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It feels crazy to me how in the last few years how normalized liking anime has become. It would be something people would watch as a kid (Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Studio Ghibli) and then be too embarassed to admit they still like when an adult. It was like being gay pre the 2010s, you would just not be open about it as if you did you would be seen as a weirdo, a creep, and a social outcast, making it a hobby you'd keep to yourself and at most share with fellow nerds on obscure imageboards. Sure, some were more socially acceptable to like than others such as Dragonball Z and Pokemon, but other than that you were on your own. Flash forward to the mid 2010s with Attack of Titan being a massive hit and anime streaming services becoming a thing and boom, there was a huge cultural shift in the landscape and now every normie alt girl and even normal ass dudes watch anime and are open about it, a complete 180 from what the stigma used to be like revolving the genre; no one really judges you anymore for liking anime content unless you're playing some weirdo gatcha game like Pedo Impact or you watch nonce animes involving little girls, much different times we now live in. Anime media now floods normal everyday stores and can be seen on public advertisements, as a young teen I'd not even imagined it and now it's everywhere. You notice this same phenomena with any other hobbies you're into, fellas? I'm not saying this is a bad thing, sure anime and manga is filled with plenty of clutter which gives the medium a bad name but there's a lot of good in it too and it's great to see it's now being appreciated more in that regard than just being seen as a weirdo pervert genre of entertainment.
It feels crazy to me how in the last few years how normalized liking anime has become. It would be something people would watch as a kid (Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Studio Ghibli) and then be too embarassed to admit they still like when an adult. It was like being gay pre the 2010s, you would just not be open about it as if you did you would be seen as a weirdo, a creep, and a social outcast, making it a hobby you'd keep to yourself and at most share with fellow nerds on obscure imageboards. Sure, some were more socially acceptable to like than others such as Dragonball Z and Pokemon, but other than that you were on your own. Flash forward to the mid 2010s with Attack of Titan being a massive hit and anime streaming services becoming a thing and boom, there was a huge cultural shift in the landscape and now every normie alt girl and even normal ass dudes watch anime and are open about it, a complete 180 from what the stigma used to be like revolving the genre; no one really judges you anymore for liking anime content unless you're playing some weirdo gatcha game like Pedo Impact or you watch nonce animes involving little girls, much different times we now live in. Anime media now floods normal everyday stores and can be seen on public advertisements, as a young teen I'd not even imagined it and now it's everywhere. You notice this same phenomena with any other hobbies you're into, fellas? I'm not saying this is a bad thing, sure anime and manga is filled with plenty of clutter which gives the medium a bad name but there's a lot of good in it too and it's great to see it's now being appreciated more in that regard than just being seen as a weirdo pervert genre of entertainment.
It feels crazy to me how in the last few years how normalized liking anime has become. It would be something people would watch as a kid (Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Studio Ghibli) and then be too embarassed to admit they still like when an adult. It was like being gay pre the 2010s, you would just not be open about it as if you did you would be seen as a weirdo, a creep, and a social outcast, making it a hobby you'd keep to yourself and at most share with fellow nerds on obscure imageboards. Sure, some were more socially acceptable to like than others such as Dragonball Z and Pokemon, but other than that you were on your own. Flash forward to the mid 2010s with Attack of Titan being a massive hit and anime streaming services becoming a thing and boom, there was a huge cultural shift in the landscape and now every normie alt girl and even normal ass dudes watch anime and are open about it, a complete 180 from what the stigma used to be like revolving the genre; no one really judges you anymore for liking anime content unless you're playing some weirdo gatcha game like Pedo Impact or you watch nonce animes involving little girls, much different times we now live in. Anime media now floods normal everyday stores and can be seen on public advertisements, as a young teen I'd not even imagined it and now it's everywhere. You notice this same phenomena with any other hobbies you're into, fellas? I'm not saying this is a bad thing, sure anime and manga is filled with plenty of clutter which gives the medium a bad name but there's a lot of good in it too and it's great to see it's now being appreciated more in that regard than just being seen as a weirdo pervert genre of entertainment.
I live in Brasil, so liking anime wasnt something that weird. Anime is pretty popular in America Latina. There was even tv channels that would broadcast dubbed uncensored anime in 80 and 90.
I live in Brasil, so liking anime wasnt something that weird. Anime is pretty popular in America Latina. There was even tv channels that would broadcast dubbed uncensored anime in 80 and 90.
