| I'd say MAL gets one of these threads monthly, or at least on the same topic. As you said being elitist it's about mentality more than the type of shows you watch. I just finished Urusei Yatsura (1981-86) and really enjoyed it, same with Sailor Moon's first season (1992-93) and Mahou no Yousei Persia (1984-85), I can assure you they didn't made me an elitist. The myth about elitist is that they're all into old shows or difficult and psychological ones, truth is I've never met one of those on MAL, just a couple on 4chan but being a dick there is a requirement. On the other hand those who attack "elitists" are closer to being one themselves, as they often try to ostracize people based on what type of shows they enjoy. The sooner we get rid of the false premise that elitism equals anime taste, the better it is. |
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simon443 said: I'd say MAL gets one of these threads monthly, or at least on the same topic. More like Every. Goddamn. Week. I really wish there was a way to filter out "elitism" or "elitists" from the forums, it's such a big meme. When people say "elitist" they mean "some asshole needlessly asserting that his opinions are better" You can have refined opinions and be critical without being the "elitist" that all of these videos are complaining about. They aren't saying that there are too many anime-buffs, they're complaining that there's too many narcissistic dweebs on the internet. Just don't be an condescending prick and you're all set. |
LemurLime said: Well you can pay youtubers to shut up about them. Or ThatAnimeSnob to retire. That will put an end to them I think. Good thing I never watched an anituber video in my entire life then. Somehow the more I hear about those people the less I wanna watch them. |
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| Some people are just born retarded and they grow up retarded and then they join MAL and pretend that elitism is an attribute attached to certain shows and by extension to their fans instead of just being an attitude problem that people from many different fandoms can suffer. Sadly these people do exist and yes, old anime and its fans are one of their primary targets for bullying. I've literally seen some of the nicest MAL users being bullied out of the site because they liked old anime and made threads wanting to talk about them and were mostly met with vile hatred and accusations of elitism and worse. The good news is that the worst times in that regard seem to be over and the mindset of 'anti-elitists' to just call anyone elitist who has certain favorites, no matter how they are actually handling themselves, is becoming less popular and more people realize the stupidity of the elitism meme and start calling out people whenever they use it to randomly attack people. It's probably still relatively widespread, because stupid ideas always are, but you should have seen AD a couple of years ago. It was much worse in that regard. Of course people with actual elitist mindsets do still exist, they always have, but they were never that huge in number and a lot of them are simply fanboys of specific series and behave elitist about them, in the sense of looking down at anyone who can't 'recognize' the greatness of their favorite. Series-specific elitism is still pretty common, but the generalized type is rare and a lot of the times people are just trolling when they behave like that. And while I've certainly met a handful of oldfag elitists over the years, the one thing that always bothers me is they always quickly get called out and attacked for being oldfag elitists, but their modernfag counterparts don't get half as much flack despite being much, much more common. It can sometimes even feel like the anime community as a whole, the modern anime fandom as a whole is extremely elitist. If you read how modern anime fans talk about older anime, it's often very offensive and borderline aggressive even without any provocation whatsoever. They don't treat their taste for modern anime as a preference, but as simply being based on modern anime having objectively better qualities and it just being 'natural' and 'logical' to prefer them. By extension that also means that to them fans of old anime are somehow 'defect' because they don't see what they think of as 'the obvious, objective superiority of modern anime' and opt for 'inferior' old anime instead. And because they can't believe that it's just a matter of preference, they regularly make up shit about old anime fans just pretending to like these shows, to be pretentious or faking their taste to seem sophisticated, basically anything to attack their credibility along with their taste. Some of them don't even believe anyone could legimately enjoy or even prefer older anime, just because they are old and oldness as seen as an inherent, unfixable flaw. If that's not extremely elitist, then I don't know what is. And the issue is not that a small handful of people think like that. It's that a surprising amount of people think like that even if not that many explicitly voice these opinions. But it's obvious if you look at how the community reacts to them vs how it reacts to oldfag elitists. Someone asserting the objective superiority of modern anime always gets much less backlash from the community and many more '+1' comments than anyone trying to do the same with old anime. That's because there is this deep-seated belief that humanity and everything we do is naturall progressing towards something better over time, so of course preferring new stuff is only natural, of course it has to be objectively better. Nevermind that it's factually not true and all their arguments about animation quality are generally bullshit (it is much more related to budget, talent and how stressful the schedule is rather than to the year of production. Movies always have better