Weeaboos and other Japan spergs

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I have a weeaboo horror story. Unfortunately, the weeb in question was me.

I was a delusion-flavored mess when I was in eighth grade. I didn't fantasize about Kawaii Desu Japan (I had brothers in the military who shared their photos of "No whites allowed" signs on Okinawa) and I didn't own a ton of anime or merch or anything (no allowance, no job), but my best friend and I were both weeby weird kids with mental problems and somewhere in late junior high we went full-on otakukin.

I won't go into too many specifics, but we fixated on a couple of characters from the Final Fantasy series and constructed this elaborate scenario explaining how we came to be in our current bodies. Anything could be proof: waking up sore meant your real self had been in a fight, an abandoned scarf in the park was actually a gift from your original world, etc. We were two creative, skewed individuals with no social lives, and we pretty much had ourselves convinced that we were going to break out of our current forms and return to our real power eventually. (I even drew a short comic about us using our powers to kill all the people who picked on us at school.) We traded stories about signs we had seen, significant dreams we had had--anything reinforced this idea that we were special, destined beings.

Thankfully I wasn't really into the Internet at the time; my activity online was limited to roleplaying on a single sci-fi board and reading stuff on fanfiction.net. If either of us had run into an otherkin/otakukin group, we might've fallen even further down the rabbit hole. As it happened, we went to different high schools and thus broke up the folie a deux, while I had a mental breakdown in my freshman year and wound up getting moved to special ed. Medication and therapy did the rest.

My friend and I reconnected late in our high school years, but we were plain old humans again. She's into Adventure Time and MLP now, while I skew more towards murder mysteries and romance novels. We're still in contact, and still call each other by our 'real' names, but it's not a serious thing any more. Thank God for that.

Sorry for the TL;DR personal stuff, guys. Some of the stuff on that Weeaboo Stories blog sound pretty far-out, but I know from firsthand experience that if you're lonely and crazy enough, you can convince yourself to pull the nuttiest otaku-est crap imaginable.
 
c-no powiedział(a):
So this weeb went brony and believes she is Pinkie Pie, wife of Naruto Uzumaki. Since you do mention she is a nice girl, did she ever get into any trouble due to her weebness or bronybooness?
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Not that I know of. So far, the Naruto thing is the most notable story I've heard. I guess I should mention that she began to project her Naruto fantasy onto this friend of mine (apparently he was Naruto in "our dimension"). He eventually told her how uncomfortable it made him and she stopped.

She has a boyfriend now and I think she's studying Equine Science, so at least she's doing something with her life.
 
I had a Weeb stage in high school myself. I grew out of it by college though. I still like some anime and manga, but not nearly as much as I used too. I really only follow some of the long-running shounen series because I have already been following them for years. I still love a lot of vidya games that come from Japan though.
 
Hm, I just realized I hardly had a weeaboo problem in High School. The worst the anime club had was the one person with no indoor voice.
 
I went through a weaboo phase myself in middle school where I was obsessed with Japan, to the point where I would wish that I could see it in person. I was watching just about any anime from Naruto to Haruhi(and I actually referred myself as a "Narutard" too *cringe*). I actually tried to teach myself Japanese, but while I did pick up some slang from anime, I did actually try to read books. I even wanted to live there, but looking back, since I was being bullied by my peers because of my Asperger's syndrome and living in a town with snobby upper middle class kids, it was more of a "I just want to get out of this town" more than anything else. I thought using my (broken) Japanese would "stump" the bullies by insulting them in a language that they didn't understand...didn't work out. Sometimes these kids would say China and Japan were the same just to rattle me (interestingly, like Chris they would also insist that I was gay, but that's another story). One of the few friends that I had tried insisting to me that Japan wasn't the romanticized place I thought it was. For a while I didn't believe him, but as I grew older and got my shit together, as well as learn more about Japan, I knew then that he was right. This wasn't helped when my little brother's Japanese pen pal came over for the summer and was a disrespectful little shit, but that again, is another story. I still would like to see Japan, as I am interested in Samurai, Ninja, ukiyo-e paintings, cultural festivals and other forms of Japanese art, but I would also like to see other places like France or Italy someday.
 