Met a girl last year who said she was really into anime/otaku culture but after talking for a while I realized she legit saw like 1 anime per season, it had to be on either Netflix or Crunchyroll and it always was the most popular show, ex. bocchi the reddit, jujutsu kaizen, AOT, spy family etc. also she was always watching anime "cracks" and funny moments in YouTube but never actually watched the shows. Tried to get her into more anime but got super weirded out by Konosuba and asobi asobase and we kinda stopped talking. I think most current "anime fans" are like that, ~5 of the most popular shows a year, like memes of shows they haven't even watched on Instagram and not much else. I guess it's not inherently bad, they will grow out of it and look back on it like how the emo/goth/darks/scene kids look back on it with a bit of shame. Anime kind of gatekeeps itself, for every popular anime between normies there are like 2 cute girls shows, 3 harems and like 5 isekais that they can't stand, so they don't tend to stick to the hobby. Plus it's not like anime is done with western normies in mind, most are either for kids, edgy teenagers who want to fulfil their power fantasies or obsessive adults who are really into the medium already. I guess the influx of "new anime fans" comes from the fact that nowadays we get like 1 normie anime per season, while in the past we used to get like 1 each year( clannad,haruhi, k-on, death note, sword art online, angel beats, Toradora, Working!!/wagnaria).
They're still normies though, not everyone can appreciate fine arts such as hidamari sketch,nekojiru, zaregoto, rakugo shinju etc. Or find pleasure while watching the more cliché stuff.
I now do remember a teacher I had in school who literally was as if reddit was a person, hugely into AOT and Marvel, boring, the most tamest opinion on everything and that geeky/nerdy self aware and self grandiose way of talking about himself.
I remember talking about this with a good friend around 2013. Anime was still something you wouldn't openly bring up as an interest in public, at least where I was from. But I told him that I thought within 10years time it would be completely normalized. The weird thing is, I didn't even completely believed myself, or rather, I thought I would prove to be wrong (and I wish I was). Essentially the point I made is that even though many people in our HS denied it, most of us at least grew up watching and playing Pokemon and Yugioh, and many of us in elementary school also watched shows like Naruto, One Piece, and DBZ. With an entire generation exposed to this stuff from an early age, there was no way it wouldn't go mainstream eventually.
Normies ruin everything they touch, anime is one of the clearest examples of this principle but i would suggest that vidya games are a good example as well, the original niche community eventually becomes debased and overrun with normies.
This is why i support elitism and gatekeeping.
Pic related says it all.
I now do remember a teacher I had in school who literally was as if reddit was a person, hugely into AOT and Marvel, boring, the most tamest opinion on everything and that geeky/nerdy self aware and self grandiose way of talking about himself.
I have never been really into superheroes so I can't really talk about how/if normies ruined it, but yeah, I remember when people looked at marvel fans like creeps or nerds. An example that comes to mind is Craig from Malcolm in the middle, he was the stereotypical weirdo + a comic books nerd.
But now? things like the thanos movies where in the news and seen as cultural events.
I have never been really into superheroes so I can't really talk about how/if normies ruined it, but yeah, I remember when people looked at marvel fans like creeps or nerds. An example that comes to mind is Craig from Malcolm in the middle, he was the stereotypical weirdo + a comic books nerd.
But now? things like the thanos movies where in the news and seen as cultural events.
Its not just marvel, any type of comics would be seeing as a "geek" or just a loser. The marvel cinematic universe really made a lot of normies aware about the existence of a lot of marvel characters, but them still dont read the comics. Yeah, they know about thanos, but the thanos from the movies is diferent from the thanos from the comics. Not just thanos, a lot of comics characters are badly represent in the cinema.
I have never been really into superheroes so I can't really talk about how/if normies ruined it, but yeah, I remember when people looked at marvel fans like creeps or nerds. An example that comes to mind is Craig from Malcolm in the middle, he was the stereotypical weirdo + a comic books nerd.
But now? things like the thanos movies where in the news and seen as cultural events.
Malcolm in the Middle was peak. I don't think I have anything relevant to say about it, but I'm glad to find another Malcolm in the Middle enjoyer on here.
Normies ruin everything they touch, anime is one of the clearest examples of this principle but i would suggest that vidya games are a good example as well, the original niche community eventually becomes debased and overrun with normies.
This is why i support elitism and gatekeeping.
