People will get bullied over anything, it’s not just anime. It’s a clash of personalities or cultures. Sometimes, it’s about power dynamics, other times it’s just about tearing someone else down to feel better about themselves or for status in some group.
Very true. I recently found out that my mom is an extreme covert narcissist and it’s been kinda wild to have a lot of my suspicions confirmed, but yeah. According to my sibs and my boyfriend, I was always her main target and I think it just taught me to expect, accept and seek out abuse because I have been bullied for most of my life by people who have similar traits as my mother. I guess I just bring it out in people when they are around me.
It only started to change right before covid when I had had enough of those types of friendships and started putting more effort into people who were actually nice to me.
Would love to say that it has fixed everything, but nope. Now I just bully myself to feel normal.
My girlfriend has twins and one of them gets bullied for not wearing dresses. The other doesn’t. She is so young that the other girls who bully her just started to even understand the difference between a dress snd pants.
You can also bullied for not doing something, as much as you can for doing something, or not doing something in a sufficiently symbolically popular way.
Like the Ribbon episode in Seinfeld, where Kramer supports the AIDS walk, but he doesn’t want to wear the AIDS ribbon on his shirt, so he gets assaulted by a gang of ribbon wearers.
I had a similar incident where I didn’t want to wear trans pride flags for an event, but I supported the event, but still pro-trans bullies wanted to paint me as trans hating bigot for not wearing their flag. It was just power-tripping weirdos, for whom the irony of their insistence of social conformity of others appearances and behaviors was lost. Because hey, they bullying you doing it for a Good Cause, so it’s OK when they do it.
Mexican here, we had anime on Saturday morning TV in the 90s and still liking anime as a teenager and beyond was a ticket to being seen as either immature or a pervert, and yes being bullied or ridiculed by saying you liked it.
people just told me I was gay for liking Gundam Wing.
I was into anime cartoons in the ‘80s, read Fantasy, D&D, and Sci-Fi, was into computers and gaming since the Atari, and a dose of neurospicy did absolutely no favors. Likely the ND drove me to the hobbies I enjoyed because they were escapes from the shittiness of the world outside of them. Yeah, I absolutely got bullied and pushed to the fringes.
At any rate, I don’t dwell on it, but the “mainstreaming” of things like IT and gaming has filled them up with assholes and jocks using them as dick measuring contests. It’s now a power play to be a CTO or IT coder or some kind of popular game streamer instead of a geek playing with computers.
It’s not the same world anymore. Probably why I haven’t used VoIP chat in any game for near a decade now. Too many assholes.
Yeah I miss real nerds. Everyone thinks they can type a prompt and be all “computery” when they dont know fuck.
I think both the greentext and tweet are wrong.
It’s not liking anime, it’s the type of person who gets obsessed with anime. Most of the anime kids at my school were VERY immature and wouldn’t shut up about Japan. They’d call you baka and say a dog is kawaii
Only my metalhead friends and internet friends knew I liked anime. I didn’t want to be associated with that type of fan.
Yet if you go around using sportsball terms as slang and tossing the ol’ pigskin in the hallway, nobody bats an eye.
Do you have an example or is this from an 80s movie? I can’t think of a single sports term someone would use to insult you or say something is cute.
Not sure how common it is outside of media for people to be throwing footballs around in the hallway, either…
Cover all your bases
From left field
Thow you a curveball
Roll with the punches
Throw in the towell
Move the goalposts
Par for the course
There are plenty more but its basically so ubiquitous no one even notices all their cringy sports terms in every day life.
(/s on the cringy, just a play on op)
Those are idioms. The anime kids were weirdly incorporating Japanese words into their communication with English speakers and doing kamehamehas in the hallway.
Here’s something more analogous: A friend spent the summer before senior year in France and when she came back, you could not get through a conversation without her dropping a French word or relating something to “how they do things in France”. And yes, we made fun of her until she stopped.
Thats kind of how language works though. Words get borrowed and absorbed from other languages all the time.
Yes but that’s done naturally, not shoehorning it into conversation with people who have no idea what you’re talking about
I remember in my Midwest college band, we stopped at a mall during a trip. Everyone broke off into smaller groups.
Timid kids were orbiting the anime shop for a while before I intentionally and loudly invited someone I liked to go in; “Woah, look it’s [goku,(can’t actually remember)], do you want to go check it out?” “Uh, sure.” Within minutes, the crowd awkwardly coming inside.
I remember the anxiety. I am so insecure and never talk to anyone, so I thought this would define me as a perverted loser. I was so relieved man. Even people I didn’t think could like anime were coming in.
As far as bullies, I feel like I remember the ones in highschool being fans of anime. Most people here who don’t like anime just don’t know it exists.
