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Correlation between immaturity and japanese media liking


Thyndd

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Oh man, this is going to cause such a long shitstorm, for what I apologize. Let's see, where to start...

A few months ago I came across a youtube video of a self-proclaimed japanese culture expert and divulgator psychologist. In this video he made a bunch of claims about japanese society and people who like japanese media (he was especifically referring to anime and manga, but due to the very similar trends and topics I consider it also applies to VNs) tending to be more "immature" (whatever that means, which I'll discuss later) and idealizing childhood, a nostalgic period to which they desperately want to go back. I'm not going to provide an actual link to the video for various reasons:

It's not even in English, so most of you wouldn't understand it anyway.

I don't know if the community guidelines in fuwanovel would even allow the publicity, and what's more, I don't have a reason to advertise a content I consider poor on so many levels.

He didn't provide any evidence for his claims in the form of any sociological study I mean, he's a psychologist... ehem so nothing there is worth more than your average middle-aged oji-san's opinion that you might find in the middle of the street.

For all these and much more, I'll try to give you a quick overview in a nutshell on his "arguments". It goes like this (warning: the amount of bullshit you will find here reaches toxic levels. Reader discretion is advised):

"Japanese society lives in a state of perpetual reverie and denial due to their defeat during WWII, which left them with a grave inferiority complex and the perception that they are at the mercy of EEUU. This caused a generalised depression that led to japanese people undergoing the loss of all sense of self-worth and autonomy, accepting being subjugated to EEUU like a kid is subjugated to their parent's commands."

"This reflects in japanese media in the form of a tendency for very young characters to which they can relate and the image of the adult like that mature person (otona), a fount of infinite wisdom, who follows blindly the role society assigns them and thus is a model for our young main characters."

"Westerners  who like japanese media tend to share this Peter Pan syndrome with japanese people. They are essentially manchildren that negate their age and responsabilites and take shelter in the world of japanese fiction, so well suited for them."

And that would be essentially it. To be honest, when I first watched his video I laughed it off and thought that this fucker just read too much Freud. It's the same kind of bullshit that you find in psycho-analysis, where you have a bunch of hypothesis with no evidence whatsoever that just sound somewhat appealing and you are told to believe because they came from the mind of a self-called intelligent person. I thought that most of us are way past that crap and quickly dismissed the topic.

And to the present day, I still think that it is bullshit. So why am I losing my time writing this? Well, you know that feeling when you learn a word that you never heard before, and thereafter you seem to hear the freaking word all the time? It's an effect of being more attentive to it. Likewise, I became more sensitive to this topic after watching that video, and since then I've been noticing an extended idea among people that indeed japanese media enthusiast, or "otakus", call it as you want, have a childish mentality. And you must be thinking... "wow, this dude discovered f***** America". Yeah right, it doesn't particularly come off as a surprise that there are a lot of prejudices against this hobby. The main reason I want to write about this is a little more subtle.

I've been noticing that the "manchild" epithet is given in a condescending way even among anime and manga fans (VN is such a niche genre that I think there is barely any room for it for the time being) to discredit other people's opinions and tastes on the subject. Wow, elitist being assholes, breaking news, I know. But you know, in spite of me being a really obstinate person, I also like to leave room for someone's arguments to change my mind or make me look at things from another angle. Plus, they say that there is no smoke without fire, so I would like to discuss how much reality there is to this what with it being a prejudice held not only by the unversed opinionated masses but even within the community itself.

First, let's address what it means to be "immature", "childish", a "childman". Definitions are always arbitrary and oftentimes confusing, so I always like to begin a discussion getting the definitions out of the way in the most clear way possible first. When I hear "childish" referred to a person, the word evoke the meaning of "person who share the common personality traits of most children" for me. And what would that be? Well, children tend to be carefree and selfish in nature, as a result of not yet knowing the hardships of life and not being aware of the consequences of their actions, for which they are not willing to accept any responsability, thus being dumped on their parents instead. By this definition, someone cannot be called "childish" on the only basis of their pastimes or passions. The gist of the question is whether there is or is not a correlation (not causation) between childish people and japanese popular media fans. And if there is, then it would mean that there are some features in this media that turn out to be appealing for this kind of people. This brings us back to the words of our good freudian psychologist and "japanese culture expert", whose statements I'll try to refute (at least those unrelated with WWII and all the nonsense not worth the effort).

