| You enjoy a seasonal show? You're a corporate NPC. You criticize a fanservice scene? Suddenly you're a Puritan leftist plant. You defend a fanservice scene? Now you're a cope-maxxing incel with Freudian issues. Was it always like this? Were the old forums just as unhinged, or has the TikTok/Twitter/YouTube algorithm turned anime discourse into a conspiracy-laced minefield of hot takes and schizophrenic lore? |
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| Just let me schizopost, I will return to reality later. |
 |
| I don't think so since tourists didn't know much about anime (other than the super mainstream ones) back then, so they didn't care. I didn't personally use the forums way back then obviously (2000s and early 2010s), but I read some of the older forum posts, and most people were respectful of each other's opinions (even though they might disagree). There was no war (or atleast the debates were healthy), just people basically saying "This isn't my cup of tea, but you do you". Nowadays, it's all about throwing mud at one another, and the tourists started it. Criticizing a show is completely fine, but judging it's fans for just liking it isn't, because it's fiction. Then again, being a "degenerate" or "prude" doesn't determine whether someone is a tourist or not. Nowadays, some "degenerates" also get easily triggered by a single criticism about their favourite show, so maybe they're "tourists" too? |
SoumyaUkil73Jun 16, 11:20 PM
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| No. You have to remember. 20 years ago there were barriers to watching anime. Streaming making anime accessible brought in people who really aren't the most intelligent to anime. Even the guy above me born in 03 has no idea. Anime discussions should have never left message boards. The average discourse was better even if we weren't all knowing either back then |
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| I think you and deg are the only ones here with schizophrenia. |
| その目だれの目？ |
| People have been arguing since the beginning of time. It has shifted increasingly to being watered down and without any substance. People used to argue about more things. Now all everyone does is compare max, say, 20 different shows, and they don't know anything outside of it. Sure, there were barriers, like the post above me talks about. Everyone had to band together. But humans will always find a way to pivot against one another. They were arguing about their Evangelion anime waifu back then, too. Do you have any idea what it feels like to hear someone say they don't know who Haruhi Suzumiya is? In the words of Kyon: But Haruhi is Haruhi. This isn't real. They don't remember Haruhi Suzumiya. This can't be happening. How can anybody forget somebody like her? We have lost the true warriors. They know nothing about the endless eight arc, the eternal battle of moe, and they all still think that Ouran High School Host Club is capable of getting a season 2. |
| There have always been arguments on anime forums, but the difference is and was that other places had mods who more actively participate in the community and enforce their rules. Even if I we didn't always see eye-to-eye on things, I still had respect for the mods trying to curate an actual community. On MAL, it's a free-for-all, anything goes mudslinging contest where serial rule breakers never get punished. A lot of times, discussions are a bunch of people who don't have much in common with each other talking past each other, because "Anime Discussion" is a broad tent where people with various anime interests that don't overlap and who often hate each other are forced to be in the same place. That's also why you get so many vapid threads from people watching anime purely for the sake of inflating their view counts, threads which are so abstracted from what specific shows are actually about that they are effectively meaningless. |
| Culture warriors didn't really exist when Haruhi was popular. We all understood anime was Japanese. We all understood fanservice was an essential part of anime. The hoodweebs, the feminists, the Christians all want to impose on anime. This is a relatively recent thing. |
|
Dragevard said: Was it always like this? Were the old forums just as unhinged, or has the TikTok/Twitter/YouTube algorithm turned anime discourse into a conspiracy-laced minefield of hot takes and schizophrenic lore? The internet in general does not provide a place for nuanced discussion. Under the veil of anonymity people are more impolite and rashly jump to conclusion about each other. derangedx29 said: No. You have to remember. 20 years ago there were barriers to watching anime. Streaming making anime accessible brought in people who really aren't the most intelligent to anime. Even the guy above me born in 03 has no idea. Anime discussions should have never left message boards. The average discourse was better even if we weren't all knowing either back then You mentioned in another post you were 32 years old if my memory serves me right. I seriously think you are not qualified to assess the situation 20 years ago as the biggest concern of your 12 years old self must have been a way to find easily accessable pornographic material. |
   |
Reply to Hiyajo-san
Dragevard said:
Was it always like this? Were the old forums just as unhinged, or has the TikTok/Twitter/YouTube algorithm turned anime discourse into a conspiracy-laced minefield of hot takes and schizophrenic lore?
