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No. 32358
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>>32237
>>32066
As someone who sometimes associates with people who are in the 18-26 age group, I think that while many people do use weeb interests as a social tool, that's not a particularly good reflection of how they consume material or their appreciation of the subject.
My take is that it's more a generational thing. In this group, there are two scanlators, several artists, several people with some working knowledge of Japanese, and plenty of people with an obsession with one genre or another. Do we have serious discussions about this, that can become heated debates? Sure, especially in smaller interactions. But in a larger setting, usually the discussion does take a more shallow and memetic flow to things, simply because it is more enjoyable to shoot the shit like that. That tail-end is what you see in public/online discourse.
As far as irony is concerned, I think it is an internalized defense to two things: the image of weebs as being easily bitter and prone to drama, and the previous generation's serious, pedantic, and unyielding nature online (which led to the former). I think DemolitionD was probably the first persona to really crystallize that attitude, but it had existed in one form or another for some time.
It is basically a rejection of the idea that anime was an inherently superior form of entertainment, and that one should proselytize, or at least defend, it's sanctity and purity while improving your understanding through obsession to other aspects of otaku/Japanese culture.
Rather, anime is what you make of it, it can have systemic flaws that you may or may not care about, it can be snycretized with Western and other cultural tradition or not, and it doesn't really matter whether you watch a series for the plot, or for the plot. Essentially, a rejection of gatekeepers and typesetting by outsiders, which in its laziest form, is expressed as not taking either force seriously. And when said gatekeepers and trolls try to shame you anyway for depreciating weebs? Well, own up to it, and say that you truly aren't taking anime seriously, you only like it ironically.
In my group above, none of us actually say we ironically like anime or anything like that, it's genuine. But when you have someone try to call you out for only reading hentai of a series when you never cared about the original, or say you're just a yaoi fujoshi because you solely consume yaoi and don't care about the rest, and you are OK with that, how are you supposed to respond to that?
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