What has never made sense to you?

[DC]

Your answer can be serious or funny.

So, what's your answer?

[Shagger]

Dog years and cat years. This is a concept created for the truly stupid.

 

The year itself doesn't change just because it's from the prospect of a different animal. Time is a constant. Different organisms have written in thier DNA a great many things. How they grow, thier instincts, thier appearance, everything including thier lifespan. These genetic codes vary, so the lifespan varies as well. No two people are actually generically coded to live for the same amount of time, never two species. These dog and cat years are for people who understand the basics of life. Dogs and cat's don't live as long as people, it's that simple. Seriously, how stupid do have to be not get that 13 year old dog is quite old just a because a 13 year old human isn't considered old?

 

Still, if people insist they this metaphor to understand this incredibly simple premise, then I say why stop with just Dogs and Cats? How about Redwood year or Giant Tortoise year. Or on the other end of the scale, how an Apply year or a house fly year? Or maybe it would actually be easer to just understand that the human lifespan is a not fucking calendrer.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Shagger

[killamch89]

People who choose to date criminals and then complain when they get caught in the crossfire - whether their partner die, police charge them for being accomplices, or they get hurt/killed by enemies of their partner and have to constantly live in fear. Those kinds of lifestyles come with consequences.

[Akun]

The dislike of "anime artstyle."

If anyone actually watches more than the typical mainstream anime, you'd know how ridiculous that statement is, considering the numerous artstyles anime series have. Don't get me started on the misconception that all anime is filled with perverse content.

[Grungie]

16 hours ago, Akun said:

The dislike of "anime artstyle."

If anyone actually watches more than the typical mainstream anime, you'd know how ridiculous that statement is, considering the numerous artstyles anime series have. Don't get me started on the misconception that all anime is filled with perverse content.

To be fair, the anime fandom itself isn’t exactly doing much to quell the pervert stereotype. When a large number of vocal fans are perverts, it’s kind of hard to shake the stereotype off. There’s quite a few series I see on a regular basis where I knew nothing about it, except for the massive amount of lewd fan art, until I saw the show myself and realized the show has nothing to do with it.

The merch itself isn’t helping either…

The show will be sfw, but the merch sure as hell isn’t…

[Akun]

1 hour ago, Grungie said:

To be fair, the anime fandom itself isn’t exactly doing much to quell the pervert stereotype. When a large number of vocal fans are perverts, it’s kind of hard to shake the stereotype off. There’s quite a few series I see on a regular basis where I knew nothing about it, except for the massive amount of lewd fan art, until I saw the show myself and realized the show has nothing to do with it.

The merch itself isn’t helping either…

The show will be sfw, but the merch sure as hell isn’t…

Right, because as we all know, the vocal minority is always the most reliable source of information, especially on the Internet. 🙄

People really should make up their own mind about shows after they watch it. Never judge a book by its cover. At the very least, read the reviews if you don't want to waste your time.

I mean, if you want to compare lewd fanart, I could show you a truckload of rule 34 content for Lara Croft alone. I could tell you it's as numerous as the lewd fanart of multiple anime series combined.

By the logic of rule 34, any show could have lewd fanart, because as the rule states, "If it exists, there's Internet porn of it." Don't get me started on deepfake porn of celebrities. Even live action isn't safe.

Also, it makes me question the taste of the person complaining about perverse anime content because it means they either 1) judged a show by its fanart, or 2) watched a perverse anime series instead of the countless normal ones. Either way, their judgment is sus.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Akun

[Grungie]

6 hours ago, Akun said:

Right, because as we all know, the vocal minority is always the most reliable source of information, especially on the Internet. 🙄

People really should make up their own mind about shows after they watch it. Never judge a book by its cover. At the very least, read the reviews if you don't want to waste your time.

I mean, if you want to compare lewd fanart, I could show you a truckload of rule 34 content for Lara Croft alone. I could tell you it's as numerous as the lewd fanart of multiple anime series combined.

By the logic of rule 34, any show could have lewd fanart, because as the rule states, "If it exists, there's Internet porn of it." Don't get me started on deepfake porn of celebrities. Even live action isn't safe.

Also, it makes me question the taste of the person complaining about perverse anime content because it means they either 1) judged a show by its fanart, or 2) watched a perverse anime series instead of the countless normal ones. Either way, their judgment is sus.

To be fair, as anime got more popular here, the pervert stereotype did kind of disappear. Crunchyroll existing and Netflix increasing its catalog definitely changed the tide here, but before that, I really couldn’t stand the anime community. Online or offline. This is coming from someone who was/is an active anime fan.

We can complain all we want about how others should be open minded about communities, but if your only exposure to a community is by seeing a bunch of perverts an/or obnoxious assholes, it makes the community off-putting for outsiders.

Before legal streaming got popular, I just wanted to have a “normal” conversation about anime. Basic stuff like “hey this show is awesome!”, instead I primarily could only find people who either only cared about talking about how much they want to fuck <insert female character> or some assholes being more obsessed with the fansub wars to fan check you.

