While Chans, IRC and the melting pots of old withered and died or morphed into an unholy union of $current_times, there still remain a few of us, left scattered and isolated in the dying Protocols and haunts of nostalgia. But not for long - many among us that lack Fortitude will pass into the high walls of the deceptively greener gardens of social media. They will thus be afflicted by means of mental manipulation and trickery, turning them into beasts lacking Virtues that made the Internet great. A "normie". A most vile and foolish creature that has naught for Fellow Man; an existence whose raison d'etre is to tilt at the perpetually spinning windmills of Labor for a pittance of vapid mass consumption culture spewed by the Satanic Mills of Mammon. Woe, for we shall all go into the night alone.

I used to be a weeb. Not anymore. I think the last time I watched anime was around 2014ish? I guess I'm just visiting old sites for the sake of nostalgia.

I think I've kind of grown out of weeb shit.

The older people get, the more likely they are to:
-Commit suicide
-Die from other causes
-Have health problems that make them tired
-Have less free time due to work
-Have less free time due to having a family
-Develop different hobbies than the ones they used to have

All in all, that leads to less people spending time on hobbies they had when they were younger.

So things like forums or image boards die off, especially when most people just stick to Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Reddit.

>>23463
I do wonder now and then where all the older otaku. Where do they hang around? Do they hide in plain sight? They sigh and just join such places like discord and withstand all that putrefaction just so they can share a topic once in a blue moon? I have no idea. If I were to base the answer on myself, then it's much simpler: I see little point in sharing. Each passing year I realize how many people treat anime / manga / games / visual novels like chores they have to complete or things to scratch off a list for the sake of fake worth points or something. I even often encounter people who seem to only watch anime because they feel that's "their thing" like some mindless drone, a different flavour of normal. If I go by that metric, then it's no wonder older otaku keep to themselves, with age this pastime because much more of a personal thing.
>>23464
I don't think normaldry is something that can be acquired.

>>23467
>because they feel that's "their thing" like some mindless drone,

I don't think that's mindless. I think people are naturally competitive. And when someone gets into something, they feel like they're personally invested into it. It reflects who they are, or at least that's what some people think.

Sunk cost fallacy:
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/
Basically, "I've put a lot of time/effort/money into it, therefore I can't give it up now." Very common thing.

Additionally, with the advent of social media, where people can show off to each other (or feel bad about seeing how successful other people's lives are), people want to be competitive in their lives, with hobbies or whatever. People don't want to just be some average baseball fan, or some average anime fan. They want to stand out and be special, rather than admit that they're just one insignificant person out of billions of people on a tiny planet in the vastness of space in a pointless universe. People want to feel important and better than average, no matter what it is that they do.

Books on zen and meditation can help with letting you just be more okay with doing nothing, or not thinking, or not comparing yourself to other people. Sometimes it's good to just exist. But it's understandable why people try so hard to be really good at something.

>>23463
You fell through the cracks, OP. No, they didn't killed themselves for the most part. I'm 31 and for about 5 years during the early 2000s I happened to be a forum admin for a reasonably sizeable anime/weeb community. About 200 or so closely knit group of people. From that 200 sample, here's the info I can give you.

Half of them were done with anime before reaching their 20s. They eventually got into relationships, had kids, etc. Moved on with their lives, many of them even before the forum closed down. Their main source of entertainment shifted to video-games (all the shit ones as you can imagine) or even regular sports. The other half still had a passing interest in anime but not enough to provide a reason for bonding over it. They did their bonds when they were 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. When we closed the forum all those people had added each other on msn, facebook, skype by then. Of course they all were using their real names and real pictures and that was about the time I began to fall through the cracks as well. Then smartphones came around and I know many of them have a common chat on whatsapp and continue to be buddies or at least have a way to contact each other. At this point, people my age are pretty much out of reach, so to speak. They are off to their own bubble and inner networking.

Here's the thing with that. This is also a response to >>23467. Most people in their 30s have no clue what an imageboard even is. Back when we were teens, we just used forums. IBs would probably feel like a shitty forum to many of them. Most people my age are locked behind private profiles on current social media vehicle or whatever smartphone chat application nowadays. If they do meet new people online, it's through dating apps. I know many use those.

Then there's me. And you. Old folk that for whatever reason managed to keep finding strange places to hang out like IBs, and for whatever reason stuck with it. I don't feel younger people invaded us however. I feel it's quite the opposite actually. We're the ones trespassing. Our communities died or moved on and we didn't follow the stream. Now, I'm sure you have your own reasons to have that happening to you. I know I have mine.

>>23470
Well that's a depressing read. I guessed as much with the FB thing but could never bring myself to join it. If it makes you feel better this community is run by a wizard who's not likely to close it down any time soon.

>>23468
I don't see how the sunk cost fallacy plays in this regard because the issue isn't that they don't have a choice of entertainment. They can just watch something else instead. It isn't like a videogame where you have a tangible invest you can see and feel. Plus, even if you're right, there are thousands of anime series, movies, OVAs, etc. that you can watch, so why indulge in what you don't enjoy just because you feel pressure to do so for the sake of identity?
>>23470
>They are off to their own bubble and inner networking.
That's a good point, although I don't see why there was any reason to close the forum. Plus, if so many so easily shifted interests, can they really be called otaku?

For me the odd thing is how young most people who watch anime are. I didn't even get into anime until I was 17, and even then it took me until I was 18 or so to actually understand enough about my new passion to know what it was, what thins I liked, etc. It's bizarre for me to imagine watching anime at such a young age, to not even be out of middle school while watching it.