Was it always like this? Were the old forums just as unhinged, or has the TikTok/Twitter/YouTube algorithm turned anime discourse into a conspiracy-laced minefield of hot takes and schizophrenic lore?
The internet in general does not provide a place for nuanced discussion. Under the veil of anonymity people are more impolite and rashly jump to conclusion about each other.
derangedx29 said:
No. You have to remember. 20 years ago there were barriers to watching anime.
Streaming making anime accessible brought in people who really aren't the most intelligent to anime.
Even the guy above me born in 03 has no idea.
Anime discussions should have never left message boards. The average discourse was better even if we weren't all knowing either back then
No. You have to remember. 20 years ago there were barriers to watching anime.
Streaming making anime accessible brought in people who really aren't the most intelligent to anime.
Even the guy above me born in 03 has no idea.
Anime discussions should have never left message boards. The average discourse was better even if we weren't all knowing either back then
You mentioned in another post you were 32 years old if my memory serves me right. I seriously think you are not qualified to assess the situation 20 years ago as the biggest concern of your 12 years old self must have been a way to find easily accessable pornographic material.
| @Hiyajo-san nah. I was browsing anime message boards WAY more than I was looking for porn. A lot of things you see now simply do not exist. |
|
| And now that I think about it. I was browsing anime message boards WAY more than I was watching anime. It was hard to find anime. I once spent 3 full days trying to torrent Mushishi to no avail. Talking about the limited amount of anime I watched back then and titles that most fans today had never heard of was exciting too. |
|
| you're an embarrassment who loves slut moe blobs and whores, the anime you like are putrid and made by parkinson patients and insane asylum people. You're a clown and your place is at the circus. |
    |
| I personally don't know. But it's online anime shit so most likely as a lot of fans that want to talk online are fucking schizo. In the good and bad ways |
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| Look at all the Misty vs May discussions on pokemon forums from 20 years ago. |
 |
| I think there are very weak discussions on here. I just make a quick post and leave. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 |
| Anime message boards have always had a high percentage of people who don't go outside and interact with regular humans as part of their everyday routine. So yeah, a lot of the unstated rules of social discourse do get bypassed. On the plus side, they do tend to know a lot about anime. |
| Pre COVID you could safely say which waifu is your favorite without anyone googling her chronological age just to call you a creep. |
 |
| I guess it became one after Gamergate. |
| Well I dunno, bor — made me account and next thing I know, it’s like I walked into a full-blown civil war. East vs West, dub vs sub, old vs new — feels like no one's happy unless they're arguin'! Was anime chat always this much of a battlefield, or did someone spike the fanbase tea? |
| I don't know about old anime discussions so I have no idea about this post. |
| In the earliest days, in the 80s, before the internet, things were a lot calmer. It was a much smaller community and it was mostly hardcore computer nerds. Moderators weren't afraid of giving trolls the old heavy-ho in a hurry, so the discourse, even if it got heated, was never the level of toxicity you see today. Then came the big online dial-up services like Compuserve and AOL, where anyone who could scratch their ass could create a forum and often did. That's where things started to get ugly, although there were many decent anime forums. Toxic birds of a feather would flock together, from that point onwards. You had to be diplomatic in what you said and how you said it and who you said it to. These services opened up Internet access to the masses eventually. Then it became a free for all, once HTML, Netscape browser and Apache server made it fairly simple for anyone with a little motivation to create their own websites. It's all been downhill since then. |
joemaamahJun 17, 9:38 AM
Reply to ComeInReiAsuka
Culture warriors didn't really exist when Haruhi was popular.
We all understood anime was Japanese. We all understood fanservice was an essential part of anime.
The hoodweebs, the feminists, the Christians all want to impose on anime.
This is a relatively recent thing.
We all understood anime was Japanese. We all understood fanservice was an essential part of anime.
The hoodweebs, the feminists, the Christians all want to impose on anime.
This is a relatively recent thing.
| @ComeInReiAsuka Someone is very ill informed. |
| There is no point engaging any serious debate over the Internet, let's be honest. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 |
| "Has online anime discussions always been a schizo battlefield?" Yes. |
 |
| This is why you don't engage in debates online. Especially if you already know the truth, and it is a waste of time telling the truth to delusional fools. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 |
| I don't engage in debates. I know damn well what is the truth. The masses just aren't able to accept the truth. The masses are comforted by their lies. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 |
Reply to Lucifrost
I think you and deg are the only ones here with schizophrenia.
| @Lucifrost I don't think being an attention seeking troll falls under schizophrenia. |
Reply to ComeInReiAsuka
Culture warriors didn't really exist when Haruhi was popular.
We all understood anime was Japanese. We all understood fanservice was an essential part of anime.
The hoodweebs, the feminists, the Christians all want to impose on anime.
This is a relatively recent thing.
We all understood anime was Japanese. We all understood fanservice was an essential part of anime.
The hoodweebs, the feminists, the Christians all want to impose on anime.
This is a relatively recent thing.
| @ComeInReiAsuka I wasn't around in the community until Fall 2014, but from what I've seen, even back in 2012 the Toonami core fans were running rampant around the anime fandom, all talking about how they thought Cowboy Bebop was "the greatest anime ever". The Christians were very much around back in the day and censoring anime, like with 4kids. The new performative activists came around 2016 when everything got all political in the world, and the censors were around too. However, since 2019, they are now trying to do this from inside the fandom. I will agree that in many ways, anime discussions have gotten worse. From what I've seen, it appears that anime generally has trended to get better until 2016, when heavy Western influence kicked in. Luckily, in 2023, the creators of Onimai decided to stand up to these localizers, get to be the most popular anime in over a decade, and inspired some other studios to abandon Western influence for some time, giving us other great anime like Oshi no Ko and MahoAko.  |
| @Dragevard 2 answers all based on the ERA i was living in as an American anime-only otaku. 1990-2000 "Has online anime discussions always been a schizo battlefield?" no. because if you weren't on Yahoo! Groups or a dedicated geeky anime cartoons superheros comics 'baby otaku geek' BBS in that decade... you didn't know diddlysquat about anime online discussions. oh and MySpace. because... anime was a 'holy gdamn tiny freaking niche' interest group in that decade. post 2000? same question. YES! because with the explosion of Napster and fansubs and Funimation and Cartoon Network and Crunchyroll and other grey-web streaming anime websites and magnet and torrent and blablablabla... anime went MAINSTREAM USA. slowly but surely. Pokemon. Digimon. Funimation's syndicated broadcast TV episodes of Dragonball English dubs. yes. wacky bonkers crazy nutso everybody everywhere saying the gdamdest things. seriously. you think TODAY's internet discussions on anime are effed up in the brainpan? imagine NO CENSORSHIP! NO FCC INVOLVEMENT IN THE INTERNET! NO LEGAL EAGLE LAWS! NO TERMS OF SERVICE other than AOL/MSN/nothing restricting what you put up (porn!) or what you infected folks' computers with (anti virus? what is this magic you speak of strange person from the future???). |
just an ol school American otaku enjoyin the life. don't sass me kiddies, i've been otaku probably since before you were born. leave me in peace and i won't bother you either.  |
Reply to Jellyf
People have been arguing since the beginning of time. It has shifted increasingly to being watered down and without any substance. People used to argue about more things. Now all everyone does is compare max, say, 20 different shows, and they don't know anything outside of it. Sure, there were barriers, like the post above me talks about. Everyone had to band together. But humans will always find a way to pivot against one another. They were arguing about their Evangelion anime waifu back then, too.
Do you have any idea what it feels like to hear someone say they don't know who Haruhi Suzumiya is? In the words of Kyon: But Haruhi is Haruhi. This isn't real. They don't remember Haruhi Suzumiya. This can't be happening. How can anybody forget somebody like her?
We have lost the true warriors. They know nothing about the endless eight arc, the eternal battle of moe, and they all still think that Ouran High School Host Club is capable of getting a season 2.