Yeah maybe I’m just a millennial, but my bullies weren’t cool either. I was never bullied for being a nerd, I was bullied sometimes because I sucked or lacked social skills and sometimes because I was an easy target with low social penalty for picking on.
“lol you were never bullied” by jackasses…
The image anon is using as an example does not say they were not bullied. It says they weren’t bullied just for liking anime, but for doing cringy stuff they saw in the anime like Naruto sprinting. Like, read the rest of the god damn sentence, anon.
People totally did get bullied for liking anime, I’ll just say that now.
👆
Same with d&d and video games.
Yep true! I think it went from “all Video Games get you bullied” -> “not playing the right video games gets you bullied” -> videogames now widespread and won’t get you bullied, but I there’s probably a bit of the previous two going on in some schools.
I remember being teased for liking Halo 3 because everyone else was obsessed with COD for being “realistic”.
lol i still get bullied for playing video games. but it’s mostly from people my own age who basically think it’s a shameful horrible ‘unproductive’ thing to do… but will spend hours on social media or watching brainrot tv.
Or the “wrong” kind of music
I agree with you, I am fairly large and I changed schools frequently. Every new school id be bullied for first few weeks and it would only stop when bullies realise I can beat them more than they can beat me, and that i wouldn’t shy away from confrontation. But liking Anime was like top two reasons
The most memorable is I was new to school and 12. I had a Keychain attached to my bag of bato from GiTS, not even motoko, at first this guy thought he was GI Joe and it was fine, then he asked more about the figure and upon learning it’s anime, he stole it… And about 2 days later decided with two of his friends, I had to be taught anime bad by shoving it down my throat. Two friends held my hand and the psycho was getting me to open my mouth to shove it in, when I broke free from one of the friend and punched him so hard it broke his nose, then kicked one other guy in nuts. I fucking ran to staff room to have some adult around. Well I almost got kicked out of school. But some 16-17 year old bystander girl went out of her way to explain everything. And I only got suspended for a week. Stories like this were common everytime I change schools, bullies test me, they realise I am willing to fight before going down and thankfully being large, I could do some serious damage. They’d give up bullying after a few months. And then a year or two later, new school. Rinse and repeat.
That being said, I also hated kids who did Naruto runs and called me senpai. I didn’t bully them, but I don’t think I ever tried to stop them from being bullied.
That’s suddenly reminded me of how I had a high school friend who tried to use me as a bodyguard, always getting himself into the stupidest situations and aggravating random people
Hilarious 🤣
Also, super impressive Meegan voice from Peele
Meegan and Dante are hands down my favorite recurring characters.
I relate to that. Since I would be stopped from bullying at some point, the other bullied kids would generally hang around me with the hopes of me being bodyguard. And most kids were just nice kids that needed break from being bullied.
But in grade 8 there was this kid, who wasn’t even bullied that much, mostly because he was a phenomenal runner and was really good at running away and also really good at spotting bullies. He’d keep preaching stuff like “fuck bullies” and “bullies don’t deserve the world” and other nonsense. But the kid sometimes was just an asshole.
One day the kid threw glue in hair of a couple of girls, obviously the strong girl from class with a couple of “bully” dudes came looking for payback and he thought I’d fight on his behalf after avoiding beating for like two entire days. I literally held him by arm till the “bully” kids took charge at beating his ass.
Anyway I guess my point is, it’s complex bullying and anti-bullying. Some people take advantage of the wrong things.
I can’t remember a single person in my school life who ever did anything like this. Usually it went like “I watch Pokemon” -> straight to bullying.
Anime was never a problem. Sailor moon, Pokémon, and DBZ were super mainstream, and you had stuff like Voltron and Speed Racer before that.
The issue is people who either only talk about their hobby, try to force other people into it, or in the case of anime, expect real life to be the same way or act it out themselves (see naruto running comment in OP’s screenshot)
This completely depends on your age and what kind of peers you were surrounded by. You’re nuts if you think no one was ever bullied for liking stuff because it was mainstream at the time and place you grew up in. Kids can be vicious little creatures and would bully you for liking the wrong Pokémon when I was in school.
There’s probably something very wrong with you if you actually think that bullying is acceptable under any circumstances. Even if some kid is behaving weirdly or likes something deeply unpopular - so what? That’s not harmful behaviour and even if it somehow was, bullying is still the wrong way to deal with that. I barely trust most adults to have a working moral compass, let alone kids. I know there’s been a resurgence in this kind of thinking on social media where people push the idea that bullying is an acceptable form of social “correctional” behaviour, which isn’t just incredibly stupid but also deeply disgusting. If you look at any of the most serious bullying cases of teenagers being driven to suicide by their schoolmates, none of it was ever justified or even had an apparent reason other than: this person makes for an easy target.
tell that to my dates who see cowboy bebop dvd set and freak the fuck out at me that I’m a weeb.
