site banner
PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   2330 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 19, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So where do people place the bar for being a fan of a genre? The content quality for every genre typically follows a power law distribution. If I only like the top 5% of anime, am I really an anime fan?

I’m gonna take the cowardly way out and reduce everything to language games. More specifically: for the term “anime fan” to be useful, it should tell you a lot about the kind of person whom that term describes, people who refer to themselves as “anime fans” should be able to have qualitatively different conversations among themselves than people who don’t, etc.

For some concrete scenarios:

  • Alice has only watched Cowboy Bebop and Dragon Ball Z. She says “I don’t watch that icky stuff for weebs; I just like good stories.” Alice is probably not an anime fan.
  • Bob watches every series that comes out each season, even if most of it is garbage. He discusses them online (even if most of that “discussion” consists of sharing screenshots of the girls in each series), rates them, etc. Bob is probably an anime fan.
  • Carl is into film and television, and this interest in moving pictures extends to some anime. He knows about certain famous auteur directors (e.g. Yuasa, Satoshi Kon) and is able to talk deeply about the technical and artistic merits of Perfect Blue. But he doesn’t necessarily partake in the broader subculture as an activity distinct from how he’d discuss French New Wave films. Carl might not be an anime fan, although it’s harder to say, and it certainly does seem that he has a greater “appreciation for the medium” than Bob.
  • Dennis doesn’t watch any anime. He doesn’t read manga either. He does watch YouTube videos posted by e-celebs summarizing or reacting to the latest flavor of the month series, he scrolls through /r/animememes, and he likes erotic fanart of anime characters on Twitter. Yet somehow, this almost makes me inclined to call him an anime fan, since even though he doesn’t actually watch any anime, he does partake in the culture surrounding it. (The word Ive seen people use to describe people like Bob is “secondaries”, that is, secondary fans.)

The common thread here is that at the end of the day, deciding to call yourself or someone else an “anime fan” is inherently a social act. If other people weren’t involved, then there would be no need to raise this question of identity: you could just watch some amount of anime on your own, in addition to whatever else you do during your time, without attaching a label to it. What this means is that if you are going to go to the trouble of applying the term “anime fan”, then the criteria for application should necessarily have to do with how to categorize groups of people.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats