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Is Dinergoth a real thing? (soft-paywalled; use reader mode to get the whole article)
Before we get carried away with narrative, let's do a reality check. Is "Dinergoth" pointing to a real cultural phenomenon? Can anyone provide anecdotal evidence?
I can probably think of one or two people I know who meet this description, but that's not enough to validate the claim, which is that:
The problem is, this archetypal Dinergoth is, by construction, invisible to anyone who's not one of them. They can't afford to live in big cities, so you'll never encounter them there. Even in a small town, the Dinergoths are shut-ins who never leave their (parents') homes and never venture out into the community to meet people. Instead they (supposedly) spend all their time chatting with each other on Discord (hence, so the article claims, the flattening of regional accents among the youth - although I think that trend is older than gaming chats).
And now that I've read this article, the next time I run across one of those obese 20-something piercing-having pink-hairs I occasionally spy at CVS or Walmart, I'll update my stereotype of them from "Antifa" to "Dinergoth"; but really I'll have no evidence either way unless I talk to them and get to know them, which I won't.
Perhaps some of you reading this are Dinergoths yourselves, although I rather doubt it.
It's a good article, and there's definitely something real there, but I hate the term "dinergoth."
For one thing, they're literally not hanging out in diners. The classic 24 hour diner doesn't exist in most locations anymore, and when it does it's too expensive for broke young people to go there casually. Also they kind of frown on people just hanging out for hours, and young people are staying at home online anyway.
Also they're not goth in any way. The glassic goth aesthetic is dark, muted colors and sad, serious emotions. This aesthetic of anime, games, and internet memes is more about bright colors and direct, intense displays of vibrant emotions. Almost the exact opposite of goth.
I would call it something like "proleanime" or "e-prole." They're not pretentious, they don't want to hide behind many layers of irony, and they're not educated enough to even understand postmodernism. They want something simple and affordable which they can enjoy, heavily based online since that's where they spend their time. Also, they want to express their sexuality free from the constraints of modern feminism, which is often "performatively" sex-positive but "practically" sex-negative for anyone who isn't gay or trans. And sure, some of them are obese or ugly because lots of people are, but some of them are traditionally attractive too (like the girls who get super into cosplay). It's a big tent of people who want to express sexuality and don't have a good venue for it in today's society! So while I'm not part of this group myself, I do support it.
Also I think maybe older people have the idea that anime is more high-brow than it is? We got this small subset of poorly translated anime films in the 90s, plus everything from Studio Ghibli, and thought it should be some high-class artistic statement because we didn't understand it. But when you watch the majority of mainstream anime with proper translations, you quickly realize how low-brow and fanservice-heavy it is. Nothing wrong with that, let people enjoy themselves, it's just a very different aesthetic than you normally expect from people who watch foreign media with subtitles.
It strikes me that this aesthetic is much more related to the old scene subculture than goths (as is e-girl subculture). e-prole sounds about right.
I know the type. The "they live in flyover country and have bleak economic prospects" thing strikes me as quite real. When rainbow hair colors started going big, I thought it was really strange -- around here that's only associated with the e-prole type, CVS worker, down on their luck, demoralized. There's a lot of hopelessness in flyover country, which competes with the hopefulness of family and faith and confusingly messianic-hope that "Trump will fix this broken country" and, of course, drugs. But there's a lot of hopelessness and a lot of drugs on the coasts, too -- I just don't know what hopefulness competes with it.
But I'll challenge that this is principally sexual. Or that cosplay is. Hell, the cosplayer I dated briefly in college turned out to be asexual, which made her the second woman I've dated that turned out to credibly claim asexuality and the fourth such woman I've had a crush on. Obviously neither relationship lasted long or went very well. (Women I've dated have turned out to be either sexless or more sexual than me, I still don't know why.) One of the latter two is someone I thought of when I read the description of the dinergoth.