Do you have any idea what it feels like to hear someone say they don't know who Haruhi Suzumiya is? In the words of Kyon: But Haruhi is Haruhi. This isn't real. They don't remember Haruhi Suzumiya. This can't be happening. How can anybody forget somebody like her?
We have lost the true warriors. They know nothing about the endless eight arc, the eternal battle of moe, and they all still think that Ouran High School Host Club is capable of getting a season 2.
| @Jellyf waves hands up in the air jumping around. YES WE OF THE 1990'S ARE STILL ALIVE BUBBA! I'M HERE! some of us 'ol fart otaku' are still around from before the WWW of the 2000's NAPSTER etc. mainstreamed anime into the USA like that one illegal drug with a name starting with H in a vein. |
| just an ol school American otaku enjoyin the life. don't sass me kiddies, i've been otaku probably since before you were born. leave me in peace and i won't bother you either. |
Reply to Hiyajo-san
Dragevard said:
Was it always like this? Were the old forums just as unhinged, or has the TikTok/Twitter/YouTube algorithm turned anime discourse into a conspiracy-laced minefield of hot takes and schizophrenic lore?
Was it always like this? Were the old forums just as unhinged, or has the TikTok/Twitter/YouTube algorithm turned anime discourse into a conspiracy-laced minefield of hot takes and schizophrenic lore?
The internet in general does not provide a place for nuanced discussion. Under the veil of anonymity people are more impolite and rashly jump to conclusion about each other.
derangedx29 said:
No. You have to remember. 20 years ago there were barriers to watching anime.
Streaming making anime accessible brought in people who really aren't the most intelligent to anime.
Even the guy above me born in 03 has no idea.
Anime discussions should have never left message boards. The average discourse was better even if we weren't all knowing either back then
No. You have to remember. 20 years ago there were barriers to watching anime.
Streaming making anime accessible brought in people who really aren't the most intelligent to anime.
Even the guy above me born in 03 has no idea.
Anime discussions should have never left message boards. The average discourse was better even if we weren't all knowing either back then
You mentioned in another post you were 32 years old if my memory serves me right. I seriously think you are not qualified to assess the situation 20 years ago as the biggest concern of your 12 years old self must have been a way to find easily accessable pornographic material.
| @Hiyajo-san 49 here this year. got started with anime in 1990. yeahhh i was 14y/o when i first watched rented VHS tapes of anime dubbed. i had a PC. i had dialup. i was on Yahoo! Groups and BBS boards for anime back then. i don't 100% agree with what you said or what you quoted... but the folks' quotes are PARTIALLY true. the OLD internet gathering spots for anime MySpace and such were MUCH more calm and polite than what i've run into POST 2000. |
| just an ol school American otaku enjoyin the life. don't sass me kiddies, i've been otaku probably since before you were born. leave me in peace and i won't bother you either. |
| When have forums or comment sections on various websites ever not been this way is my question? I've kind of just become numb to it all honestly. @_@ |
 |
| Have you ever seen me engage in debate with anyone? That has never happened. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 |
| Last sentence is definitely a very significant factor. It doesn't help that short-form garbage like X and TikTok have conditioned people into thinking that reading anything longer than 2 sentences is some sort of agonizing labour, let alone typing them. The short-form format also tends to promote and be a breeding ground for extremism due to the reduced space you have to articulate an opinion. It pushes folks towards making radical, sweeping statements they wouldn't have otherwise. Which then is replied to by also radical and sweeping statements, and the process continues from there. I do wish people would learn or in some cases re-learn how to properly post on a forum instead of bringing that sort of stuff here. |
MaythewsJun 17, 1:48 PM
       |
| There is nothing really to debate about. Especially when you realize everything is carefully controlled by the government. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 |
| All internet discussions are schizo battlefield, when you understand that you truly can begin to enjoy internet. You also unlock the new class: the Troll |
 |
Reply to KiliianSleipnir
@Hiyajo-san 49 here this year. got started with anime in 1990. yeahhh i was 14y/o when i first watched rented VHS tapes of anime dubbed. i had a PC. i had dialup. i was on Yahoo! Groups and BBS boards for anime back then.
i don't 100% agree with what you said or what you quoted... but the folks' quotes are PARTIALLY true. the OLD internet gathering spots for anime MySpace and such were MUCH more calm and polite than what i've run into POST 2000.
