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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.
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.
In the US: being obese, wearing pajamas in public, spending 4 hours per day watching tiktok reels, binge watching streaming content, eating HFCS-laden hyper-palatable slop at most meals, avoiding exercise, drowning in CC debt, and probably a few things I'm forgetting.
Exhaustive and accurate. I’d add: Being uneducated and generally as uninteresting as possible
This and the parent comment, while humorous, seems very uncharitable. I personally love Americans when I'm in America. My experience is limited to west coast and predominantly the South.
Maybe. I mostly lurk and you’re certainly a level headed presence around here so if I’m out of line I’m sorry.
That said - are these comments inaccurate do you think? While humorous, they both accurately describe the current state of what has felt to me like a race to the bottom in terms of societal expectations and social norms over my 50 years on the planet. FWIW I’m American - family here since the 17th century and I live here all the time. I miss it when I’m abroad too long but I usually feel like the country I grew up in has been replaced somehow and no one really noticed.
No need to apologize and yes, the listed qualities are probably accurate for a large percentage, but certainly not everyone. And by uncharitable I mean it frames Americans in a very unflattering manner while ignoring qualities that I at least have noticed about the common man, namely openness to relative strangers, straightforwardness, the ability to enjoy simple pleasures, a sense of humor, self reliance, resistance to pretentiousness, an innate sense of equanimity, occasional unexpected generosity, morality that drives one's actions whether it is always adhered to or not, and so on. You see where I'm going with this--not everyone will have all of these qualities of course, yet nor do they have all of the previously listed.
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