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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5143 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.

In Twilight's defense, its target demographic is tween and teenage girls, unlike Akira which is meant for adults. I don't think it's really a like for like comparison. Certain media might strike an adult as cringe but be exactly what the target demographic needs at that point in their lives. It would be easy for me to find an anime meant for children (e.g. Cardcaptor Sakura) and point out that it's silly in comparison to, say, The Godfather, but that would hardly be fair.

I've never seen Cops, but isn't it just bodycam footage of criminal interactions? What's cringe about that?

I get the impression that people who watch "reality TV" shows like Cops do to see idiots (people who get arrested), to laugh at them and feel better about themselves. I get why someone would want to see a couple real arrests, but why else would anyone watch enough that there are 37 seasons? And my understanding is they're more or less staged, even if it's just only showing the "interesting" arrests, it creates an expectation or "norm" that people being arrested are crazy.

‘People’ don’t watch 37 seasons of cops. People watch cops when they’re bored, they don’t follow the franchise.

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