Forum Settings
Forums

Is the impact of COVID on the anime community overrated?

New
Aug 2, 8:49 PM
#1

Offline
Feb 2014
5798
Look, I likely dislike normies more than all of you combined, but I can't understand this "Waaaahhh, we used to be Animeperborea, then came COVID and now we are in RVINS" because I was there during COVID and don't remember it happening in real time.

Where did that come from?
Aug 2, 8:53 PM
#2

Offline
Feb 2016
15741
That reminds me. I wondered the same thing about Gamergate.
その目だれの目?
Aug 2, 8:55 PM
#3

Offline
Feb 2024
3486
Your recent threads are constipated, your baiting used to be more creative
Aug 3, 12:30 AM
#4

Offline
May 2024
1557
It definitely happened in real time. If you were on twitter and instagram during covid you would've literally seen it happen.
Aug 3, 12:41 AM
#5

Offline
Feb 2014
5798
Reply to SimplyBrazen
It definitely happened in real time. If you were on twitter and instagram during covid you would've literally seen it happen.
@SimplyBrazen
SimplyBrazen said:
If you were on twitter and instagram during covid you would've literally seen it happen.

Why would I do such a stupid thing?
I was playing FFXIV at the time.
Aug 3, 12:50 AM
#6

Offline
May 2024
1557
Reply to thewiru
@SimplyBrazen
SimplyBrazen said:
If you were on twitter and instagram during covid you would've literally seen it happen.

Why would I do such a stupid thing?
I was playing FFXIV at the time.
@thewiru Well, that answers it then...
Aug 3, 12:52 AM
#7

Offline
Feb 2014
5798
Reply to SimplyBrazen
@thewiru Well, that answers it then...
@SimplyBrazen
Well, what was happening there at the time? Tell me, please.
Aug 3, 1:00 AM
#8

Offline
May 2024
1557
Reply to thewiru
@SimplyBrazen
Well, what was happening there at the time? Tell me, please.
@thewiru The normie influx. Isn't that what you made the thread for?
Aug 3, 1:01 AM
#9

Offline
Mar 2021
4582
thewiru said:
Look, I likely dislike normies more than all of you combined, but I can't understand this "Waaaahhh, we used to be Animeperborea, then came COVID and now we are in RVINS" because I was there during COVID and don't remember it happening in real time.

Where did that come from?


You're operating under the assumption that just because a bunch of people were bored out of their minds during the pandemic, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, that those who suddenly started binging a ton of anime would automatically gravitate toward the MAL community or any online Anime space. That simply wasn’t the case for most of them.

I even have friends who probably watched more anime than I did during that time even subscribing to every platform available to them, and they’ve never bothered to register on any anime community site. Sure, they might use a platform like MAL occasionally to look shit up, but they have zero interest in participating in discussions with a bunch of strangers online.

It reminds me of when I watched "Game of Thrones" while it was airing on HBO. I’d already read the first few books back in college, and I subscribed to HBO specifically to watch the series. I got pretty into it, bought the expensive hardbound books, collected all the seasons on DVD, but I never once felt like joining any online forum or subreddit about it. Even when my wife and I went to a local renaissance festival where one of the actors was supposed to make a guest appearance (which ended up being just a rumor because they didn't show up), I still didn’t care about engaging with the hardcore fanbase surrounding it online or even in person.

So to answer your question, that whole "we were Animeperborea and now we’re in RVINS" thing likely isn’t about a literal moment that everyone felt in real time. This shit is more of a retrospective sentiment shaped by how the community gradually shifted as a flood of casual viewers came and went without really embedding themselves in any online space.

This kind of thing happens in pretty much any medium. As an example, A once underground rock band that started out playing in front of 12 punk rockers who didn’t even like them can somehow blow up into a massive commercial success, only to eventually slide back into obscurity over time, and then going back to playing for those same 12 punk rockers who still don’t like them. lol

Users who actually participate in any online discussions only make up a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the people who are actually into any particular medium. There’s a much larger group out there who just don’t give a shit about engaging online with a bunch of strangers. Which effectively makes online Users like us more like outsiders and the real minority.

