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.

I post on a few /jp/ spin-offs and the average age is about 25 or more. They are quite slow however.

>>23872
Really? I am surprised as /jp/ spinoffs seem to be quite young in age. The whole teenbro thing has some basis in reality.

>>23874
It depends on the spin-off but even the ones that actually have teenbros tend to not actually be teenbros but just attention seeking schizos, I don't post on these any more. New and young people don't generally find out about the spin-offs.

>>23875
I don't even know of any, I dropped off the map of everywhere for years online not interacting with much of anyone. Stumbled across 8chan and I really didn't like it. I remembered /jp/ and revisited but it's pretty dead to me. I remembered here and returned, I'm happy there's at least something still going on.

>>23794
If they get tired of anime and leave it alone, will it be possible to heal anime back to it's original state?

>anime back to it's original state?

You mean Studio Disney from the 30s and 40s? I would love that, Snow White really is one of the best movies ever made.

>>23884
nah, clearly he mean the likes of Astro Boy and Gigantor

>>23884
No, I mean anime going back to being good quality.

>>23886
I know right?

>>23887
No, I mean like right now.

Look, anon. You're getting the wrong idea. If anime becomes trash, it will be trash in terms of plot quality. My question is, will it be possible to regenerate that trashy plot back to a better one?

If anime becomes trash (in terms of storyline and plot), will it be possible to regenerate that back to a better one? Animation isn't the concern here, the story is.
To: >>23887
From: >>23888

>>23889
How are you going to gauge the quality of writing in the whole medium in the first place?

>>23890
Japanese culture is very prevalent in anime. But if the West had to kill anime, anime wouldn't be Japanese anymore. If I had to resurrect anime back to it's original state (like it is today and was back then), I would need to eliminate Western themes and ideologies.

My question is, if anime had to get completely destroyed by the West, like completely overtaken, would it be possible to undo that? I don't just mean anime having some western ideas, I mean like the entire medium being completely and utterly polluted with Western ideologies and society.

Would it be possible to undo that, if it ever happens?

>>23892
The Japs are killing anime themselves, without the West. Look at all the isekai and ecchi shite being made, and how it's becoming more prevalent in manga and anime.

>>23894
They've noticed this too. From what I've heard (not sure how true this is), most manga publishers have a soft ban on new isekai stories due to the market being over saturated and creators often having no long term plans for the stories. Ecchi shit meanwhile is shit sure, but it's shit that's always been around and always will be. I'd say that's something which can easily be ignored. I don't think it really hurts anything.

>>23895
The problem with ecchi is that it's lapped up by the ironic weeb types, which is another nail in the coffin. Even if a soft ban is in place, they'll still have plenty of contracts lined up for the next few years, so it won't have much effect.

>>23894
Ecchi's prevalence is a western myth. Fanservice is drying up compared to 10 years ago.

>>23897
>Fanservice is drying up
It really isn't. While it may have declined since 10 years ago, it's still fairly prevalent. I don't know how much the Japanese like it, but the ironic weebs in the West love it.

>>23898
The fact that it exists at all doesn't mean it's "prevalent" compared to the heydays of eroge adaptations. There isn't a single anime this season I'd qualify as ecchi, for instance. In my experience, westerners despise erotic fanservice and they see it as a barrier to "serious storytelling", so your interpretation of it feels strange to me.

>>23899
Actually, since writing this I remembered that ImoImo exists and I forgot about it completely. I stand by the point that these kinds series are few and far between, and this one in particular is too low quality to satisfy those who seek this kind of content.

>>23897
Yeah, seems like that was super common in the early 2000s and late 90s, but I haven't noticed much of it lately.

Its naïve to blame the decline of fan service over the past decade on intrusion by western influences. shitanro ishihara and the japan restoration party have been the ones pushing for increased censorship, its not church ladies in wisconsin that are at fault.

>>23470 again.
Today I came by to see how this thread was going and unfortunately it's steering away from its original intent. I thought there would be more ancient weebs finding this thread but apparently not. Oh well.