^ Did your love for Japan come mainly from anime, or did it come from research into the culture and history of the actual country? There is a lot to like about it, but anime only represents a small slice ( if even that) of the real Japan. Did you pick up any karate or nijitsu for self defense? That would have been better than Japanese curse words. Kamehamehas and Special Beam Cannons are a good way to deal with bullies. Btw, why was it that japan struck a chord with you and not China/Thailand/ Korea?
 
I had a weeaboo-type phase in my early teens. I blame Toonami/Adult Swim for all their anime shows. I brought several Japanese dictionaries with me to school with me everyday in attempt to learn the language. I wrote shitty copyright infringement inducing "original fiction" based on certain animes. I live in the Midwest, so I wished there were more places to buy Asian and anime-related merchandise than Suncoast and Hot Topic, and that the merchandise wasn't so damn expensive. However, I knew better that to blindly idolize Japan. I'm half Chinese, and growing up I sometimes heard the story from my mother that my Chinese grandmother and my uncle often had to run from the Japanese soldiers in WW2. Mom told me that grandma hated the Japanese. So even though Japan has an interesting culture and produces entertaining media, they still have have their flaws.

Nowadays I don't watch as much anime as I did in my teens. The last series I remember really getting into is Madoka Magica Puella Magi. I still enjoy going to anime conventions and cosplaying when I can. I'd like to go to Japan someday, but that's mainly because I like to travel internationally. I still remember some random Japanese vocabulary from my attempts at learning the language back then (I learned more besides "baka" and "kawaii"). Also sushi is delicious!
 
Although I never really had a weeaboo phase, I left a comment on a trailer for the Japanese version of Fallout 3 wondering if there was a way to change dubbing (Back then, I didn't like the grunts made by the male Lone Wanderer, kinda thought they sound more fitting on a thirty year old). One guy responded saying I was a sad weeaboo. Needless to say, it flew over my head until I found out why. Still, I kinda liked hearing a Japanese dub of the games simply because I played a demo for a game called Yakuza (The voice on the player character in the demo sounded like a tough guy in his 30's or 40's and not some anime young hero 20 year old. I kinda liked the voice on that character)
 
When I was in high school I had a little phase, but I was only interested in the language and music. After five years of taking Japanese I just had to quit, I didn't fit in with the anime fans and native speakers in NY just assumed I was one of them (weeb exhaustion I guess). I keep up with the music now and then but really if the boos want it that bad they can keep it.

Now it's interesting, in linguistics people have some really deep 'boo-isms but for completely ridiculous things. There are so many Basque fanboys; they don't speak Basque really or care about the region/culture but they get a boner for ergatives and language isolates etc. People who weeb out over Austronesian are really common, especially for historical linguists.

Last year I was a huge Indiaboo, I spent the summer watching Bollywood and listening to the remixes on YouTube, but the culture was still second to the language quirks and the data I came up with. There's one more but I'm almost afraid to say because people would peg me too easily :)
 
Alan Pardew powiedział(a):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=W05bMnR4HKw
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The way he reads espeoradar's comments is hilarious. Nuff said.

Anyway, I haven't dealt with any aboos in person; but I did deal with a weeb on Deviantart one time. Let's just say he RP'ed every single goddamn time when he was talking to someone. No really. I'd make a screencap of whenever he spoke; but recently he got tangled into a drama on DA, and his page is filled with all caps comments, which I dislike because it's childish and spergy.
 
What's a little annoying is when people conflate casual/non-obsessive interest in something with being an 'aboo. Fortunately, I would think most people have more sense than that.
 
Ostatnio edytowane:
FifthColumn powiedział(a):
^ Did your love for Japan come mainly from anime, or did it come from research into the culture and history of the actual country? There is a lot to like about it, but anime only represents a small slice ( if even that) of the real Japan. Did you pick up any karate or nijitsu for self defense? That would have been better than Japanese curse words. Kamehamehas and Special Beam Cannons are a good way to deal with bullies. Btw, why was it that japan struck a chord with you and not China/Thailand/ Korea?
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I did try learning Karate when I was like 8, but lessons were too expensive and I never got further than orange belt because of it. I was the kind of kid who tried using words, not fists, to solve my problems. When I tried using Japanese curses, I was thinking "maybe if I trash talk at them in a foreign language, maybe I can confuse them and get them to stop making fun of me."

At first, my love for Japanese culture did come from anime, but as I learned more about the culture, I became fascinated by how even in modern times, there was still this historic quality about it that drew me in. When I saw Spirited Away for the first time on Cartoon Network, I was intrigued by the references to Japanese folklore and out of curiosity I decided to learn more. I got a glimpse into the land of the rising sun and the mysteries that surrounded it.

There were certain aesthetic qualities in traditional Japanese art that sucked me in and I was amazed by this sort of raw narrative power that the myths carried (to me at least). When I learned about the Samurai and the way of Bushido, I was drawn in by this romanticized image of them and what they stood for. Even the Ninja have some honorable qualities about them if you look deep enough (look up Masaaki Hatsumi and Gizoku, that and, I just think Ninja are cool).

Then there was the whole bit about American History lectures in school, where in our textbooks, where Reagan was the most recent president and the Soviet Union had only just dissolved. Constantly hearing the sanitized version of events that happened in the past did more detach me from my own culture. It didn't help that around the same time, lots of bad shit was going down such as the then ongoing war in Iraq and the housing collapse(They didn't directly affect me, but they did lessen my faith in my own country).

I don't even know what it is about Anime that seems to draw people with ASD such as myself
or Chris, but anime made me want to learn more about actual Japanese and their way of life. I live in a predominantly whitebread suburb that feels as if it exists in some little bubble where the outside world is all but nonexistent.When I see something from another culture it intrigues me because it is different. I like meeting people from other cultures since most of the knowledge I have on other cultures is out of whatever I've read on the internet, seen in museums, or some book that I read, but I don't always have a human perspective available. Anime played a part in this in that it essentially gave me a culture to latch onto. Japan naturally came to mind because anime was something that I liked For once though, I wish that I could actually see these countries in person.

I will say that my image of Japan isn't of this magical place that I could escape to like I originally thought. I know how the Japanese might treat someone like me for having a disability. I'm sure that being white would likely exacerbate the problem, since I'm sure that even today, kids there are still being taught to be afraid of Americans post WW2. I am also aware of their attempts to try and gloss over the bad things that they did in WW2( to be fair though, what government doesn't do something like this?) Not to mention I became aware of how school bullying there was as bad as, if not worse than some of the stuff I experienced. And I've shown interest in other countries, such as Italy, being the home of my great grandfather before he emigrated to America. I've accepted that I would probably not want to live in Japan after all, and I've become content with living in America. Even if I had problems here, I managed to get my shit together and make meaning of them, but that again, is another story

Tl;dr, It was a mix of an anime obsession and timing coupled with ASD. I was tired of living in a one horse town that was all but sheltered from the outside world. I romanticized Japanese culture partly because of my associating it with anime, and just wanting a place that I could escape to from my problems. I realized that if I actually did live in Japan, I wouldn't really be much better off then I was then. I still have a fascination with Japanese culture, and it's probably the culture that I have the most knowledge about besides my own. Even though I am still fascinated by traditional Japanese art, warriors, music, history, and folkore, it has died down to (what I at least consider to be) more reasonable levels. I like the idea of traveling around the world, but I'd be content just to travel further outside the United States than Canada, even if that place didn't end up being Japan.
Whew, that was lengthy, and I'm certain that I probably went around in circles at least once, but if you have questions, feel free to ask and I will answer them as best as I can.
 
Ostatnio edytowane:
I haven't come across this particular word, but the concept certainly exists: 'Europeaboo', someone obsessed with Europe as a whole, especially the 'romantic' bits like France and Spain and Italy, or England/Scotland/Ireland. They're less numerous and less aggressive than most other 'aboos' but still just as nuts when they meet a person who represents their obsession. I have (dyed) red hair, green eyes, and very fair skin, and a slight accent (from northern England, not that many 'aboos' can tell the difference), so the people obsessed with Ireland occasionally go nuts about me. It isn't often so it's mostly really funny how dumb they are.
 
ToroidalBoat powiedział(a):
What's a little annoying is when people conflate casual/non-obsessive interest in something with being an 'aboo. Fortunately, I would think most people have more sense than that.
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Anti-weeaboos (as in people who go out of their way to pick fights with weeaboos [see Eden's Cross for example] as opposed to non-weeaboos) are just as irritating as weeaboos.
 
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