverse of it is. I mostly keep to myself, writing and drawing all sorts of things, some more messed up than others. I'm not on social media, I'm not on YouTube, I don't have a MAL, I at best lurk on some alt-chans on forums (like this) or in a Matrix or IRC with a small circle of friends. Most of the people I follow who are part of the niche have 10-20k Twitter followers to their name tops, maybe DLSite purchases in the high 10k-s. I went in with the thought that this series was just another part of this underground kink scene and I guess I didn't realize the real masses aren't just the 'I watch Dragon Ball and Naruto' types anymore.

>>8 i think culture shock is a pretty good term for it. esp when you're not clipped into what normies are doing. the one that got me is ppl not knowing what Azumanga Daioh is. and by ppl i mean artists who'd been drawling the characters for sometime. imo there's always been a distinction between "weebs" and "otaku" but it feels like the gap shifts further apart as time goes on and more gens grow up with anime being "cool".

>>9 one thing that ive noticed from getting to know some western “digital painters” who often draw anime girls and hang out in the twitter illustrator circles, is that they seem to not be otaku and are sometimes even anti-otaku mindsets.

in particular they seem to have a very romantic perspective on art and look down on the databasey, obsessive, and intertextual approaches to (interpreting) media. the kind of people that believe taxonomy and comparison is a kind of violence that prevents things from being perceived “as they are”, instead of a more post/meta-modernist idea of perception where the interplay between physical phenomena and cultural symbols produces the interpretation of the artwork.

essentially, they venerate intuition and naivety while scorning irony and encyclopedic knowledge (which they tend to misattribute to a means to an end, a neoliberal conquest to conquer and understand all, instead of a product of the joy of discovery and obsession with a medium as well as its (meta-)narratives and histories). in fact, they view knowledge and discourse as corrupting forces that contaminate their expressive individuality. the dont learn any music theory because it will make you write music like everyone else’s type of people.

idk if these people are the majority and I know Libido Kamen has raged extensively against them, but
tldr: I get what you mean by these people. they dont love anime, they love drawing images, which is a fundamentally different point of departure.

>>10 "a fundamentally different point of departure" is such a good way to put it. i've felt what you're saying first hand. trying to interact or even lurk in online communities for anime/whatever i'm an otaku of is rough bc our mindsets are simply different. it's how i got so good at ignoring normies in the first place. there's ppl who i wouldn't call otaku but what they got to say is at least interesting. i feel what op is going through.

I mean, it wouldn't be all too bad by itself, but the pain is just amplified so much from me and the protagonist being unfathomably similar. Her hair style, her bland dress code, her wallflower social behavior, her obsessive nature, her green thumb, the way she likes just sketching about to kill time, and that's not even getting to the lascivious bits. There have been multiple times throughout this anime where in my adrenaline-dazed, barely self-aware trance I mumbled out loud the exact same sentiment as she said, at the exact same time, and it's fucking surreal. I'm going through my second, 'normal' watching and it feels like it was a dream. Like my brain is telling me that didn't actually happen but somehow I still know the story beats.

How could I even go about explaining this even to people who fundamentally, emotionally get it, letalone the NORPs and their 'hurting someone you love is irrational, though' mentality?

I might be getting too philosophical here, but I feel like in the west we just have this view on the corrupting power of images which doesn't have as much of a hold in japan and with otaku. there are all sorts of people who will try to turn which images you engage with into some sort of metaphysical force with corrupting power. Since all that exists is spectacle, how you interact with certain images becomes the only thing remaining to critique. And then even that sort of judgement becomes a simulacra of let's say political action for example. What's strange is there's an image of the delusional otaku (or maybe chuuni) who can't tell the difference between anime and real life, but it's really the anti-otaku who can't seem to understand "c'est ne pas une pipe". Like >>10 says about certain twitter illustrators, there are certain people who are desperate to seperate the signifier from the signified, recouperating the image of a certain artstyle or characters (especially to tie it back with 2000s nostalgia that's so trendy now). This ought to be considered a form of violence. For a time, I thought a way to escape from this was to go into deeper parts of the subculture (in the west at least) like eroge. I thought, no one who isn't already a hardcore otaku is going to read 50 hour long eroge. But I think that it doesn't matter, because they don't need to read it. See how many normans are posting azudaioh memes without ever having seen the show. To them this is not a shameful act, and that's very confusing to me.

>>12 well, you did explain it. (even if you didn't go into full detail.) tho i haven't seen the show you're talking about i'm understanding where you're coming from. really i think it comes down to finding spaces with likeminded individuals. it's why i think boards like this are super important. i would not be shocked if a lot of denpas have similar experiences, just with different characters/shows.

>>13 it worries me that ppl seem to judge fiction by how well it goes for or against their morals rather than just like, anything else you can get out of art. not only do they treat fiction like it's a representation of irl, they expect artists and their art to outright be vessels to push their worldview. if they don't get it they scream about the work being "problematic" or "woke" (depending on who is doing the bitching.) it's like ppl think every single thing should be made for them. the way ppl talk about sex and fan service being in shows/art is a great example.

tho i agree with a lot of stuff you said i'll be real- some normie drawling is whatever imo. what i can't stand are the ppl who think they're keepers of what is art and how it should be made. these types act like calling out shit they don't like in fiction is some type of noble cause, moral duty, and obligation.

it makes artist's job harder because why put up with having random stupid ppl speculate on and even decide your character because you put something in a story or drew something and the wrong person found out about it? i hate this mindset so much idk why so many ppl do it, besides out of stupidity and maybe to fit in their online circles. it's weird and i hope online discussion becomes smarter, but that's a pipedream.

age

>>15
rather than whining and bitching they should create their own things that suit their tastes, that goes for every kind of critic of art honestly

>>17
and it goes doubly for those who whinge about other people whinging