animation than TV anime for example, and that includes a ton of movies from the 80s that are animated better than most if not all 2010 TV Series.). And when they start arguing that art and artstyles, the most subjective thing there is, has become objectively better over time, that's where I start laughing maniacally and my sanity is leaving me. It's unbelievable to me how many people actually seriously make the argument that art has become just 'better' over time, instead of just different, having a different appeal. That to me is the single most elitist thing that the majority of the anime community seems to agree on, and it's so preposterously stupid that it makes me want to opt out of humanity. And the great irony in all of that is, that the same people who are so convinced that art quality can objectively be measured, are the first ones to attack fans of old anime for being elitist when they dare to voice that, to them, old anime actually looks better. It can be really tough navigating this community as someone who doesn't hate old anime, because the prejudice against them is everywhere and by extension also a lot of prejudice against their fans. Modern anime fans are extremely quick to assert that someone has an elitist agenda if he mentions liking or even preferring modern anime, no matter how nice or polite he is about it. I've seen many threads that just wanted to peacefully talk about old anime be derailed by modern fans attacking the OP for no real reason while maintaining that OP is actually the bad guy. At the same time old anime fans are constantly confronted with the passive elitism of modern anime fans, because just the way they talk about old anime is often so condescending even if they aren't attacking anyone. It's a 'casual elitism' of sorts, mostly unprovoked and they probably don't even mean anything by it, it's just that their views on old anime are so inherently baised and elitist that even if they jut state their normal opinion on them it comes across as aggressive. For example the classic addendum in recommendation threads that says something like 'Please no old anime, they're so fugly it hurts my eyes.' Not 'because I prefer the modern look', no, the preference is always expressed by making old anime sound objectively worse, ugly and whatnot. Like it's a fact of life and anyone who would disagree has no aesthetic sensibilities. Small things like that, if they happen 10 times a day, every day, without provocation, no matter what the topic at hand is, just being thrown in casually and being treated as factual knowledge by a majority of the community, they create an atmosphere of hostility towards old anime fans, even if some of the newer fans are not aware of what they're doing because they are so convinced that it IS an objective difference in quality and their preference is just 'natural'. It can make the community feel really unwelcoming and even hostile to fans of older anime. Like the whole community is collectively shitting on your taste and feeling good about it, like it's not even rude or offensive. And given that I'm not too surprised that a lot of the people who do like older anime leave the forums because they don't want to constantly have to defend their taste against prejudices and attacks. Because, and that's another big thing, you don't even need to be prefer older anime to be treated like an oldfag elitist. Often it is enough to not hate them and not see them as inferior. I should know, because I love anime from every decade but have been put into the 'oldfag elitist' corner in many discussions just because I didn't join the collective efforts to shit on them and paint them as superior. Because I clap back with facts and experience that most of the people making these claims about old anime do not have. Anyway, sorry for the rambling but this is a topic close to my heart and really an issue that I think modern anime fans aren't very aware of, but as a fan of old anime and cel animation, it's impossible not to notice once you're active on these forums for a while. It used to be even worse, but it's still far from a friendly environment for fans of old anime. |
| I probably regret this post by now. |
| I'd rather avoid using the term elitism altogether. Like every other buzzword out there the more you read it the less sense it makes compared to its original definition (in this case) and I can't get over how silly it sounds when used in the context of your preferences in media. And of course having specific preferences doesn't make you a "moe/whatever elitist", and the few times I've seen that kind of title it's always been in an ironic way. As far as my experience goes is far more common to find people who deliberately avoids older shows based on preconceptions and very few actual past experiences. I might've shared similar thoughts when I was younger, so it's normal I guess. With the difference that I've never verbalized those in forums and when it actually came the day I gave older shows a fair chance in the form of trying many genres, decades... It was an acquired taste in the way I progressively watched older things and found my favorite artstyles and authors in the process. When I come back to the looks of current anime I can see why some fans complain that part of that uniqueness has been lost but wanting to get the same out of it is a mislead complain, so I definitely don't subscribe to those ideas. For better or worse things change and I'd rather focus in the positives and things I do care about. And there're plenty of old anime anyway, so odds are you won't be running out of them any time soon. Do people automatically think of you as an elitist if say you enjoy older (80s/90s/00s) anime? And no, I don't recall anyone calling me one but if it ever happens I might actually take it as a compliment. |