I just read OP again and his major complaint is that he feels like he doesn't belong. That youngsters just talk about college and life prospects. That can be alienating. But then, is it really different when you have people around your age to hang out with? About 2 years ago I moved back to my parents house and lived there for 6 months. They live in a fairly small town and everybody knows everybody. Sure enough, I was out for groceries one evening and a couple of people I went to highschool with happened to be on the same store as well. Met them on the liquor isle (I don't even drink, I was just looking at all the pretty bottles they have there. Wouldn't be cool to have pretty bottles for soda as well? Why isn't that a thing, seriously. Someone need to make it happen). Anyway we ended up talking for a while outside. A fourth guy we went to hs with just happened to be walking that same street and stopped by as well (telling ya, small town). So here we, four 30yo in front of a store, ready to talk about all the cool stuff. What they talk about? Making money. 90+ minutes talking about making money, every scheme, job opportunity, investment tricks, inside information, business venture. No subject was left unexamined on how to make money. I have no idea how to make money, that's why I can't even pay rent! I'm not going to say it was an agonizing experience, it wasn't honestly. I don't think I even care to be out of tune with people. And these guys are not chads btw, they were the geek boys, the ones that played Ultima Online and Magic The Gathering. Pretty sure if it were the chads we would be dividing the conversation between women and making money, making it positively awful. Anyway, that was the first real, long, proper conversation I had with someone my age since I left school basically. And there it was, still sucked ass.

I don't think had they talked about video-games or anime it would be any different honestly. Some people are just out of tune no matter what. I suspect OP might be one such case. They actually added me to whatsapp later that day and 3 months later I just left. It's just 6 people sharing porn and cracking ridiculous jokes at one another. There was nothing in there for me really. You know what I think it is? It's just some people, and I include myself in this category, are smart enough to have no fun with stupid jokes and sexual innuendos but not smart enough to have anything interesting to say, so real smart people don't want to have anything to do with you either. You get stuck on a limbo between apes and geniuses with no where to go. I remember being out of tune since early childhood days. I don't know exactly wtf is. So yeah I think OP is not really focusing on the main problem. I don't think it's about age. Maybe I'm completely wrong though, maybe he has a bunch of friends his age and it feels awesome for him. Somehow though, if he did find imageboards and one as obscure as Tohno, I don't think it's the case.

>>23471
Thanks. Depressing read really? I mean yeah, in a way, seing small forums and communities vanishing to become part of huge social media conglomerate. But remember, of all those people, I was the only one who had trouble jumping in, everybody else was fine with it, so I guess it's what they wanted? Truth is it doesn't really matter to most where they get to talk about the stuff they like. Just whatever, it's free and easy to use? Sign me up.

>>23502
>That's a good point, although I don't see why there was any reason to close the forum.

The reason is there was no one left that cared. We had like a post once in a blue moon and then the guy paying for everything shut it down to "re-design it, make it cool again" and it just never went back up again. Not that anyone cared really. Nobody cared. They had the FB group anyway. That was it. Now with smartphones people are not even on their computers anymore. You can find them on instagram now.

>>23879
I visit Kakashi-Nenpo and Merorin. Merorin has kind of skewed from being a /jp/ spinoff though...

>>23906
Not him but I went to Merorin a couple of times and it seemed mostly people talking about their lives, nothing to do with otaku culture so I left. Will check out nenpo though.

>>23906
>>23907
Merorin is more like /b/ than /jp/, I don't know how you could actually browse and post there. Kakashi-Nenpo is decent though.

>>23905
It's not just you, there's a small handful of people who didn't jump to social media and are just floating around on old, dead websites, talking about the old days. There's still a handful of active anime websites, but like you said most people seem to still be in their 20s while older people grew out of it.
Maybe it just is stunted growth.

WRT OP:
31 here.
Started e-anime consumption on dial up. Digi Charat (muh first) took about 2 months to get. This for a start highlights something we've lost. The community was *necessary* because you couldn't consume otherwise. Now, when the entire process from subject searching, downloading, and scheduling can be automated if you want it to be, anime is effectively a secondary utility you have piped into your house - not a treasured find.

The secondary value of anime before, say 2008 (Specifically when Haruhi made bank), meant not only anticipation & satisfaction, but a wealth of surrounding topics to really enjoy with like minded people. "The best subs, the best sites, the deeper meaning behind the translations" - none of which you can't today get with either google translate or one of the many content aggregators - or even aggregator aggregators.

So now, anime/the utility has to stand, i'd suggest, solely on its content - not the adventure and anticipation of finding something special or the pleasant sense of guiding someone else to moments of delight.

To make it to 30, you can probably put a cash value on your time, having sold enough of it to realise how little it's actually worth. Taking, say 3 hours to watch a mediocre story targeted at teenagers which reminds you of the "youth" and "vigor" you don't have any more loses pretty much all its appeal when you can calculate the opportunity cost without thinking too hard. If you've actually paid for it, then you've effectively got to justify "I have spent 2 days of my life (daily net income + viewing time) to watch a 10 year old girl fuss over nothing very much" - try rephrasing this to whatever you watched recently and were non-plussed about, see how enthusiastic you are about doing it again.

