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Gillitrut

Reading from the golden book under bright red stars

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joined 2022 September 06 14:49:23 UTC 

				
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Gillitrut


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 14:49:23 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I suppose I'm on team "let kids have interests." Probably because that's the kind of attitude my parents took towards me and it seems to have worked out fine. Some of my interest in nerdier things came from my parents! I played Everquest with my father, step-mother, and brother back in the day. I watched anime on "normie" television like Toonami and Adult Swim. I read a lot of big fantasy door stoppers when I was young.


I think "anime" is the wrong level of abstraction for useful analysis. Like saying "books" or "fantasy." Are there works in any genre or medium it would be inappropriate to expose children to? Yea certainly. Are there works in any genre or medium it would be fine to expose children to? I think mostly yes. Certainly, there are child-appropriate anime. People in this thread have mentioned some. There's a certain kind of obsessive fandom that it is probably unhealthy to develop but you don't need anime for that (c.f. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek).




On the more general question of "fitting in" as something abstractly desirable or that parent's ought to enforce I think it also depends. What are they being asked to fit in to? If it were normal to watch anime would the anti-anime crowd force their kids to watch anime so that they fit in? At least when I was growing up it was common for my parents to denigrate the idea of following what was popular just because it was popular. "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?" was a common rhetorical question.






"For your whole life, you will live as undercover agent in enemy territory. As Otto von Stierlitz had to pass as Nazi, you must learn how to pass as normie."




I guess two points.


1. I am confident it is easier today than ever in history to find and make friends who happen to share your niche interests. Indeed, it seems like part of the anxiety about having "weird" kids is that they will have friends who are also "weird."


2. I am also confident everyone does this sometimes. I find it extremely unlikely any significant fraction of people spend all their time around people who have all the same hobbies and interests.