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Forum - View topicAnswerman - Is Anime Fandom More Dysfunctional Than In The Past?
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Watanabefan
 Posts: 152 |
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Yeah I get the sense there have always been jerks and creepers in the fandom, but just like every other aspect of pop culture, the proliferation of the internet and social media has amplified those voices tenfold, to the point where they now give everyone else a bad name.
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Lynx Raven Raide
 Posts: 412 Location: Central Coast, AU |
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I was about to say this, but you beat me to it. Social media has given people a more easier platform to vent their spleen so what was localised whining before has been dialed up to 11 and seems more noticeable because social media provides a larger audience |
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Brand
 Posts: 1029 |
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Another old timer here and yeah I agree with Justin. There might be more bad behavior today but not because people are behaving more badly there are simply way more people.
In the 90s there were only so many people on the internet and only so many of those people were anime fans. Now, anyone with a smart phone has the net and anime is much more visible to the general public. |
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5506 Location: Iscandar |
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From what Justin says anime fandom has the same good and bad things it had 2 decades ago. I became a hardcore fan in 2012, and I used to clash a lot with other fans in online forums. The solution I came up is too avoid interacting with fans unwilling to listen to others' opinions. I also try to avoid forums that turn toxic.
Still, interacting with other fans can be fun and rewarding if you are smart about it. |
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xchampion
 Posts: 370 Location: Idaho Falls, Idaho |
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I was thinking about writing in a similar question, so I'm happy someone else did. My question was going to incorporate Netflix though. That seems to be the most toxic and divisive topic in the anime community at the moment. Whenever it comes up on any online forum (including here) the fighting gets nasty. The hate is immense. I would love Justin's opinion on that.
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1052 |
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It cuts both ways. The jerks are more noticeable because of the Internet, but that also empowers people to speak up about it. People are afraid to say anything if they think they're going to be the only one doing it, but the more people who are around, the more likely it becomes that someone will have the courage to do so, and once that happens you get a deluge of, "Yeah, that's right. We don't have to put up with this crap." |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4157 |
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And there it is, in a nutshell... nut's hell I mean. I'm a preInternet anime fan... yes, it did exist way back then; Dinosaurs did too, just not at the same time... and as an apparent outsider, I can say that lone nuts are one thing but given them a opportunity to collect and organize with likeminded people only to reinforce their opinion is not the best thing the Internet has handed to the world.
To me, this is like mistaking a forest fire for a campfire or am I the only one to notice the lack of self awareness on display here? People like to have their views validated, not challenged. Yes, I remember Newsgroups and I remember using the internet through more archaic methods which was entirely text based. Again, they were more civil because the interactivity was not real time and it was, unsurprisingly, more fact based than opinion based. |
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1897 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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The fandom has always been dysfunctional from my point of view which had only been amplified with the power of the Internet. I still have strong disagreements with people to this day regarding anime distribution and privilege. However, I don't let that get in my way of enjoying anime or seeking out moderation to said controversial topics. If we have disagreements, we eventually find moderation to those disagreements. Life is too short to be arguing over foreign cartoons.
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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And many places support anonymity, like this forum, which lets people spout off with little concern about any consequences. I'm all in favor of anonymity, but it does encourage trolling and the like.
People think it makes them look like cool radicals attacking large, relatively wealthy corporations like Netflix. Amazon's entry into anime has received mixed reviews as well. That said, I suspect "subs vs. dubs" continues to be more divisive than Netflix. Last edited by yuna49 on Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:17 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24142 |
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I've been an anime fan for far less time than Justin (just under 10 years now) but I would say the same in terms of not much changing. Mind you, I also have a very narrow view into the fandom in that virtually my entire perspective of it comes from what posters write here at ANN. I'm an old fart and none of my RL friends are into anime, I don't belong to any anime clubs and even on the rare occasion when I go to an anime convention (Anime North), I'm not actually interacting with other anime fans. I don't go to other sites or follow social media messages where people discuss anime. So if I have a skewed view of anime fandom, blame ANN!
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Tenebrae
Posts: 490 |
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I've been into anime/manga since the early nineties and with the rise of the web quickly gravitated towards the fandom's email lists and chatrooms. In my opinion, things were back then just as they are now, just the details of the discussion may have changed (but I suppose Rei vs Asuka still is Rei vs Asuka). I've also been a longtime regular on 4chan /a/ which is a pretty good cross-section of the fandom (despite some people's complete unwillingness to admit this) and I don't think I've seen much change there either. Most notable ones would just be the shows that dominate discussions and seasonal waifus.
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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Zero question that it's gotten better over the time I've been in the community, and I'm not even that old (Toonami kid, kind of took a break during the piracy years).
Am I seriously the only one to remember yaoi paddles? It used to be that sexual assaults with weapons were taken for granted and seen as an inevitable problem at conventions and other large fan gatherings. That the worst we have now is photography is a huge testament to how much things have improved. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2175 |
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I agree with the other posts that suggest anime isn't magical and doesn't remove all human flaws from the viewer. The same human stuff that impacts everything else in life still shows up in anime fans.
Information and digital stuff is easier to spread... so maybe there are more mean meme pics posted than when it took like 8 minutes to download a 200kb image on dial up, but people not being nice to each other isn't some recent development introduced to global society in like 2009 |
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belvadeer
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Subs vs dubs is an eternal war. I doubt it will ever end; not until we all speak some homogenized super language anyway.
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Chrono1000
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The main issue with anime is that it has a wide range of fans with vastly different interests. The people that like Free are generally not the same people that like Monster Musume. That has always caused some friction in the anime community but the demonization of male sexual desire has recently made it a bit more heated.
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