Could you imagine how fucking messy the MAL Anime Discussion subforums would be if over millions of Users constantly participated in every online discussion? lol
ColourWheelAug 3, 1:36 AM


Aug 3, 1:03 AM
Offline
Jul 2018
561541
It is a complete meme. Streaming services had taken over anime prior COVID anyway. It was bond to happen regardless.
Aug 3, 1:29 AM

Offline
Feb 2014
5798
Reply to SimplyBrazen
@thewiru The normie influx. Isn't that what you made the thread for?
@SimplyBrazen
The thing is that I only see people using the term, I don't know what it meant in reality.
Like, what ACTUALLY happened to be called that?
Aug 3, 2:36 AM

Offline
Sep 2016
23556
Not really, the impact has been quite significant.
*kappa*
Aug 3, 2:46 AM

Offline
Apr 2024
1555
I'm personally inclined to give streaming services the blame for the low quality average anime we've been getting for the past few years.

After all, with streaming you just need to convince someone to watch it once. If they don't buy the Blu-ray anyway there's little incentive to make it crafted well enough for multiple watches or to fix animation mistakes with the Blu-ray version, let alone uncensor anything.

I feel that all the quality drops I am noticing in the 2020s are related to streaming services gaining market share. Kinda ironic that giving the anime industry money via streaming would lead to a serious decline in overall quality.
Aug 3, 3:00 PM
Offline
Jul 2024
5624
Reply to Lucifrost
That reminds me. I wondered the same thing about Gamergate.
@Lucifrost Gamergate is a complete fiction, from all that I have read of it.
Aug 3, 3:17 PM

Offline
Mar 2021
4582
Reply to Sheol01
@Lucifrost Gamergate is a complete fiction, from all that I have read of it.
Sheol01 said:
@Lucifrost Gamergate is a complete fiction, from all that I have read of it.


It's not complete fiction, perse. But there was no actual evidence that supported the initial accusations, the journalist in the original controversy never reviewed some game that sparked the fake outrage (like nothing can be found when asked something like "what published review? can anyone link it? or even quote what was said in it?"), and further more no actual ethical breach had really occurred in the 1st place.

But online movements in places like 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit still perpetuated the lie and further sparked rises in alt-right and online extremist communities.

So basically someone made shit up, people believed it in online spaces just parroting and spreading some shit they just casually read, which lead to shit like harassment of women, polarization of gamer culture, and the beginning of culture wars in gaming communities.

Just shows how dumb people really are in general. lol

So basically modern online culture wars when it comes to media entertainment are practically predicated on a fucking lie. lol
ColourWheelAug 3, 7:50 PM


Aug 3, 7:02 PM

Offline
Jul 2024
988
Reply to SimplyBrazen
@thewiru Well, that answers it then...
@SimplyBrazen Can we close the thread then? 😂

Why does every single banal thought require a thread created?

The modern anime community is largely made up of people who started watching through streamable content and the amount of this greatly increased during Covid. Can't say if we would've arrived at the same point without Covid eventually, but probably not.
Aug 3, 8:04 PM

Offline
Jul 2013
2263
I'd say covid wasn't the cause, but the accelerant. Anime community was starting to blow up prior to covid anyway: Your Name broke records left right and center, Demon Slayer took over the internet, Titan picked up its lost steam after season 3 and so on. The result seemed inevitable, covid or not.
Aug 3, 8:06 PM

Offline
Sep 2022
836
The real reason is streaming in general brought retards to anime.


This goes back to like 2009 for me when I knew some fat retard weeb who accidentally stabbed himself in the foot with a katana watched Naruto on stream.

This collectively added up for more than a decade.

As in. Anime should have never been more accessible than bittorrent or physical media.
ComeInReiAsukaAug 3, 8:12 PM


Aug 3, 11:51 PM

Offline
May 2018
12559
I don't have statistics, but here's my take.