He claims that immature people feel attracted to japanese media because of the prominence of young characters they can relate to. I'm not denying the fact that that prominence is very much real, though of course it also depends on the genre. What I think he's missing here are the actual reasons why and the themes these kind of works usually deal with. As for the reasons of this abundance of young characters, the obvious one is that most of these works are targeted at a young audience, while trying to make it enjoyable for all publics. It's important to keep in mind that anime and manga is, at least as a popular phenomenon, a relatively young one. Most of the fans are still young. But for me, the most relevant reason is embedded in the true nature of japanese society (and not all the crap he pulled out of his ass). If you pay attention, the most frequent period during which most anime and manga are set in is the last years of high-school. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense, since it makes for a really handy narrative device. No matter where you are from, those ages are where you become the person you will be during all your life. It's a period of change, and also a period of difficult choices, your ACTUAL first difficult choices as a new-born adult. What you usually see in these works is not a bratty teenager without a care in the world that get away with that attitude at the end (something more frequent, incidentally, in american teenage fiction, if I'm allowed to say it). Instead, what it all usually comes down to is to learning to be critical with oneself, facing your responsibilities and becoming an overall responsible and decent person who will be productive when integrated to society. And this last part, this "integration to society" is so fundamental in the japanese mindset, that I believe that is the reason why we get so many school life related works. Japanese mentality is extremely communal: the well-being of the community comes first as a priority than your own interests. Every new piece to be integrated into this machine needs to be polished and have the social awareness that is expected from it. You tell me, how is this not contradictory with the childish mentality that I described above? Like, they are total opposites. I seriously doubt that childish people would enjoy most of these works where the reality of the world, the fact that you must accept your coming to age and face your responsabilities are thrown so blatantly to your face.

And that's pretty much everything I wanted to say. If you've made it this far, congratulations :makina:

I'm aware that asking for an opinion here might be like asking your grandma to confirm that you are the most handsome person in the country, but anyway, let's try to be critical about it and get to the bottom of this. I would love to read your thoughts on the topic. 

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For me, the only reason i think people are calling anime fans childish is because anime is targetted exactly at this particular age group (let's ignore the serious genres, people who don't watch anime don't really know about them anyway) where you are considered still immature.

So the logic seems to be that if you share interests with kids, you are probably one yourself, which is just a load of prejudices.

Not much imput from me (and probably not very elaborated), but i hope i at least made you feel better by letting you know that one more person read this wall of text :wafuu:

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Honestly I find the idea of immaturety of adults that have hobbies they enjoy that aren't "adult hobbies" to be stupid. It sort of feels like the people who calls people immature for liking something different just want everyone to conform to their lifestyle. Also I always believed the high school setting has been common because adult work life in Japan is shit. Since they work so much extra time that they essentially don't have a life outside of work most adult life based stories would be boring (unless the characters have an interesting job) and I assume a lot of people in Japan use anime as an escapism from their empty lifes filled with endless workdays. A high school setting works really well as that is the time they can think back to before they started working as well as it being easier to make stories for it. Characters have more free time and this is the time where people often develop themselves as people.

Edited by bakauchuujin
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29 minutes ago, Thyndd said:

It's not even in English, so most of you wouldn't understand it anyway.

I assume it's in Spanish because of the EEUU? Link me up fam

In any case, while you seem to believe this Japanese culture expert (JCE) is biased / prejudiced, I would also note that you continuously refer to their opinions as "bullshit" and to JCE as a "fucker". Do ensure that you present both sides of the argument fairly, even if their thoughts may seem completely outlandish.

It's very hard to contribute on a topic like this because there are, to my knowledge, no concrete statistics or studies that examine the link between interest in Japanese media and personality traits. As a personal anecdote, however, I know multiple people that seem to fit perfectly into the theories JCE proposed. I don't believe that this is a one-size-fits-all everyone that likes anime is a manchild type deal, but in some cases it rings very true. 

I think JCE may be referring to people that are obsessed with Japanese media and whatnot, rather than anyone with an interest. There's "I enjoy anime and am learning Japanese in my spare time" and then there's Kendesu. That is an important distinction to make. 

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well, this "expert" is just completely wrong on all levels and just a dumb poopy head.

 

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but really, i can kind of see that. i mean, just look at japanese grown up society. it revolves around working incredibly long hours most days of the week and only a few moments of free time to themselves. who wouldnt want to try to recapture their childhood days where they didnt have as much worries in the world? where society constantly applies pressure to them. get a job, get a family, have kids, go to social gatherings, either for work or family. just, ugh. now, i know it doesnt just mean japanese people but im guessing that this study is heavily focused on them. anime, for me, sort of recaptures wonder and excitement. like your name, the visuals were just absolutely stunning, the story engaging.

 

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^LOOK AT THAT! thats a scene from the movie! isnt it just beautiful? no way a 3d movie could make me feel the same. i know with cgi its just as equally not real but for some reason when its animated its just more beautiful. so yeah, thats what anime does for me. pull me into a world of magic and wonder that i miss from my younger days.

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1 minute ago, Zander said:

In any case, while you seem to believe this Japanese culture expert (JCE) is biased / prejudiced, I would also note that you continuously refer to their opinions as "bullshit" and to JCE as a "fucker". Do ensure that you present both sides of the argument fairly, even if their thoughts may seem completely outlandish.

I mean, they are real bullshit insofar as they are not backed up by any rigorous studies or at least he didn't provide any (and note that these are some serious claims about japanese society as a whole and the impact of WWII). Utilizing your status and titles as your only prop to sell a theory about reality is the hallmark of a charlatan (which for simplicity I'll call fucker :sachi:).

8 minutes ago, Zander said:

It's very hard to contribute on a topic like this because there are, to my knowledge, no concrete statistics or studies that examine the link between interest in Japanese media and personality traits. As a personal anecdote, however, I know multiple people that seem to fit perfectly into the theories JCE proposed. I don't believe that this is a one-size-fits-all everyone that likes anime is a manchild type deal, but in some cases it rings very true. 

I can also think of some people that would fall in this category, but as you say, since there are no studies that I know of it doesn't prove any correlation. You could also make up some weird correlation about manganime fans being murderers because the favorite anime of a murderer is Mirai Nikki :leecher:

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I think that you're correlating the state of the anime fanbase with broader implications regarding Japanese culture. The former is something that I believe I can explain, while the latter feels like it's just a pretentious (and perhaps even prejudiced or racist at worst) attempt at interpreting it more broadly than it is.

Well, the majority of popular anime can be said to be rather tropey or at least by-the-numbers.

Many anime works are easy to compartmentalize: shounen anime, bishounen anime, SoL, etc.

In a deeply connected fashion, character archetypes are also very clearly defined: These are your kuudere, yandere, etc.

As such, many (most?) anime works are rather derivative. This leads to the fanbase of such anime to stay the same in their tastes and in their discourse- the discussion around anime, therefore, stagnates. 

Furthermore, the vast majority of these genres and archetypes are designed to appeal to a male audience (save for generally women-oriented genres like BL). You can see this from the (over)abundance of female characters- their abundance usually isn't due to some concept integral to the plot or logic of the anime in question, but so that the girls can be marketed by ensuring that as much of the audience as possible feels enamored with (at least) one character. I don't feel that merchandise featuring boys sells as well as merch featuring girls. Frequent sexualization of girls in anime ties into this.

Since so much of mainstream anime's geared towards men, of course their audience will also predominantly consist of men.

So you get a fanbase around the medium that's both unwilling to deviate from a formula to create new, different works; and since it's so overwhelmingly male and so commonly sexualized, it cannot be moved forward easily by female perspectives.

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2 minutes ago, Funyarinpa said:

I think that you're correlating the state of the anime fanbase with broader implications regarding Japanese culture. The former is something that I believe I can explain, while the latter feels like it's just a pretentious (and perhaps even prejudiced or racist at worst) attempt at interpreting it more broadly than it is.