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| Based on this logic everyone becomes an elitist someday. They just need to wait until they get older. Great! |
| I've never been called an elitist for enjoying old anime but I display typical elitist behavior since I tend to look down on people who only watch stuff from the 2010s |
| MEA·MENTVLA·INGENS·EST |
| Watching and enjoying retro anime? No, it does not make one an elitist. but Acting all 'Judgy Von Holier than thou' and crapping over other people's tastes? Yes that makes you an Elitist. Not to mention a cunt |
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| While i prefer older anime over anime nowadays i still like some newer ones, they are on average just worse. Anti Elitism is the moire annoying thing imo of course if one prefers a show from the 80s above that one big generic show you are a elitist ;) Disliking anything for being to "old" or to "different" is pretty idiotic, this goes for old anime, black and white movies or silent films everything has some great stuff some more some less and there are always people that prefer one over another. Just watch everything from a story, theming and character perspective if those are good i dont care about the time period or looks of the thing i watch, there are so many older shows or movies that look "worse" but have way better cinematography than most of the newer movies or shows. Elitism is Myth change my mind. |
-Mullerio-Nov 22, 2019 2:21 PM
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LemurLime said: Get older? Where you get that? My point was that is has nothing to do with age but attitude itself. Ah sorry, maybe I didn't express myself understandably. I didn't mean you. I was talking about the people who say that watching older shows is elitism. Based on their logic they will become elitists themselves someday. Because then the shows they like(d) will be old, too. I agree that elitism is not about age or the shows you watch but about the mentality you have. |
LemurLime said: penmel said: Based on this logic everyone becomes an elitist someday. They just need to wait until they get older. Great! Get older? Where you get that? My point was that is has nothing to do with age but attitude itself. His point was every anime becomes old eventually, anime that are new that we enjoy will eventually become old decades from now. Attributing elitism to enjoying old shows means everyone will become an elitist because every show is destined to become old. Not completely sure how I feel about that point, but I do agree that liking old anime is not a sign of being an elitist. Liking the original Gundam doesn't really give someone that feeling of compulsion to look down on newer viewers. There might be people that are already elitists that feel like they have to watch and enjoy old anime, but the cause wasn't the anime itself. You're right in that anyone can be elitist, but that isn't caused by the type of anime itself, otherwise we'd have FAR more elitists. |
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| Personally I don't think older anime are any better or worse than newer anime. Both eras have their own great, average and just plain shitty shows. There's just a lot more anime being produced now than before, so the shitty ones are a lot more noticeable. It's all pretty subjective anyways. |
LemurLime said: ...moe elitists, to ecchi elitists... Elitism is a word that gets thrown around a lot and like... people have different definitions so whatever, but unless we're going to define an elitist as anyone with a preference for one type of anime over another, I can't see I see any kind of major problem of moe or ecchi elitism. The closest is people who say that those things are more "anime" than other stuff. Like when people say something with a very definitely not moe art style "not real anime" or some such. So I guess that kind of counts. But putting those people in the same boat as the kinds of people who tend to be elitist against ecchi / moe is like how people compare Nazis with Trump supporters (sorry for the politics, but I think it's a good analogy). Moe / ecchi fans tend to be the much nicer side of the community in my opinion. I think if you're going to talk about elitism, it's important to recognize where it's a legit problem rather than just saying "well there's all sorts of elitists", which, while true, is kind of besides the point in conversations about elitism. You make a good point about era elitists though. I got downvoted on Reddit the other day for daring the suggest old anime are better. It was a short, jokey statement so maybe people misinterpreted it as being a certain way, but it wasn't overtly aggressive or in anyway overtly elitist. I just genuinely think the last 6 years, compared the 6 years prior, there is a noticable difference in quality. But there is 100% a kind of contrarian reverse-hipster mentality that I think comes from the large influx of new fans recently where they have no reverence for the old classics and they think people who talk about the classics of anime (even more recent stuff like Steins Gate) are basically olg geezers that need to get with the times. There's an interesting parrallel with how the new generation of late teens to early twnties people in general have this really toxic kind of "old people are dumb and we need to change everything" attitude. But maybe it's just my age talking. |
| “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” -Friedrich Nietzsche Aggregate scoring is bad for the anime fandom |
| The elitist is that fictional being in MAL everyone likes talking shit about but no one actually can point their fingers to. |
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LemurLime said: Orhunaa said: The elitist is that fictional being in MAL everyone likes talking shit about but no one actually can point their fingers to. Actually it is very easy to point the main one out. I point to ThatAnimeSnob, lmao. I'm not well-acquainted with anime YouTube channels. I did talk about it in the context of MAL in particular, have I not? |