I think it's fairly true that these folks are mostly politically disengaged, but in flyover country the type runs consonant with being a political leftist. But I'd describe the type as "politically disengaged because they believe the Democratic party is full of rich people who don't want to help people like them," or "politically disengaged because they believe the only solution to America's problems is gay space communism established through the revolution," which they fantasize about while standing dead-eyed at the CVS checkout counter.
I don't know that this is the default youth culture, but it certainly is huge. I'm an elder zoomer -- this is the end-fate of a lot of people I went to school with. The Asians and the gays went to elite colleges, the Christians went to <evangelical_school>, and the dorks, who I hung out with, often tried to go to college, dropped out, and ended up listless and hopeless.
Apparently I'm pessimistic tonight. I don't mean to be. I'm actually very proud of where I grew up and the school I went to, despite their problems. But there's real hopelessness out there, and everyone of my generation I speak to almost identically tells me they have no real hope for the future and almost feels humiliated in spite of their achievements. Even if they're married, have a good job, a house, friends...
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I don't think anime was ever "highbrow" like French cinema, but in the Millennial anime period (maybe 1995-2015) it did have a certain edge to it, like all things Japanese (think: karate, console games, cyberpunk, sushi, Zen). You probably had to have an above-average IQ to be into these things (although whether that translated into social status was another matter). If Dinergoth is real, that's no longer the case today.
An artifact frozen in amber:
Definitely a difference in the sort of crowd that would download a torrent + apply the .sub file, or pay expensive import fees, or join a club just to watch someone else's bootleg tapes, vs the current meta of endless mindless streaming on demand.
Also, excuse me while I go full weeb a minute, but I feel the same way about sushi. There's levels to it. On the low end, you can buy cheap premade stuff as a snack, and that's perfectly fine, just don't expect any complex flavors. American restaurants usually oyster California rolls or some deep fried monstrosity and that's... fine... but you might as well just order fried shrimp. The better places offer simple nigiri or sashimi with nice rice, so you can really taste the subtle flavors of the fish, and a clear mild liquor like sake really does complement it well. Some fancy plates and a cool chef also helps the experience. But at some point people go to extremes where they're just wasting money on "the secret, ultimate fish" or whatever and that's just stupid. Or you get drunk salarymen snacking on sushi while also binge drinking and smoking so... that can be fun too, in its own way. But once in a while its worth making the effort to appreciate a fancy meal with more subtle flavors than typical restaurant fare.
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I think it's one of these midwit meme distribution. Glug thinks cartoons are low-brow childish entertainment, midwit thinks since it's not aimed at kids it's adult and somewhat sophisticated. Genius knows it's mostly endless rehash of tropes comfortable to its audience.
This would be odd given the Black + Asian fanbase of anime.
Anime is aimed at teens and is for teens. Adults who are black appear to love it as well. If the meme is to be fufilled the jedi at the right end of adults should also love it.
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Yeah that's fair. I'd like to point out that there is some sophisticated anime, and especially the niche manga that never gets turned into anime. But I'm well aware that's not what people are watching on Crunchyroll or Toonami.
Do you know of a good resource for a list of niche manga you'd consider good? That's something I've never explored but would probably enjoy.
Try Blame! It is not without its faults, but it sure is unique.
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Not an easy one. I used to use MangaRock, but it got shut down for piracy. Im not as plugged into the scene as I used to be- the big mainstream western accrptance and commercialization kinda killed off the indie scanlation volunteers. Your best bet is probably to search the list of manga that have win awards not in the shonen/shoujo category, like the general category of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogakukan_Manga_Award. Once you find something you like, you can search what else they've done- often they have more experimental works that never hit it big, but are more intellectual. Or if there's a specific genre that interests you, you can see if there's a magazine for that (eg, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Yuri_Hime for yuri manga that's actually aimed at women, instead of male fanservice). Unfortunately the rabbit hole gets pretty deep, and the really niche stuff is often print-only, not sold outside Japan.
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