If you're particularly smart, you'll spend time researching either better alternatives through the myriad of services established, or shift genres to sample something else in hopes of finding something better to your taste. You may even find an overlooked genre that will provide a year or so of fleeting fulfillment before the cycle starts again (i.e. for the 12th time in your life).

But the first thought won't be to ask anyone - we've got web applications for that.

The question then really is, what is an anime community for? And does a 30+ y/o need that?

The modern answer, as the OP suggests is 'to be seen', like the edge-lord teenager's version of Opera Season.

And a 30+ year old survivor doesn't need that.

>>24122
In the case you’re describing the anime “community” is for the discussion of seasonal airings because as you’ve said all the other reasons that it used to be for are pretty much obsolete

I'm rather young so I can't fully relate to this thread and it kind of makes me sad. I got really into anime when I was 14 and around this time it was still niche so you could talk to actual nerds about it and have meaningful conversations. It wasn't until I turned 18 that westerners began to unironically enjoy and talk about anime, at least on a surface level.
The current state of the anime community is something that I have never seen in any other hobby community I was a part of. All I have seen outside of this website and a few others, are Stacies cosplaying and Chads/Tyrones wearing t shirts with Kanji on it. What pisses me off more than anything about this, is that they will go out of their way to bully and pick on genuine anime fans or literal weeaboos. I used to want anime to get more popular in the west, but now I have to watch anime turn into the new "cool kid thing" and it feels like a slap in the face.

The point I am trying to make is that, I wish I was just a bit older so I could fully experience the old anime community before it became trendy to claim to like anime. God, I hate normalfags with an undying passion!

>>24122
>anime is effectively a secondary utility you have piped into your house - not a treasured find.
Just something I'd like to point out: With the death of old nyaa and the closing of bakabt to the public, finding certain series can indeed be more difficult to find reliably. Sure for most common things it's easy, but not for more specific genres or simply just older stuff that people don't pay much attention to anymore. You can still expect to find some things that will take months to fully download just from the fact of flaky seeders if you're lucky, or possibly do some deeper digging.

>>24174
Don't a group of people ruin a medium you enjoy for you. While much of the perspective being represented in this thread is that of people barging in and hijacking the hobby, your point of view is different as someone taking to it more recently. Really, I'm probably not that much older than you, and have been watching anime and consuming other Japanese media since maybe 2011/12. If you're recently getting into anime and are taking the fact that these people exist over your enjoyment that sounds like it would seriously blow. Especially starting off, there are a lot of things you need to watch to get a feel for the different genres, their stereotypes, and developing preferences. Back when I first got into the stuff there was a big "grind" period where I watched a crap load, and I really did enjoy that. Just because it's trendy to some people, doesn't discount it all. Those same people would drop the hobby like hot coals the moment something new comes across.

Post edited on 18th Mar 2019, 5:03pm

>>24122
>The question then really is, what is an anime community for? And does a 30+ y/o need that?

The community is for sharing jokes about the anime and for sharing your original art based on the girls in the anime with penises drawn on them. If nobody else in the community is contributing to the fun then it ends up being pretty boring and you get sick of it and go looking for better companionship elsewhere. We live in an expanding universe so you can't expect everything to stay the same forever, learning when to move on if your community gets invaded by posers and turns to trash is an important skill, but just because one community stopped being fun doesn't mean that something similar can't happen again some other time, somewhere else, if we're lucky

The Touhou community is still good. One of the last "weeb" communities that hasn't been overrun by shallow teenagers.

>>24312
It probably depends what community. The Majority of Touhou posters on imageboards are secondaries. I recently did a test where I made a meaningless thread with a Touhou character and then I made a thread about the new game, only I didn't post A Touhou image in the op nor did I mention it was Touhou, I just used the title of the game. The first thread got loads of replies and the second not a single one.

>>24312
It’s probably due to the skill required and how much media there is to get through a lot of it. It’s also a shadow of what it used to be and there’s a lot of discussion over how the games aren’t as great as they used to be. While >>24314 has a valid point, being a secondary isn’t that prevalent compared to how it was in, say, 2012 when it’s cultural relevance peaked. It might also be because of how infamously dumb and passive-aggressive the communities around it were once upon a time that a lot of people don’t even bother with them. I don’t really blame them, even.

It’s kind of funny that people are upset with young people are the majority in a community around the media based overwhelmingly aimed at young people. I’m not even saying there is anything wrong with that, it’s just amusing.

>>24320
>It’s kind of funny that people are upset with young people are the majority in a community around the media based overwhelmingly aimed at young people
When I first got into anime, I remember the community being full of preteens and that never really bothered me. I think the problem a lot of people have is that the mindest of the community has shifted from a bunch of nerds cracking jokes and spamming japanese emoticons, to obnoxious teenagers using "hip" lingo and only having a shallow interest in anime. That's the way I see it at least.
This whole "Nerd culture" thing that has dominated this decade is on it's way out anyways so I'm sure these kinds of people will leave this community when something trendier comes along.

I think even this place will eventually get overrun by normals if certain "meme" ideas get big enough. Politics by its very nature is inextricably linked to nomralcy, what is moral and how the normal world should enforce it's morals. It has to be, the whole point of politics is to determine what, or who, is outcast from society and who is not. If that mindset of trying to enforce social normalcy grows enough here, you WILL see the board become more and more normalized. Having an owner who actually cares about otaku culture will stem the tide quite a lot, but it's inevitable that you're going to see discussion become more and more tailored towards the idea of social morality, culture wars, and worse. Look at how 4 /a/ anime culture got co-opted and dragged into the political battleground. Now people there openly mock waifufags, calling them inc3l virgin losers, and it's not just a few outsiders, it's the whole damn board. I don't think there's anything tohno can do to stop it, unfortunately, and one day I'm sure he's going to shut down the site in disgust. I've been thinking of leaving the internet altogether, but it would be really painful to not have a place to talk about anime without the horrible mainstream culture infecting discussion.

>>25338
>Now people there openly mock waifufags, calling them inc3l virgin losers
You're saying this in the context of the current opinions on waifuism but I have to ask about that sentence from a different point of view. Do you at the same time consider the "inc3l virgin losers" to be a correctly identified group of undesirables that is being rightly bashed?
Because I'm one of them.

>>25339
Not him, but I avoid that word because it's a term that normals define and use. They sling it around so casually, it's kind of infuriating.

>>25338
What about a place like gurochan? If the topic of your site is so far-removed from normalcy, doesn't that give it immunity?

>>25338
>>25340
You just have to be completely focused on yourself. People who want to moralize and talk about "culture wars", AND "inc3ls", whiny cunts who actually define themself by their inability to have sex with 3dpd despite wanting to, are both a cancer I don't want on tohno-chan.

>>25340
I do my best to not put anyone any under labels, people are highly interconnected by an infinite number of things in their personal lives I'll never know or completely understand. This causes a lot of intersecting areas we label people in as. Consciousness is its own network and we're it's various points. It's usually best to interact with the person and their specific even if very similar to their designated groups collective views cause they'll always have those unique traits that just happened to put them there.

>>25342
Yes just do this and while observing everyone else have your own set of morals based on your own experience. Finding yourself falling for hive mind nonsense is hard cause sometimes it happens and you don't even realize it at the time. But we'll always have that, we function upon layers and layers of programming from all sorts of things. If you stripped all that away would you even be human at all anymore? What that chaos creates is what the physical plays out on.

>>25342
What an asshole. Guess what, I don't want your kind on tohno.

>>25344
I don't think he's really wrong. The people he's talking about make themselves and everyone around them miserable when they don't need to.

>>25344
Go make a thread on /so/ about how you want a gf, or want sex, or how you wish you were super good looking so you could be "alpha", or putting stacys into a concentration camp. Whatever it is they talk about. See what kind of reception you get.

This is back up again. Well, I guess since this thread is about the species I belong to so to speak, I'll just talk about the process of my extinction.
>Where the fuck are all the 30+ weebs?
I'll be 34 this year so I can at least answer for myself. Past year my favorite manga artist passed away and since, I've been reading his stuff along with every volume of Doraemon again. Ironicaly for the very first time in my life I've managed to have some sort of income so I finally have some money to buy his works, but if I buy his stuff now it's all going to the wife or whatever. Not that I care but it's definitely not going to the author, unless I burn some ghost money if that's real at all. My taste in manga was pretty isolating in itself but since Mr. Azuma passed away my drive to read new manga diminished a great deal and I sort of crawled back to the stuff I've already read in the past. Well, just check the /ma/ right now and you'll see for yourself how much of a community there is for manga readers. Last post was in january.
I think there's two types of old weeb. There's the one that just don't care anymore about being part of a community and just leaves. Then there's the type who wants to be part of a community but just can't. I'm the latter. Now, I say this with no ill intent at all, but I just can't watch 99% of the stuff I see people watching on /an/. I can't silence the opinion in my head that's all garbage. If I use my reason to analyze this opinion, it's very clear to me that I've become too strict to my old ways and my tastes have solidified and the stuff I like is not better or worse, but simply the stuff I've watched during my formation years. That's what, within strict reason, I believe to be the case, however, emotionally I still think it's garbage and I can't bother to watch it. I'm sure it's obvious to anyone here that if you want to participate and feel part of a Japanese culture community like this one, you must watch at least some of the recent anime otherwise it's pretty difficult for you to connect to anyone. And I can't watch the stuff people are talking about. And this is the one thing that makes the gap; taste changes between generations. In my case it's worse because I don't really care for anime and nobody reads manga, new or old titles. Hell, I think next post we get on /ma/ is going to be me posting about Mr. Kazuki Motoyama's passing and a google drive link to his work. That's the main reason I post in Tohno at all is to remember people these guys exist. I'm pretty sure no one else is going to post about them.
I'm pretty sure I could be a better member of this community. For example I could post more about manga, I'm sure I could make a few titles sound interesting enough for other people to jump in but then I would have to be less depressed and drunk that I am currently (those have nothing to do with being a weeb I asure you) to keep up with this. I'm almost convinced if I could make a decent post about some of those titles I could build a small group of 3 or 4 people here and we could have a lot of fun reading some of that stuff together. All I need is a couple of people willing to give it a try and to be able to read Japanese. And I would need to not be gloom half the time and drunk the other half. Well I'm sure I'll be able to pull it off eventually. Oh well

>>25347
its truly a pitty /ma/ doesnt get much traffic.I too am dissapointed by the newer stuff so i just browse through older ones.
You can go ahead with the recs just skip the jap ones cause im a filthy eop

>>25347
>I can't watch the stuff people are talking about.
I'm way below 30, but I don't either. The stuff people talk about constantly changes. Something from 2013 seems really recent to me, but unless it's part of a much larger franchise, like Love Live or Girls and Panzer(neither of which i'm into), it's considered "old news" by most. I can't and don't want to keep up with what's currently airing. Tohno-chan is better in that regard because if you do bring something up from before 2010, there's a good enough chance people will know about it and be willing to discuss it.

>>25347
>I'm pretty sure I could be a better member of this community. For example I could post more about manga,

Yes, they say to post the kind of content you like to foster the community you want. Not to be rude but you probably haven't been posting much on /ma/ either if the last post was so long ago.

But part of the problem of it is the spread out nature of the board, the last post I made about manga was about Rozen Maiden but that was in an /an/ thread about the anime I think and I was discussing it in relation to the anime, I guess I could have posted it in /ma/ but then I would be double posting. That was also the last Manga I read, as I am in that in-between phase of not knowing enough Japanese to read Manga but learning Japanese and wanting to read the Manga in Japanese rather than English.

>>25346
These are products of your imagination. I don't post anything close to your examples. Your opinion is based on pieces of outsider meme culture fused into some biased image of what an inc3l is.
You're an asshole.

>>25345
Look at these posts. He's not talking about people. He's taking easy shots at made up paper cutout targets. Someone tried to make someone else miserable here, but it wasn't me.

>>25351
You can stop being an inc3l incredibly easily. Just stop defining yourself by your ability and desire to have sex with 3dpd. It's that simple. It's a completely voluntary group to be a part of. Where do you post? What inc3l boards do you post on?

>>25352
I always found the ironic thing about inc3ls is the fact that identifying as an inc3l is usually the only thing keeping them as inc3ls. It is a hard cycle to break though I understand and easier said than done to stop. The more rejected and abused a person is, the more bitter and jaded they become, which in turn pushes people away, and that makes people more bitter jaded. It's asking a lot of a person to make years of resentment just go away and start acting like a nice friendly happy person, often to people who treated you like shit for a very long time, but that's exactly what society demands of these people unfortunately.

>>25353
>the more bitter and jaded
I'm plenty bitter and jaded, I just don't call myself stupid names, or try to be part of group that exists on the basis of those feelings. I don't endlessly talk about and stew over my dissatisfactions and resentments. I'm not a nice, happy person. Never claimed to be. But i'm not an inc3l. Why? Because I choose not to be. If woman are so bad, move on. Don't think about them if you don't have to. Don't be part of some other idiotic group either, like "mgtow". A group about being independent, how dumb is that?

>>23467
>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
that hits hard, i sometimes get this feeling whenever i think about shows ive left half finished that i dont really want to finish them but i do anyways because....?

i try to usually only watch anime or play VNs only when I want to because forcing myself to do it turns it into a chore, but this sometimes leads into me putting it off indefinitely

>>25339
>>25342
I think you completely, and totally misunderstood the point of my post. What I hate are the normalfags who conflate everyone who is a virgin, a loser, only likes 2D etc, with the inc3l subculture of recent times. What I hate are the people going around calling everyone an inc3l for not being normal. Of course, I also can't stand the self-defined inc-ls of the kind that only talk about 3DPD and only use anime as some way of "getting back" at 3D women. Not, of course, that I like 3D women myself either. I'm a virgin "loser" myself but the difference is that I don't define myself as part of the inc-l subculture and I don't want to be conflated with them. They are very, very different from the internet loser of the 2000s. I don't WANT that stupid, social morality obsessed culture taking root someplace like here, but clearly it's too late.

i grew out of anime and anime culturearound 2013-2014. it just got too popular and mainstream with all the kids, no longer did I feel like I was a part of a special club for losers, seeing anime memes and stuff all over reddit and youtube, etcetera. That happened to the whole internet, the internet became too accessible because of smartphones and twitter.

I had been a lifelong gamer too, but with video games becoming popualr among regular people instead of being a loser thing, and the the whole gamergate gurrrl gaymer shit, I stopped identifying with video game culture as well.

Its just all the gay people and trannies, always talking about sex and having fun on 4chan and playing video games, and more oppressive than that is the women who invaded the spaces as well.

I do miss the old days when 4chan was a club only for the biggest losers and lolicon and shotacon was common trade.

The times they are a changing, WERE changing, almost 10 years ago, and now I just exist in the desolate aftermath. The internet sucks now.

Im only 25 but I feel like such an old timer, having browsed the internet and 4chan since 2007, I dont relate to anybody, I just feel like having been a no-lifer who browsed chans for 13 years puts me in an elite club that is fucking empty.

>>25375
Im not that guy Im just going to barge in on you guys little piss match over whos an lncel or not.

>What I hate are the normalfags who conflate everyone who is a virgin, a loser, only likes 2D etc, with the inc3l subculture of recent times.
Too bad, lncel became a hot topic meme buzzword, and it only proves Looks Theory that ugly, fat neckbeard fedoras and nice guy betas get lumped in as lncels despite the typical Lookism/lncels.co user being neither of these things.

Thats why I say that being an lncel just means that youre a adolescent/adult male who does not have a sex life. Its the most inclusive way of looking at it without dumb shit like wizardchan gatekeeping.

>What I hate are the people going around calling everyone an inc3l for not being normal.
An lncel being a loser adult virgin is not normal.

>Of course, I also can't stand the self-defined inc-ls of the kind that only talk about 3DPD and only use anime as some way of "getting back" at 3D women.
Like all of the people on this board, you included, who push the trite 3DPD meme? Everyone knows 3DPD is just a self-empowerment meme meant to give neckbeard otaku a way to disassociate themselves from not being to acquire relationships with real women, despite wanting to, so in turn resorting to a sour-grape anime fantasy land.

>Not, of course, that I like 3D women myself either.
You either like women or you dont like women at all, regardless if they are drawn as a cartoon. Is an adult man considered straight if hes only gay for 2D bara porn? Of course not. This is how ridiculous your argument is.

>I'm a virgin loser
yes
>myself but the difference is that I don't define myself as part of the inc-l subculture and I don't want to be conflated with them. They are very, very different from the internet loser of the 2000s. I don't WANT that stupid, social morality obsessed culture taking root someplace like here, but clearly it's too late.

It does not matter what you want or what you think.You, being an adult male virgin loser weeaboo, are indeed an incel. It is what it is. If you want to be apart of some underground true-loser club, the only last social taboo that hasnt been popularized is pedophilia. If there is some chan dedicated to lolicon and shotacon I suggest we form an lncel community there, no normies at all.

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

>>25376
And why do you let others to steal what you like?
Since I liked anime and videogames since late 90's, before any imageboard culture, I don't see your point. Whatever normal people likes or consumes is irrelevant, what makes us different is the way to enjoy it, the authenticity.
Being into something just because it's obscure it's not authentic, it's normal hipster behavior.

>>25378
I know what you mean, and it has more to do with not wanting to be associated with fads or trend followers because I did indeed like what I liked because of authenticity and not because of ha ha epik such a weeb lol guise!! bullshit every where.

Its not that I REFUSE to watch anime or play video games, its that I just dont build my sense of identity around it. Im just a guy who keeps to himself anyways.

>>25376
>>25377
I'm not going to explain everything wrong with these posts. There were no good old days because there was always orbiter, liking stuff primarily for the social aspect and it's "identity" faggots like you around. Looking at the actual history of western imageboards, that's clear as day. Get out of here with your shitty 3dpd pictures. Every time, it's people like you who break that rule. 3dpd is all meatspace humans. Not everything is about women.

>>25380
I am afraid I cannot understand this schizophrenic non-sequitur post, please try again.

>>25381
>>/ot/32982
>04) Posting or linking to 3D (real) pornography, Guro, or pictures of 3D (real) people.
- By 3D (real) pornography, we refer to pornographic videos and/or images depicting any and all real world humans regardless of age.

Post edited on 14th Mar 2020, 8:45am

>>25377
Get back in your tent under the portland convention center, tokiko.

>>25377
What part of "involuntary" is so hard to understand? This isn't the first time I've seen some ignorant kid toss that term around as a derogatory insult. "lncel" stands for "involuntary Celibate", not "old man", not "nerd", "not "loser". It's not that difficult.

>>25352
Stop with the wild guessing already. I don't post anywhere, never did, and am not part of any organized group.
I'm not actively seeking to "define" myself as anything. Which doesn't matter because no one really gets to choose the labels that others apply to them.
Keeping quiet and pretending like I'm not being included under that umbrella term when people talk about inc3ls does nothing. If I try to discuss my issues I out myself as one fitting the definition, at which point any possibilities of dialogue end as people default to their preestablished opinions and fill in the blanks with biased conjecture, as you did.

>>25386
>If I try to discuss my issues I out myself as one fitting the definition
I don't think so. There's bad place and better places for discussing personal issues. Any place that places optional group labels onto you that you don't identify with is a bad place. You can crave coitus with a meatspace human female, but see no way of doing it on terms you'd like, and feel bad about it without being an incel.

>>25378
i struggle with this a lot. its hard to get into it without sounding stuck up but it pains me to see anime taken so lightly and to devolve into just another facet of nerd culture. i say that its a symptom of a bigger problem with society today, but thats a rabbit hole for another thread

>>25393
I know what you mean. I hate seeing people treat it as nothing more than disposable meme fuel. I can't stress how frustrating it is trying to meet and chat with people in anime communities only to find most of them don't even watch any. To them it's little more than a fashion statement. Just today I went to a channel called "otaku general" in a server about Japan, and I asked if anyone collects figs. I shit you not ten people in a row thought I meant the fruit. Asking if they were serious just made them confused.

>>25393
I can't say I relate. I've been watching anime for 20 years and that's more than half of my life, it's impossible for anyone to take that from me. I just ignore people who takes it lightly, or try to educate them if they are truly interested, but little else. It's true that maybe it would be nicer to have more places to have deeper discussion though. But truth is the whole thing was never a "social" kind of thing so it's not that important. Maybe the thing I miss the most is the kind of community that could get you into obscure stuff or just new content you didn't know about.

>>25395
>Maybe the thing I miss the most is the kind of community that could get you into obscure stuff or just new content you didn't know about
Exactly.Thats what is missing.I cant even begin counting how many series/manga i have picked up over the years not by "serious discussion" or pretentious top ten lists or infographics, but by funny/interesting screencaps/gifs/webms and the like that i reverse-serched.
Also there was never serious discussion in imgboards it was funposting all the way,if you wanted to delve deeper in to something there were dedicated forums and wikis.And they still exist but i never found them interesting unless in very special occasions.The nu-/a/nons that start weekly discussion threads and generals in most websites or cancerous messaging apps are stuck-ups that suck the fun out of everything and are interested in upvotes/replies . the hotest meme template that is gonna get posted everywhere to death, or simply as a way to circlejerk around something.I mean you can visit the archives and see for yourself.Even /jp/ was all about funposting.
Thats what i miss the most-not that i dont have a place to browse all my free time but a place to find people with similar interests to discover new material from old ovas to doujin games.

>>25396
Maybe we should talk more about anime and manga here.

>>25377
Even though he got banned, tohno-chan is still going downhill like everywhere else and I'm probably gonna leave soon, maybe even today. Tohno can't stop it, no one can stop it. Times have changed, the western anime fan circle from 2000 is dead.

>>25397
I agree. I try to talk about manga as much as possible.
>>25398
Have you considered trying old-school forums or even resorting to Japanese sites?

>>25398
Sorry, I only joined the circle in 2005. I could post my thoughts on anime that nobody else is watching if you'd like.

>>25378
You make a valid point. Normals have always been into anime, though before it seemed to be just the more "unsocially adjusted" normals. I know many of you remember Deviantart, Livejournal, Gaia, etc. etc. in the 2000s. All of those people were into anime too. However, the difference between them and legitimate otaku was that the majority of them didn't fully understand the jist of otaku culture in Japan like those on imageboards (did) and constantly conflated and related it with western cultures and ideals. (Examples include improper use of venacular "KAWAII-desuuu :333 or the improper use of honorifics, calling western cartoons anime, etc.) That is the same thing that is happening today on a greater scale since the popularity of anime has risen so much that even the regular normalfags are into entry-level anime and other forms of japanese entertainment. So the "Kawaii ugguuu neko san) of yesterday can be now compared to the disgusting culture of having multiple 'waifus' among normalfags, unoriginal memes, and the constant onslaught of identity politics in a foreign medium.

>>25393
The good news is most normals only watch the entry-level seasonal shows. They will not watch something offensive or older. I find that it's much better to talk about old shows that I missed rather than new stuff. The quality of the disscussions are much better.

>>25398
Learn Japanese. Either that or visit a more obscure fourm or imageboard. But even those are filled with people who like to name-fag and push politics into conversations where they aren't needed.

>>25408
>just go somewhere else
guess what
theres nowhere else to go anymore

>>25408
>even the regular normalfags are into entry-level anime

That's nothing new though, actually it happened more in the past. In the 90's and 00's there was a shitton of anime in TV, so all kids and teens watched anime, and even random adults. I don't think today there's anything comparable to the Dragon Ball fad.
Like you said the difference is how normals use part of a particular imageboard culture. Also the general culture has become completely sick and repressive, and that means any influence is going to be more toxic than in the past.

Bitter manchildren who complain about shit all day are worse than actual children.

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

>>25411
>anime on tv
That reminds me that I really hate those toonami purists.

>>25413
>toonami purists
What? Isn't that an oxymoron? What are they "pure" about?

>>25414
You would think so. Basically they insist that stuff that aired on there is all there is to anime and the rest sucks. They're a dying breed fortunately.

Post edited on 20th Mar 2020, 9:53am

This is something about time. I'm a 33 yo man and I really love anime, manga, visual novel... I'm a full blow otaku, but I have job and do everything that a normal person do,
I don't have much free time, but I visit some anime/otaku culture boards to talk about otaku culture and I'm happy since the level of information is good around /jp/ and /a/.

>>25458
Working sucks so much. Right now I'm afraid that returning to normality will be traumatic for me (last weeks I've been working from home doing barely nothing). I need free time, why as an adults we have to spend, at least, five of seven days every week to someone else just to have a minimum income to survive? Why it can't be 50/50 at least? I just hope I can work less hours in the future.

>>25459
>Why it can't be 50/50 at least?
50/50 would be working 12 hours a day seven days a week.

>>25460
You can't count sleeping and all the shit you need to do for work outside your work schedule.
I spend two hours everyday to go to work, plus the time I need to get ready, clean my uniform, shave, etc. That's not "free time" that's time I indirectly give to my employer. My complain is how much of our living time (and energy) we need to give to someone else just to have a minimum income to be able to rent a room, eat and pay the bills.
I also spent years working 12 hours per day and seven days per week, that was living hell but somehow it doesn't make me much more happy about an average working schedule.

>>25458
Yeah, as I started work full-time it becomes harder to really care that much about hobbies from video games to just anime -- there's not as much time to appreciate the better things in life when you snap in and out of a crappy looping routine that gets greyer and greyer. Memories of a life with more emotions fade into dust.

>>25458
>>25459
>>25462
Yes, it's all terrible. I'm in a part-time position and still feel it takes way too much of my energy. Here's a funny thing I tried to do a while back. I noticed that the very fist activity I do in the day is the one I can put most of my energy in, so for a couple of weeks, instead of having working as my very first activity, I rescheduled my life and began waking up at around 11pm, doing all the stuff I wanted to do and go to work at 7am as usual, thus effectively making work the very last activity of my day.
By the end of the first week I was so utterly destroyed I had to switch back, but it was an interesting experience, specially how much you start not giving a fuck when you're tired at work. Really not caring at all, to the point I was afraid to get fired.

Worker drone problems on a NEET board.