Ok, I feel it's really important that I clarify something. Everything I theorized about japanese society and its relation with japanese media was just an attempt to offer a less crazy alternative to the hypothesis that our friend in the video spout as the truth. If I tried to sell them as anything more than my subjective take on the matter I'd be falling into the same error as him, which is talking about something I have no idea nor proofs to offer. 

I wouldn't pay much attention to that part of my post, as it was intended as just a particular example of the seemingly extended preconception of a correlation between japanese media liking and immaturity, which is the topic I really wanted to focus on.

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Most Japanese under the age of 20 don't even know which side the Japan fought in WWII so that is a thing 

But Kiri thinks that the work life sucks anywhere in the world. I have experienced it myself. Work slowly eats all your energy and takes too many hours of your day (Petition for 6 hour work days anyone?)

High school days are also the so called Golden Time of your life when you live your life to the max for most of the people. Why not university you ask? Well because university exams are hell and many people can't go there. There are still some university animu media but not clearly as much as high school. After high school you also start to get older and older and don't have so much energy do stuff either.

Nostalgia is also a thing here too Kiri thinks. Past was always better no matter what period of your life it was.

I don't also understand what's wrong with liking younger girls. Who the hell wouldn't want a young cute GF instead of some old lady www

But most importantly Kiri is still a child and doesn't even know what she wrote.

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2 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

But Kiri thinks that the work life sucks anywhere in the world. I have experienced it myself. Work slowly eats all your energy and takes too many hours of your day (Petition for 6 hour work days anyone?)

Pretty sure it is worse in Japan due to the insane amounts of overtime they have.

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1 hour ago, Thyndd said:

"Westerners  who like japanese media tend to share this Peter Pan syndrome with japanese people. They are essentially manchildren that negate their age and responsabilites and take shelter in the world of japanese fiction, so well suited for them."

Not gonna lie, I know people exactly like this, but making them out to be weeaboos is a bit oversimplified. I define weeaboos as japanesse nationalists who never been to japan; they have this fantaized view of japan from anime/manga/VNs/RPGs etc. It's literally a phase and then people wake up. This phenomenon happens during the early teen years anyway, and by the time you're in college. You shouldn't really be referring yourself as an weeb anymore.

Personally, I feel like this guy does not know enough about the medium to even make that analysis. He cites what exactly, psychology and sociaology have been experiencing a reproducibility problem with their experiments. In other words, most often an experiment would be done to prove that X happens under these conditions with 87% possibilty. When reproduced by a team of different researchers, it turns out the experiment completely failed. Therefore, I take psychology studies that happened once with a grain of salt.

Furthermore, the implications of this "study" seem inconsequential. Like, so people have some childish tendencies. Does this affect their lives significantly? No. Really? Oh. Then let go back reading my One Piece. I am curious to see what research this guy has cited what experiements did they do and how well their study design was.

Also, anime is just animation that comes from japan. Could this man research the manchildren here in america? He would have the same conclusions, it's almost as if these people are missing their childhood? Could it be NOSTALGIA!? But what the fuck I know, I am just an Otaku working on my CS degree.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Happiness+ said:

Not gonna lie, I know people exactly like this, but making them out to be weeaboos is a bit oversimplified. I define weeaboos as japanesse nationalists who never been to japan; they have this fantaized view of japan from anime/manga/VNs/RPGs etc. It's literally a phase and then people wake up. This phenomenon happens during the early teen years anyway, and by the time you're in college. You shouldn't really be referring yourself as an weeb anymore.

Personally, I feel like this guy does not know enough about the medium to even make that analysis. He cites what exactly, psychology and sociaology have been experiencing a reproducibility problem with their experiments. In other words, most often an experiment would be done to prove that X happens under these conditions with 87% possibilty. When reproduced by a team of different researchers, it turns out the experiment completely failed. Therefore, I take psychology studies that happened once with a grain of salt.

Furthermore, the implications of this "study" seem inconsequential. Like, so people have some childish tendencies. Does this affect their lives significantly? No. Really? Oh. Then let go back reading my One Piece. I am curious to see what research this guy has cited what experiements did they do and how well their study design was.