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| I feel like people who call out elitists are usually pretty fast on the trigger and do some pretty crazy mental gymnastics linking stuff together and assuming stuff quickly, and are pretty close minded too. Like if they were insecure about their taste in anime and usually mention those unknown elitists a lot. You seem to mention AnimeSnob OP, I've seen some of his vids and I think he's fine in general in his more serious videos, but in the rant videos, especially about Chibi and ForneverWorld he clearly changes his "Internet Persona" to get more attention which I mean is supposedly not cool but those other Youtubers aren't doing any better circejerking around shonen anime which pleases the younger audience which usually is the more close minded. To be honest he is pretty elitist but it definitively is not because he likes older anime, but more because he aggressively dislike people who hype up recent stuff, which to some extent I can understand and I think everyone can if they dislike a certain show, it's just that they stay silent on forums and what not and I do too, I don't want to seem rude to some people and then get called elitist lol, he probably just got over that for that attention. Could you tell me more about his presence on MAL, I didn't know he used to be there, also if there is any other reason why you think he would be an elitist, AnimeSnob definitively is a weird anime Youtuber. Tbh I usually dislike Youtube anime content usually just trying to please the lowest common denominator. |
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| I like what I like, why should I have to cater to other people's opinions. Although I enjoy things prior to the 90's and 00's than what we currently have. |
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| No, you are an elitist when you start calling all new anime shit without giving it a chance while praising old anime like if all of them were perfect, not just because you watch old anime. |
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BiDiGiN said: I feel like people who call out elitists are usually pretty fast on the trigger and do some pretty crazy mental gymnastics linking stuff together and assuming stuff quickly, and are pretty close minded too. Like if they were insecure about their taste in anime and usually mention those unknown elitists a lot. You seem to mention AnimeSnob OP, I've seen some of his vids and I think he's fine in general in his more serious videos, but in the rant videos, especially about Chibi and ForneverWorld he clearly changes his "Internet Persona" to get more attention which I mean is supposedly not cool but those other Youtubers aren't doing any better circejerking around shonen anime which pleases the younger audience which usually is the more close minded. To be honest he is pretty elitist but it definitively is not because he likes older anime, but more because he aggressively dislike people who hype up recent stuff, which to some extent I can understand and I think everyone can if they dislike a certain show, it's just that they stay silent on forums and what not and I do too, I don't want to seem rude to some people and then get called elitist lol, he probably just got over that for that attention. Could you tell me more about his presence on MAL, I didn't know he used to be there, also if there is any other reason why you think he would be an elitist, AnimeSnob definitively is a weird anime Youtuber. Tbh I usually dislike Youtube anime content usually just trying to please the lowest common denominator. I agree with you but his cancerous attitude is a main contributor to why retro watchers are seen as elitists, his "Retro always wins" mentality for example. He doesn't even review much good retro titles to begin with! He used to be a part of MAL, before he got tired of being constantly banned for starting trouble in user's comment sections. All of his reviews were on MAL too. In 2015 he requested in an YouTube video that MAL deletes his channel, as he claimed they refused to before because they gained traffic from his content. They listened and deleted him and that was the end on here. From then on he only posts on Reddit's /a/ and nothing else. Supposedly he began posting on MAL because he was banned by the biggest Greek anime website for doing what he always did, start pointless drama and harass users over anime. https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1602186 Here is an old MAL thread discussing him if you are interested.  And a bit of his older attitude... I'm just gonna say, no hate towards the guy but he's been at it for over a decade now and hasn't changed one bit. At one point his YT channel did hit 17 thousand subs and was even featured in WatchMojo's top 10 anime reviewers (only because he shamelessly promoted the hell out of himself and told his fan-base to up vote him), but you know what he did? He made fun of a kid who failed to kill himself, saying that he would have respected the guy if he at least had gone through it to the end.Yeah. Here is the video by the way. His channel got deleted after. He is using his back up channel now. So yeah. |
removed-userNov 22, 2019 4:46 PM
LemurLime said: Orhunaa said: I'm not well-acquainted with anime YouTube channels. I did talk about it in the context of MAL in particular, have I not? Well if you were around you would know that he used to be pretty active on MAL to the point mods would freak out over his daily drama and cancerous fanbase harassing people on here. Now you do. Oh is that so? In any case unfair labeling of people as elitists far outnumbers the few genuine ones here. |
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