i don't 100% agree with what you said or what you quoted... but the folks' quotes are PARTIALLY true. the OLD internet gathering spots for anime MySpace and such were MUCH more calm and polite than what i've run into POST 2000.
| @KiliianSleipnir This was mostly supposed to be a jab against derangedx29 who claims to know the situation with his omniscient age of 32 years. You are way more qualified to assess the situation if you have been there from the beginning. I guess back then the discourse had not been brutalised yet as people valued connecting with over people via a new technology over a shared hobby. |
|
Reply to KenaiPhoenix
All internet discussions are schizo battlefield, when you understand that you truly can begin to enjoy internet.
You also unlock the new class: the Troll
You also unlock the new class: the Troll
| @KenaiPhoenix it is easy to not engage in flame wars with other people online. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 |
| More schizo battlefield, less roleplaying |
Nothing amazing ever happens here. Everything is ordinary. |
| Yeah.... I remember some fun discussions on youtube in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Though I used to think the community was more accepting. If MAL is to go off, there are a lot of extremes, and I don't feel very at home with "anime fans", regardless of where their views lay. Granted...maybe that's just a sign to cut down on fandom interactions, and just enjoy the medium. That's pretty much what I did before creating a MAL. |
Reply to DesuMaiden
@KenaiPhoenix it is easy to not engage in flame wars with other people online.
| @DesuMaiden Yeah, but where is the fun? I dont pay the internet to read other people opinions |
|
Reply to KenaiPhoenix
@DesuMaiden Yeah, but where is the fun? I dont pay the internet to read other people opinions
| @KenaiPhoenix engaging in flame wars might get you banned BTW. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 |
Reply to DesuMaiden
@KenaiPhoenix engaging in flame wars might get you banned BTW.
| @DesuMaiden But we are here to discuss (AD, CD, etc), a flame war is just troll vs troll This is totally different |
|
Reply to KenaiPhoenix
@DesuMaiden But we are here to discuss (AD, CD, etc), a flame war is just troll vs troll
This is totally different
This is totally different
| @KenaiPhoenix I make a few comments here and there, but I never engage in any serious debate. |
| Here is my Pixiv account of my hentai drawings..... https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/104739065 |
| I actually had paranoid schizophrenia, complete with like split personality and voices and everything. I think especially in the analog era people who were different were inflicted with illnesses that primarily reflect mainstream people's fears and frustrations and interests. Trump for example appeared pretty frequently in my visions, and to the outside of course he is just some regular WASP guy or whatever, but deep down I think he is essentially a paranoid schizophrenic, who believes that representations in media are like real things that substantially affect you in real life, and believes in the lost civilization of Mu and that aliens came to earth and a wide variety of ideas that were introduced to me. I really don't actually believe any of those things, of course, and he you know technically doesn't believe any of those things. Anyway, my point is though that I'm really a video gamer and only picked up anime because of schizophrenia altering my identity, and reflecting back the Anime community is just insane (again, not really the people who make it and watch it for fun, but mainstream types who have serious problems coming here to make the anime community a place for them to vent their frustration) I don't think the OP was referring to literal schizophrenia levels of chaos, but in the event they were, no, it's not at that level. That's reserved for the gaming sphere and basically only me. Everyone I know who wasn't Canadian who was into games in the 80s and 90s is in mega level chaos situations, whenever I encounter them at all. Anime discussion, not being as crazy as games, is just like I was saying, insane, but not schizophrenic levels. That's true even back in the day because I watched anime and it was clear you were getting into something really crazy, but not really on the same level as games. And there's nothing crazier than games (currently), so that's where the buck stops. Anime is a distinctly grade level 2 rating in the 5 levels of insane sub-community chaos meter. The BDSM scene for example is another area where it's level 1, there isn't really like a place where anyone meaningfully discusses anything because everyone is so berserk over the whole subject matter in the first place. Comic discussions in my opinion would be like level 4 or something like that. (1 being the highest, 5 the lowest). Genuinely assessing and evaluating Germany's side in WW2 is like level 3. So yeah level 2 is really high but not the max, and I think that was true the whole time. |
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