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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5397 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026

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Last week anime culture war news was rather unwelcome here, so it is time for another.

The topic of last week xitter storm was anime.

Is anime weird? If so, what should parents do to make sure their kids never watch anime and become normal members of the crowd?

Fitting with the crowd as end in itself was always seen as moral duty in small c conservative tradition, nothing unusual with it.

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn't call his Father and Mother "Father" and "Mother", but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non- smokers and teetotallers and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on the beds and the windows were always open.

It is clear who the bad people are and why they are bad.

Nevertheless, massive arguments for and against torn xitter asunder and joined with even bigger arguments whether normie existence in 2020's North America is really something you should strive for or whether much better, happier, nobler and more fulfilling life can be found elsewhere.

If you examine all parts of normie life, from such basics as school, regular employnment, transportation or house building and find this is worthwhile prize, and then find out that your kid is not normie, you should indeed tell them:

"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."

(using Eastern archetype here, in Western culture heroes are men of action facing adversity directly and challenging enemy in honorable combat, not sus characters skulking in shadows)

But parents are usually extremely bad judges what is "weird" and what isn't. They remember what was normal and what wasn't in high school in early 1980's, and are unable to comprehend that times are changing. And this is the problem barely noticed, the problem that makes this whole discourse waste of time.

What is normal in today's world?

That women looks like she's wearing makeup and hair dye, is that normal? Are celebrities who get lip filler surgery or anorexia normal? Is reality TV normal? Is obesity normal? Sometimes I look at my weird interests, then I look at modern trends and realize I'm not so weird after all. I think Akira and Serial Experiments Lain are far, far less cringe than Twilight or Cops.

Maybe trad culture like the Amish is "normal" in that, out of all ways to live we've tried, it's maximizes some "ideal normal" metric like median person's happiness divided by resource usage. Unfortunately it's outcompeted, and even trad influencers tend to not practice what they preach, and/or preach "norms" that never existed.

I think Akira and Serial Experiments Lain are far, far less cringe than Twilight or Cops.

I'd like to slightly hijack this thread.

What is going on with Attack on Titan? It was basically everywhere for a while so I decided to read the plot summary. I haven't watched a single second of the actual show and I haven't read the manga.

Eren Yeager is a boy who lives in the town of Shiganshina, located on the outermost of three circular walls which protect their inhabitants from Titans. In the year 845, the first wall, Wall Maria, is breached by two new types of Titans, the Colossal Titan and the Armored Titan. During the incident, Eren's mother is eaten by a grinning Titan while Eren escapes. He swears revenge on all Titans and enlists in the military along with his childhood friends Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert.

Five years after Shiganshina's fall, the Colossal Titan attacks the city of Trost, located in the second innermost wall, Wall Rose. Eren helps to successfully defend the city after he discovers a mysterious ability to turn himself into a sentient Attack Titan [??]. Additionally, he regains memories of his father Grisha Yeager giving him this ability shortly after the fall of Wall Maria, and telling him that the truth about their world can be found in their basement in Shiganshina.

[...]

Shortly thereafter, Pure Titans mysteriously appear within Wall Rose with no evidence of how they got in, accompanied by the sentient Beast Titan. Ymir, one of the new Survey Corps graduates, reveals that she can transform into the sentient Jaw Titan [???], while Ymir's close friend Krista Lenz reveals herself as Historia Reiss, a member of the royal family [?]. Two other members of the Survey Corps, Reiner Braun and Bertholt Hoover, reveal themselves as the Armored and Colossal Titan respectively [???]. They attempt to kidnap Eren and Ymir, but fail. In the ensuing battle, Eren discovers another power within himself called "the Coordinate", that allows him to control other Titans, which he uses to kill the grinning Titan and send a horde of Pure Titans to attack Reiner and Bertholt. [????]

Isn't this... Kind of retarded? Isn't anyone here a normal human? It just seems like endless rule of cool coincidences like you might hear on a playground. "Dude, what if Ymir was also a titan?" "Yeah dude, like a Jaw Titan!" "And then Reiner and Bertholt are also titans!" "Hell yeah! But they're bad titans!" "And then they try to kidnap Eren and Ymir!"

This continues for 40 volumes. I haven't checked the anime but I presume it's basically the same. Who reads this stuff?

It can’t be worse than the median soap opera.

Sure. But you rarely see people claim that the median soap opera is a tremendous artistic coup.

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