Pic related says it all. View attachment 2421
magic the gathering is in the last 2 panels phase. anyone want a gay nerd history lesson? ok, here we go
ive been in and out of the game at various times since 1996 as time and money permits. theyre really slacking on creativity and are going woke with some characters
magic was invented by a math professor and develped with some of his nerd buddies, and it blew up with the DnD crowd (it was touted as DnD but with cards). if you read sme old cards it's like, word and math salad that nerds would jizz over. complicated phases and steps and blah blah. but having this high fantasy kind of setting, it had cool characters and even a decent plot (all things considered, the orignal story of "the borthers war" was sick. 2 brothers go to war and end up nuking the world into an ice age, one brother finds hell [essentially] and begins training an army there to reinvade, which triggers yet another massive war...this story took place over like, 10 years worth of sets) and the art on cards was always unique and cool (each illustrator of the cards had a unique style)
then it starts getting big at some point and tthey decide this thing called "new World order", which is essentially "the game is too complex for newbies so from now on, cards printed at common are going to be super easy to understand, and complex rules related stuff will be reserved for higher rarity cards"
this wasnt so bad, it didnt really have any BAD effects, but it was the beginning of making the game a commodity
then came the narrative. around 2010-ish they came out started focusing a lot more on narrative and created these shitty characters each aligned with a color of magic (white, black, blue, red, green, for those not in the know). these characters were very 2 dimensional for the most part, kind of tropey narratively, and was very obviously created to create a sort of "avengers" type crew of wizards for their crappy story and also to give an excuse to print broken/wild shit on cards at a high rarity. this was met with mixed results and actually broke the game a little
one of these shitty 2d characters was named "jace beleren" and it wa pushed pretty heavy at the time that he was gonna be like a mascot for magic. he was a blue mage that had a "dark past" that he only remembered pices of because of plot-convenient amnesia. To show their hype and importance of the character and the new story-driven aspect of the game, they printed "Jace, the Mind-Sculptor" which is even today, one fo the most broken card in MtG's 30+ year history.
anywho, as they started focusing on this narrative the story line got very....comic-book-y. instead of each new set taking place on a certain original world with it started to become like...themed worlds. the game always bounced around to different worlds, each usually having it's own theme and aesthetic, tribes that lived there, etc. but in this new narrative paradigm the sets became VERY themed around real life things, and it was always like "the MtG superfriends go to egypt, fight an evil god, kill it, and now they're on to ancient greece!". sets began borrowing concepts and aesthetic from real life eras and shit. there was an ancient chinese set, and egypt set, an india set, a dinosaur set, an ancient rome set, a harry potter/hogwarts ripoff set, a nordic set. and all this shit. and it started to get cheesy because all the new worlds lacked originality. it literally became "ok, how can we paste MtG stuff on ancient egypt settings" insead of "how can we apply ancient egypt tropes to the world of magic"
around this time MtG also got bought by Hasbro, which leads me to where the game became shit 100%
around this time they started printing SO SO SO SO much product. it used to be, you had a few sets a year. a main set, and then like, 2 large sets, and a few smaller sets. this was a lot, but manageable. but after hasbro...you got all these plus themed DECKS based on a specific format called "commander" (5 unique decks, 100 cards each, printed every year), then you had reprint sets which usually were curated to create a unique deckbuilding experience with very powerful cards that were never meant to be played together, but if the set was curated well, it worked. they would use these as an excuse to reprint some expensive cards to get them into circulation, which drove up the price of packs. then they would make starter sets for newbie players. and on and on. and because we have hasbro, a giant corporation, we started seeing cards with token black characters on them, non-binary characters, and implied gay characters. then they would drop these joke sets every now and then. then they would do "secret lair drops" where they would print limited numbers of cards with unique or special art. this is where i encountered this nightmare:
yep...mtg pride month. pretty innocuous, but you can probably spot the problem cards that are the MOST gross/pandering.
it was around this time i stepped out. i peak back in now and then just to see what's up. like i said we have hasbro running the game now, so we get actual IP's slapped on MtG cards. Lord of the Rings branded sets, MY LITTLE FUCKING PONY mtg cards, transformers, godzilla, doctor who, and they are currently rolling out a jurassic park set. yes, in theory Gandalf or Optimus Prime or King Ghidorah on a magic card is a cool idea...but the novelty of this very quickly wore thin. the last new card i remember seeing was from a grimm's fairy tale themed set and the gard was an evil gingerbread house
so the game has gone full retard, sadly. i dont really intend to ever go back, i just have my collection of nostalgia and break it out every now and again
thanks for reading my ted talk, form a line for any questions