You really think that bullies pick victims that deserve to be bullied?
I said no such thing, and I’m not sure what type of victims you think “deserve to be bullied”
People who stand out from the herd are those that are either idolized or shunned, depending on other factors. But bullies target those who they think they can victimize. So as I said in my first comment, its not really about anime or specific hobbies, at all.
Anon got bullied, it’s true. And that sucks. I sympathize.
They still need to grow the fuck up. They sound like a millennial based on when anime went mainstream in which case, my god, get a therapist already.
Imagine still being salty over people being mean to you 20-30 years ago. Fuck
Signed,
A millennial who was bullied plentyInb4 “therapy is expensive”
All bullying isn’t equal. You have no idea what kind of shit OP was put through, and have no idea if it’s at all comparable to what you went through.
Except that therapy actually is expensive, and a whole lot of therapists actually suck at what they’re ostensibly there to do.
Then, try finding a good therapist who actually is neurodivergent, its nearly impossible.
A neurotypical fundamentally isn’t capable of actually fully empathizing with a neurodivergent… their brains are literally wired differently.
You being this dismissive of genuine, deep seated pain… that literally is the problem, people who act like you.
Why would anyone listen to the advice of someone who doesn’t actually give a fuck about their mental health, about their CPTSD, caused by people like you?
The… whole problem is that at the most basic level, people repress and internally stew on their feelings, when broader society does not allow them to express them without mocking them.
Your entire post here is ‘I am better than you and you are pathetic, I sympathize with you though’.
Do you have no self-awareness?
… therapy is a good thing, if you can find it, if you access it, if its done by a person who actually knows what they’re doing and can actually relate to you without the sociopathic ‘emotions off/HR mode enabled’ mask that many therapists use.
We could just have a space where people could just say whats really on their minds, you know, publically.
Or we can have people like you show up when they do that, tell them they suck, and tell them they need to pay money an expert.
spot on.
lots of folks just refuse to move on and grow on. they still cling to bad memories because their negative experiences define them.
i’m in my 40s and it blows my mind how many people are hung up on shit from 20-30 years ago. like… i figured this out 20 years ago, you should have done so too. and as an adult, if people are still being dicks, you just ignore them.
Therapy is no substitute for well earned grudges
Grudges often (not always) are just a second bully victory, because they make your life, not theirs, worse. You don’t need to forgive them, even if it can help (help you, not them), but therapy can help you move on with your life more lightly.
You getting paid to shill therapy or what?
“This comment brought to you by better help!”
I wish!
This is literally Chun Li’s plot in the Street Fighter movie.
For the bully, it was tuesday.
Why should it make your life worse? It could, but that shouldn’t be the assumption. The older I get the more I value any memories I can feel the same about now as I did back then, because most of it fades into nothing, only the most intense emotions have staying power. What you hate defines you just like what you love defines you, grudges are important for holding on to your humanity.
Of course it’s good to come to terms with things, and therapy helps, but I strongly object to the idea that the mature thing to do is entirely let go of old resentments and never share them, the opposite is true.
Let’s not forget the pictured message they were replying to specifically mentions growling at people and sprinting around.
That shit never went mainstream. Fucking hell
Bish please. It was mainstream as fuck before social media.
Naruto runs were being a fucking airplane, complete with sound and spittle. A dumbass kid’s game probably as old as the Wright brothers…
Every fucking generation in the last century has been playing it without anyone giving a damn, ffs.
When a six year old does it, it’s cute. When a sixteen year old does it, it’s sad. Context matters.
All hail diversity and creativity, except when it’s not conformant to expectations.
If a kid in high school was zooming around acting like an airplane, they probably would have also been bullied.
And that’s very, very sad.
My initial reaction was to agree with you because, yeah that’s pretty weird, but honestly fuck that.
Kids playing and being a bit embarrassing? That’s perfectly normal. They don’t deserve to be bullied and the problem lies entirely with the bully.
Same. I got my face pushed in by a bully who was on the boxing team. The principal later put me on the spot, asked me to forgive him to his face and I said no.
I could have easily needed therapy for that, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have come through it liking myself more, even being proud of how I handled it. I can take a punch and walk away calmly and deliberately (then cry through a giant red snot bubble in the nurse’s office later).
Besides… Last I heard he was in jail for armed robbery. Ha! And double ha! Ever thus to bullies.
People who know about my interests and hobbies tend to not like when I go near their pets
Only when you bring the taxidermy kit
Do you fuck sexy animals, or do you consider yourself an animal fucker that is sexy?