>>23660
I don't see how it's odd at all unless you're seeing it as some sort of silly "higher form of art". For example, I started watching anime in the 90s, before it was even named like that internationally, with Mazinger Z and several Tatsunoko series like Time Bokan and Tondera Hausu no Daibōken, amongst dozens of other shows, alongside tokusatsu series like Kidō Keiji Jiban, Choushinsei Flashman and Choujuu Sentai Liveman. Then Power Rangers appeared from and Saiban's corporately dubbed-anime, which everyone just called cartoons. Until the end of the millennium, with Dragon Ball Z (anime came much later than when it aired originally in Japan, obviously) I didn't know what anime was and it was just known as "Chinese cartoons" with the most respectful of us correcting the plebs and saying "Japanese cartoons", but after that and the appearance or knowledge of otaku culture in general, is when most people seemed to get into anime as its own and specific form, with people making anime clubs, searching for VHS tapes, stalking local "black" markets for imported cheap figures, and so on.

Currently, with the sad and pathetic decline of western animation, anime is seen as more of a distinction, for an animation enthusiast, that divides the people with taste and those without. Point being, watching anime doesn't need to be a "passion" nor a hobby. It can just be an entertaining activity someone partakes in, and that's ok too. Also, a ton of anime is made specifically for children, so it shouldn't feel weird children can get into it.

>>23663
Nah, I don't really see it as a higher form of art, although I certainly do feel it is superior in many ways to other medium. It's more that I can't imagine watching anime at such a young age. I can't imagine being able to appreciate it properly, as I can see happen with most kids who watch anime. They watch it, but they don't really like anime for what it is. They think it looks cool but wish it was something completely different. They like what they think anime should be, that is with more western lines of thought, more than what it actually is. I think someone like that would go insane after trying to watch anime for more than a couple years, or into adulthood at all.

>>23468
Watching anime is supposed to be entertaining. If people want to be competitive about something, they should do so about an actual skill, not about something you're supposed to watch for fun.

>>23695
I agree it's pretty retarded. Take the people who watch anime at 2x speed for example. Sounds like it would take the fun out of everything.

I'm almost 23, so I'm probably one of those younger users you mean. I only saw Death Note and a few episodes of Hellsing when I was 16, and only seriously got into the medium when I was 17.

I used MAL forums for a really short while, and probably since my paranoia aged 18/19 I felt like I was older than the core userbase there, and at least I knew I couldn't fit in at all with people in college (pretty much just bragging about college). I posted a thread about Social Anxiety once and the responses were along the lines of "Get over it, work through it", "So anyone can say they're just depressed and get disability money?", "I __ (something about them achieving an irrelevant task from 'hard work')". I post that to try to show that the anime community isn't any different from normal people. I lost most of my joy in things when I was 18 and I doubt many people who end up on a website like this can relate to people on mainstream forums.

Also the mainstream forums seem to be centered around 'meme' culture kind of, where people act purposely obnoxious/edgy just to get a response. It's cool to be embarrassing kind of thing.

I would say you'd have more luck looking at smaller, older anime communities though. I've seen quite a lot of 30+ and some even 40+ on smaller websites. I would say they're relatively normal but the amount of posts about depression are higher than usual on forums like that (I guess 'normal' people would already have friends to watch and discuss anime with at that age?).

It really tires me out interacting with energetic people so I haven't looked at forums for a few years (I don't even use tohnochan regularly). I know lots of people feel depressed over comparing themselves to people so tend to avoid things (I used to feel this way watching slice of life anime where they'd have friends even). I really wish I found anime when I was 13 or so, since I'd appreciate it in terms of joy a lot more than now and some of the acquaintances I had in High School liked anime back then but because I'm retarded I rejected to watch it since I was and still am paranoid to express myself in front of my family.

There seem to be also a lot of autistic people into anime still as adults, but I don't really consider them comparable at all. If they're high functioning and have aspergers it's fine, but there are those loud obnoxious ones that I'd feel uncomfortable around. I assume you are also a regular person in a bad situation.

Oh yeah and my interactions with older anime watchers have only convinced me they're mostly weirdos. A 26 yo guy who had ecchi wallscrolls on his room used to ONLY talk about his friend with benefits and porn/hentai. That made me wary of speaking to people like that (people from here/wizchan I found have usually just been depressed). I don't know if this is true but some of those users on forums might be older than you'd think they just act like they're still 15.

Post edited on 17th Aug 2018, 5:03am

It's hard as fuck to stay active in your hobbies when you've got a full time job. Working 40+ hours a week just doesn't leave much time for anything else. Eventually everyone sucks up their pride and becomes a wage slave sooner or latter. It's even worse if you get a family. Those people are lucky to find a few minutes to unwind.

>>23702
Ever since 4shit got popular after the "messing with football" bullcrap, which was in late 2006 (Kanon was airing and I was watching it in 320p on realplayer) all of the same posers who infect any other field of enthusiasm showed up to the internet anime club with their desire for personal attention and feigned interest or outright disinterest in the topic at hand.
Social networking sites like MAL exacerbated the problem.

>>23793
Thanks for posting that image. I was looking for it and couldn't find it.

God damn normals did it to videogames, and now they're doing it to anime. All that's left is for anime to be completely butchered and warped to the tastes of those last two types of members and it's what the likes of CR and netflix are currently trying to make happen.

>>23794
It's a shame to think we're living through the period in which we will see the complete decline in not just anime, but hobbies that were typically associated with outcasts. I can't help but wonder if this normalisation process is deliberate...

>>23795
I feel like that decline is part of why retro stuff is starting to make a huge comeback, because there's still a sizeable portion of people who want the non-normalized version but no one wants to make that anymore so they re-release stuff that was already made

>>23796
I think a lot of that has to do with industries being creatively bankrupt while also not wanting to take risks. Old stuff that was once popular is a safe investment to them which takes minimal effort compared to something they have to make from the ground up.