Also, anime is just animation that comes from japan. Could this man research the manchildren here in america? He would have the same conclusions, it's almost as if these people are missing their childhood? Could it be NOSTALGIA!? But what the fuck I know, I am just an Otaku working on my CS degree.

 

 

I also feel like there's some bayesian problem with it, when it comes to the perception of people in general. Childish people perhaps tend to lean towards fiction, and since they usually stand out more than people with their feet on earth, it's easy to mix up "the probability of liking anime given that you have a childish personality" and "the probability of having a childish personality given that you like anime".

Edited by Thyndd
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8 hours ago, Thyndd said:

Ok, I feel it's really important that I clarify something. Everything I theorized about japanese society and its relation with japanese media was just an attempt to offer a less crazy alternative to the hypothesis that our friend in the video spout as the truth. If I tried to sell them as anything more than my subjective take on the matter I'd be falling into the same error as him, which is talking about something I have no idea nor proofs to offer. 

I wouldn't pay much attention to that part of my post, as it was intended as just a particular example of the seemingly extended preconception of a correlation between japanese media liking and immaturity, which is the topic I really wanted to focus on.

Oh, okay!

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22 hours ago, Thyndd said:

I don't know if the community guidelines in fuwanovel would even allow the publicity, and what's more, I don't have a reason to advertise a content I consider poor on so many levels.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure the guidelines allow it, and in general it's always a good idea to give a link to something if you are discussing it, even if you don't agree with what they say. Even if it's in some language not all of us here speak.

As for the topic of this discussion... The people I know in real life who enjoy anime from time to time don't look immature to me at all, but the set is way too small to say anything in general. My personal opinion about this would be that this is just bullshit. There may be a lot of anime fans that act immature online, or perhaps even in real life, but is this not true for young people in general? I mean, even if it turns out that there is some correlation, I don't think there's any excuse to make any claims about anime fans in general, assuming that the author of that video did.

The part about WWII, on the other hand, is just stupid. People need to stop finding historical parallels in everything.

Edited by Dreamysyu
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I see a pattern in this and it's more general than what it seems at first glance. It's about the classic "you have to think like me". There are plenty of examples of this. It's very clear in politics where you can be called deplorable for just disagreeing on which politician to vote for. There are however lots of examples unrelated to politics. Few examples related to psychology.

 

Introvert vs Extrovert

While introverts have a high degree of "other people can do as they like", extroverts have a tendency to expect other people to act extroverted and they announce whenever they think somebody doesn't behave according to "extrovert guidelines". If a person have no interest in being the center of attention at a party or even showing up, that person is declared to be a loser. The same goes for a person with too few friends because apparently having 1000 friends on FB is a goal in itself. Introverts tend to care less for how cloth looks, but wearing something, which was the fashion 10 years ago is so not accepted by some other people.

 

Asperger syndrome

This diagnosis is likely to be removed in the next revision of official diagnoses due to being applied to people it was never intended for. However if we look at the core criteria for this diagnosis, it aims towards people (primarily children), which are different. On top of usually being introverts, they don't like crowded places like schools, mainly due to the noise level. They have a tendency to have a major interest, which they like to study, usually alone. This interest can be anything, but is often mechanical in nature (trains is a common interest). They don't mind studying insignificant details for hours and they build up a wast knowledge of the area and you can ask them anything and they usually remember.

The problem with this description is that particularly the interest part of it fits most engineers, which has given it the nickname "the engineering disease". Most engineers tend to like studying "insignificant details", like engine parts, software algorithms, math problems etc. All those problems seems to be unimportant to psychologists, which by now has labeled them as deviation from perfection.