Maybe they’re just a sexy animal that fucks
It’s gonna be both
Someone should tell animal fuckers that humans are animals, blow their fuckin minds
the moment that anime went mainstream is the moment that it got stupid and uninteresting, that’s when i stopped watching it. the quality just dropped to adapt to the mainstream
I mean, basically same?
There was a kind of… cresting wave effect, where it was getting more popular, and some really good stuff was coming out… and then yeah, it became super popular, and the overall quality of any random show just tanked, with the occasional bright spot of course still showing up.
I’m baffled that this is apparently a controversial opinion, this has happened in basically every format of art ever.
You must wear plaid and have a beard with a curly mustache.
When was that moment and which anime was the first stupid one?
idk maybe bad anime was always a thing and i just ignored it until then, but i’d say around 2015 maybe.
the thing that specifically bothers me is when these themes recur: “you just have to work hard” (boys speaking to boys or any young people talking to each other) - as if it would solve our problems. it’s just capitalist propaganda. you only need to try hard then you’re gonna make it
another thing that bothers me is when anime doesn’t dare to be cringe. like, when it stops crossing socially acceptable boundaries, to explore new fields and topics and themes. when it adheres to what normal people would call “acceptable”. an example of that might be when anime stops being unhinged and when it stops feeling like a dream. when it tries to depict things too realistically, as if it were a movie that has to adhere to the laws of physics. for example, i like stuff like spirited away because it starts out with a completely bonkers assumption, namely that there’s a portal to a completely unrealistic world. which is good because it makes people dream.
another thing that bothers me is when it’s obvious that the characters are forcing themselves to smile, as if that’s some kind of social expectation. i hate that anime characters stopped displaying how they actually feel, again this plays into the “ganbare” (work hard!) theme. like, you have to try hard to smile. i hate that anime instills this sense that you can’t display how you feel to other people. very mainstream, very neurotypical, it brings us nowhere, has no vision and can be replaced by a machine. i don’t get why we’re doing this.
The “work hard” isn’t meant as capitalist propaganda. Well, at least it didn’t start as such.
It was first and foremost an advice given from themselves because drawing manga and anime was seen poorly and a dead-end job. The creators faced a lot of opposition and few opportunities, so every success was heartfelt and attributed to them working hard for their dreams and not giving up.
Despite entering the mainstream having diluted the situation these words were meant for, it’s important we don’t forget that the first creators were pioneers who dedicated their entire lifetimes to their craft.
They did everything you hate back when you said liked anime. They still have bonkers shit today. There’s variety. It’s not like the entire extremely prolific animation industry of an entire country is moving in lockstep to deliver exactly the same product across the board.
Sure, there trends like the onslaught of bland isekai shit we had for a while but even the worst seasons of that had their gems. Heck, even that genre has gems; there a reason KonoSuba is well-regarded (and it’s full of people who would be utterly unacceptable in Japanese society).
You probably have the same problem that gets people to think that all music became shit approximately 20-30 years after they were born: They mainly remember the hits of their youth and forget that 80% of airtime went to shitty music back then as well.
Interesting. I have to say these are nuaces I never really focussed on so I didn’t notice any differences there. I’m in my 40s now and I started watching Anime in the 90s. So there was this stuff on public TV like “Mila Superstar”, “Sailor Moon” and some football and racing shows and the rest I had to get from friends or video rental. There I focussed on SciFi and Fantasy extreme stuff (super violent, scary or pornographic). I’d say there where some masterpieces like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Evangelion, Berserk, Patlabor, Lupin the 3rd, Memories, Spriggan and many more. Later, I guess in the early 2000s there was Dragonball and Dragonball Z on public TV, wich I liked. Then with access to the internet I discovered more stuff like Death Note, Cromartie High, Samuari Champloo which had a completely different vibe etc.
Well, long story short: I never really cared for those more “social” and school related animes which I guess have been there a long time so I didn’t notice any shifts there. Some of the animes I watched had a school theme but that part always just confused me (e.g. Spriggan), I guess school in Japan is very different.
I think there have always been “cheap” animes which where mostly there to sell merchandise and toys but that was not what you meant. What really pissed me off was the early shift to 3d rendering which made a lot of interesting anime completely unwatchable for me.
Regarding the “bonkers stuff” I actually feel there is more available now. I don’t use Crunchyroll but there seem to be lot’s of shows like “what if you reincarnated as a vending machine in a mediaval fantasy city?”, “what if you reincarnated as an intergalactic emperor”.
It’s because OVA doesn’t exist anymore. Like all the interesting niche anime were almost always OVA.
Adaptations can be niche, weird and interesting too, but original anime just tend to utilize the medium more fully and even push the boundaries occasionally. It really is a shame that almost no studios are willing to take the perceived risk of original concepts without an established following.