1. No, people weren't bored during the pandemic, they were stressed out and scared. And it just happens that anime is one of those media which are very suitable for escapism.
2. Watching online content definitely increased during the pandemic. Many YouTubers talk how their old videos performed better in that period.
3. My personal impression is that the topics "I am new to anime, can you recommend me some stuff?" increased significantly on r/anime in that period.

So maybe the memories of the phenomena are exaggerated, but definitely there were such processes going on.
Aug 4, 3:51 AM

Offline
May 2018
1722
Even if you didn't see it personally it still happened. People not being able to go out made them try new media, games etc
Aug 4, 4:02 AM

Offline
Aug 2021
5041
Covid reminds me of the 2011 movie Contagion, which took place before the pandemic and is extremely similar to the pandemic. The Conclave movie was released, and after a few months, a conclave actually took place.

Aug 4, 4:21 AM

Offline
Jul 2014
664
Anime fans are still weird as hell, so, probably.
Aug 4, 7:06 AM

Offline
Feb 2016
15741
Reply to Absurdo_N
Covid reminds me of the 2011 movie Contagion, which took place before the pandemic and is extremely similar to the pandemic. The Conclave movie was released, and after a few months, a conclave actually took place.
@Absurdo_N
I don't agree that Contagion resembles the coronavirus pandemic very closely. For one thing, nobody wears masks in Contagion.
その目だれの目?
Aug 4, 7:14 AM

Offline
Aug 2021
5041
Reply to Lucifrost
@Absurdo_N
I don't agree that Contagion resembles the coronavirus pandemic very closely. For one thing, nobody wears masks in Contagion.
@Lucifrost

"nobody wears masks in Contagion"

That's true.

But I'm talking about the behavior that the people in the movie had around people in real life. Many people treated the virus as something insignificant and saw it as just a simple flu and ended up killing people because of it. I know a guy who didn't follow the recommendations not to visit the elderly to avoid infecting them and he literally visited his mother and she died because of it. This is so sad.

Aug 4, 7:23 AM

Offline
Feb 2016
15741
Reply to Absurdo_N
@Lucifrost

"nobody wears masks in Contagion"

That's true.

But I'm talking about the behavior that the people in the movie had around people in real life. Many people treated the virus as something insignificant and saw it as just a simple flu and ended up killing people because of it. I know a guy who didn't follow the recommendations not to visit the elderly to avoid infecting them and he literally visited his mother and she died because of it. This is so sad.
@Absurdo_N
That is indeed sad, but it is hard to know which recommendations can be trusted when so many of them are wrong.
その目だれの目?
Aug 4, 7:45 AM

Offline
Sep 2008
4547
in case you don't remember, there were 3 entire pages of new topics every day on mal, with multiple topics discussing the "latest news" and the same noob questions repeated every day.
it was kinda bad, but mal is a ghost town now compared.
most people moved on by now I think.
馬鹿げた倫理 全部ガラクタで
Aug 4, 9:21 AM

Offline
Jul 2013
12897
Is it possible covid-19 is just government PsychOPs? And it doesn't actually exist?

More topics from this board

» How do people watch anime without scrobbling/logging/adding it to a media thread?

thewiru - 4 hours ago

17 by GrumbleDango »»
5 minutes ago

» (Voting later) Anime Party Boy / Party Girl Competition (nominate a ratio of boys/girls that TOTALS 5 characters)

IpreferEcchi - Dec 9

17 by UhOhFanOfTouhou »»
15 minutes ago

» Best anime of 2025?

Fukoku - 4 hours ago

11 by Gator »»
19 minutes ago

» Why is elitism frowned upon?

IdeDial - 10 hours ago

37 by ryan77999 »»
20 minutes ago

» What anime franchise had the biggest potential to be a mass merchandise seller but missed out on that potential?

TheBlockernator - 7 hours ago

8 by DesuMaiden »»
34 minutes ago
It’s time to ditch the text file.
Keep track of your anime easily by creating your own list.
Sign Up Login