One example would be Joseph Whitworth. He became obsessed with measuring small distances and in 1840 he achieved being able to measure a millionth of an inch. Just wanting to measure something too small to be seen provides a not insignificant score on the AS scale. He then proceeded to make a standard for screws, which made them interchangeable and it's this thing, which allows you to go to the hardware store and buy screws and bolts and know they fit whatever you need just by reading the numbers on the box. He also started making guns where barrel and bullet fits in size, making them long range and accurate enough to allow aiming in a way we understand as aiming. Somebody else quickly took his method of measuring and applied to it making cylinders and pistons for steam engines. This almost eliminated the problem of leaking steam around the pistons, which made them a lot more fuel efficient. This in turn changed railroads from something in coal field areas to a global thing because now they were beating horses in operation costs even in countries without coal. The importance of Joseph Whitworth is likely not possible to over estimate (but have you even heard of him? I didn't in school). The reason why I bring him up here is because if he had been born today, he would have been labeled as Asperger and put in counseling and possibly medication to make him normal. He would need protection against his own weird ideas. There is no room for being different anymore. Einstein has been labeled with Asperger, though luckily not until long after his death, meaning it didn't cause him any problems.

 

Anime/VN/Japan

I see little difference in this. There is some guy, who doesn't understand and doesn't try to understand what he is talking about and then he flames people for having interests, which are different from his interests.

 

That he brings up childish as a psychologist (if he is that) is interesting because according to psychology, there are 3 categories: child, adult, parent and each person consist of something from each. Since only the child is able to have fun, people with little or no score in child aren't able to have fun at all. In order to be happy, it's important to have a non-insignificant score in child while at the same time it should not over shadow the others as that would make the person irresponsible.

I wouldn't call it childish to follow orders. In fact it's actually a grown up thing to do. For instance there is a law stating that cars should drive on the right side of the road (or left depending on where you are). A child would go "me first, me not listen" and go everywhere while grown ups will understand that it's part of a greater plan to avoid traffic jams. You become one piece in a giant puzzle and you understand that it is in the interest of everybody including yourself that all pieces match perfectly. Another example would be to obey queues when going through a door. If you want to skip ahead in the queue, you risk ending up in a jam because too many people are in the door at once.

 

The talk about Japan and WW2 makes no sense whatsoever. If true, then explain why what he claims to be a result of losing WW2 was present even more strongly in the 1930s than it is today.

 

I wouldn't put too much into "somebody on the internet" flaming people out of ignorance and intolerance. The people he talks about do exist, but he puts it in way too general terms. Going back to the car example, it would be like saying people drive cars because they want to drive around a block repeatably honking the horn to annoy somebody. It has likely happened in rare cases, but it's not a general trait of car owners.

Edited by tymmur
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People who follow their hobbies obsessively are often seen as eccentric or childish... but immaturity is relative.  One of my best rl friends is a heavy-duty otaku with a family who works in the embassy of a certain African nation (though, because of that I haven't seen him in years).  I know plenty of people who are serious and live fulfilled lives around me who also happen to be otakus... and if you don't seem childish while indulging your hobbies, they probably aren't a hobby.  That is because a hobby is something you are supposed to take joy in pursuing, as opposed to working at.

That said... in any community, a certain percentage of those involved are going to be immature trolls (trolls being immature by definition).  I won't deny that some people, excluding myself of course *bats his eyes innocently* have made decisions others might consider... immature.  However, there is no absolute definition of maturity, beyond the ability to rationally make your own decisions based on what you want from life and be capable of rational discussion with people who disagree with you... or at least avoid exploding in their faces.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 18/3/2018 at 9:30 AM, Clephas said:

People who follow their hobbies obsessively are often seen as eccentric or childish... but immaturity is relative.  One of my best rl friends is a heavy-duty otaku with a family who works in the embassy of a certain African nation (though, because of that I haven't seen him in years).  I know plenty of people who are serious and live fulfilled lives around me who also happen to be otakus... and if you don't seem childish while indulging your hobbies, they probably aren't a hobby.  That is because a hobby is something you are supposed to take joy in pursuing, as opposed to working at.

That said... in any community, a certain percentage of those involved are going to be immature trolls (trolls being immature by definition).  I won't deny that some people, excluding myself of course *bats his eyes innocently* have made decisions others might consider... immature.  However, there is no absolute definition of maturity, beyond the ability to rationally make your own decisions based on what you want from life and be capable of rational discussion with people who disagree with you... or at least avoid exploding in their faces.

 

I know that I'm going to derail from the main thread (sorry for doing this, Thyndd), but I really would like to ask @Clephas something about his post:

How is your friend living out his hobby/coexisting his otaku side with his family and his life in general?

The reason for my question is that, frankly speaking, I live in a country not that developed toward otaku stuff in general (the south regions, in which I live, are even more ignorant on this matter). As a result, most of the people here hide the fact of liking anime/manga or any videogame which is not soccer or FPS related (because here, if it's not soccer or a shooter game, everything else is "crap for children").

This holds extremely true for my generation and similar (I'm almost 30), which forced me to hide my hobby till this day. This goes without saying that is very stressful, and unable to show others my tastes without being finger pointed.

Edited by きょうすけ
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48 minutes ago, きょうすけ said:

This holds extremely for my generation and similar (I'm almost 30), which forced me to hide my hobby till this day. This goes without saying that is very stressful, and unable to show others my tastes without being finger pointed.

I completely agree with what you're saying Kyousuke. I'm also of a similar age (32) and there's no way I can discuss with others about my hobbies without being labelled as weird. That said I believe it's all about your environment and the people that surround you. During my first (and only) research assistant position I found that I could talk to colleagues about these things; although many of my colleagues at the time we're Chinese. Since I had to give up my ambition of a lectureship (due to an unplanned pregnancy) and move into the defence industry for a permanent job there's just no way I can discuss these hobbies with anyone anymore; and I find that unbelievably crushing. Like you said if it's football or rugby then there's conversation, everything else just raises eyebrows. :amane:

Edited by Trickay
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5 minutes ago, Trickay said:

I completely agree with what you're saying Kyousuke. I'm also of a similar age (32) and there's no way I can discuss with others about my hobbies without being labelled as weird. That said I believe it's all about your environment and the people that surround you. During my first (and only) research assistant position I found that I could talk to colleagues about these things; although many of my colleagues at the time we're Chinese. Since I had to give up my ambition of a lectureship (due to an unplanned pregnancy) and move into the defence industry for a permanent job there's just no way I can discuss these hobbies with anyone anymore; and I find that unbelievably crushing. Like you said if it's football or rugby then there's conversation, everything else just raises eyebrows. :amane:

^Amen to that (feel a bit sorry for you too, since we understand each other that kind of awkward situation, which is sooo unpleasant).

You are also right on finding the right environment with the right people, but is very luck based, at least to me, which to this day I wasn't able to find outside of the internet.

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I'm probably repeating someone's opinion, but: I've heard a psychologist say that adolescence is truly our "golden years". When our brains function to the fullest and we have the potential to enjoy lots. Apart from obvious coming of age stories, in Japanese media it's reasonable to enshrine adolescence. It's not immature, it's just the way it is. Those years marked us, and made us what we are now (if you're 30-something like me).

As such, fits of nostalgia aren't unheard of, where you try to reproduce those times. With the music, the things you did, etc. The same psychologist said that most of us shift tastes with time, but I don't agree that much. I keep doing what I've always done, plus some newer hobbies. Does that make me childish? I don't know. Are the hobbies childish in themselves? You have the final word.

A Magic: the Gathering card carries a quote that goes, "life is too short to not do what you love". So, it all comes down to if you still enjoy it or not. Doing the things you like will have a positive impact on your life, indeed. More than any pseudo-psychology mumbo jumbo advise.

That's about the "enshrining adolescence" part, but there's the fact that even though anime shows are more commonly starred by high school students, not all of them are slice of life. Commonly there's another kind of plot, ranging from the serious to the silly. Then it all comes down to the quality of the plot, more than the characters' age. Of course, not every anime is a masterpiece, but the same can be said about Hollywood movies, and no one is accusing them of immatureness.

I've read tymmur's previous post, where he talks about being able to enjoy things in order to be happy. There's a mental condition called "anhedonia", associated with depression and schizophrenia, and boy, is it sinister. It's the inability to feel pleasure, or more generally, satisfaction. This is fucked up, so please consider how lucky we are to enjoy something like Japanese media that brings us joy and entertainment, even if it's considered the stupidest thing under the Sun.

Edited by Okarin
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