I’m so glad that latter part died off. Nothing like seeing a bunch of people who don’t know Japanese argue with which translation is more accurate.

[Akun]

6 minutes ago, Grungie said:

To be fair, as anime got more popular here, the pervert stereotype did kind of disappear. Crunchyroll existing and Netflix increasing its catalog definitely changed the tide here, but before that, I really couldn’t stand the anime community. Online or offline. This is coming from someone who was/is an active anime fan.

We can complain all we want about how others should be open minded about communities, but if your only exposure to a community is by seeing a bunch of perverts an/or obnoxious assholes, it makes the community off-putting for outsiders.

Before legal streaming got popular, I just wanted to have a “normal” conversation about anime. Basic stuff like “hey this show is awesome!”, instead I primarily could only find people who either only cared about talking about how much they want to fuck <insert female character> or some assholes being more obsessed with the fansub wars to fan check you.

I’m so glad that latter part died off. Nothing like seeing a bunch of people who don’t know Japanese argue with which translation is more accurate.

That's a fair opinion. I had my own experience of being exposed to toxic communities before that influenced my beliefs of certain fandoms... or even political groups.

I don't know what was it exactly that gave me a more positive experience towards anime, but perhaps it's because I've argued with so many people online - both anime and non-anime fans - that I've pretty much realized there's toxicity everywhere on the Internet, myself included. The anonymity of Internet just has a certain influence on certain people like myself, bringing out the worst in us. I wouldn't really say more than half the things I say offline. I guess it might've been that kind of exposure that led me to direct my cynicism not towards anime itself, or any show in particular, but people in general, becoming somewhat of a misanthrope for a period of time even. It helps that I have a great respect for the craft of storytelling and have seen the immense potential anime possesses in telling a wide range of stories across multiple genres, so that led me to value anime as a medium for imparting such interesting themes and ideas.

Also, in terms of making eye candies of anime characters, I'm not surprised to be honest. In spite of its range of targeted demographics, anime is still a form of animation, and that attracts young audiences who treat it like any American cartoon. You've got kids and teenagers getting all horny about cartoon characters (again, just look at rule 34 to see how horny people can get about fictional characters, even American cartoons). I'd say that I've came across my share of fans being passionate about wanting to fuck certain live action characters too. I guess I could see why anime would certainly attract the more perverse crowd to the conversation, given that there's an entire genre of anime specifically targeting these people... but again, I think it's like you said, it's not really the case anymore now that legal streaming has become more popular, and we start to get more "normal" audiences.

As for fansubs... I gotta say, I can't really begrudge those people too much. Many of those people from those fansub groups that I've met actually did know Japanese, which is how I came to rely on them for accurate translations. I'm a purist that way. English isn't even my native mother tongue anyway (it's Chinese), so it's not like I'm betraying my own people or something if I find the English dub annoying. Also, fansubs were literally the only way you'd get to watch many of the popular anime series like Death Note and FMA: Brotherhood back then, even when "official streaming" was starting to come around because of region restrictions. I doubt many people knew how to VPN back then either in the 2000s. Those were different times, but I doubt anime would become as popular as it did without fansubs.

[Grungie]

48 minutes ago, Akun said:

That's a fair opinion. I had my own experience of being exposed to toxic communities before that influenced my beliefs of certain fandoms... or even political groups.

I don't know what was it exactly that gave me a more positive experience towards anime, but perhaps it's because I've argued with so many people online - both anime and non-anime fans - that I've pretty much realized there's toxicity everywhere on the Internet, myself included. The anonymity of Internet just has a certain influence on certain people like myself, bringing out the worst in us. I wouldn't really say more than half the things I say offline. I guess it might've been that kind of exposure that led me to direct my cynicism not towards anime itself, or any show in particular, but people in general, becoming somewhat of a misanthrope for a period of time even. It helps that I have a great respect for the craft of storytelling and have seen the immense potential anime possesses in telling a wide range of stories across multiple genres, so that led me to value anime as a medium for imparting such interesting themes and ideas.

Also, in terms of making eye candies of anime characters, I'm not surprised to be honest. In spite of its range of targeted demographics, anime is still a form of animation, and that attracts young audiences who treat it like any American cartoon. You've got kids and teenagers getting all horny about cartoon characters (again, just look at rule 34 to see how horny people can get about fictional characters, even American cartoons). I'd say that I've came across my share of fans being passionate about wanting to fuck certain live action characters too. I guess I could see why anime would certainly attract the more perverse crowd to the conversation, given that there's an entire genre of anime specifically targeting these people... but again, I think it's like you said, it's not really the case anymore now that legal streaming has become more popular, and we start to get more "normal" audiences.

As for fansubs... I gotta say, I can't really begrudge those people too much. Many of those people from those fansub groups that I've met actually did know Japanese, which is how I came to rely on them for accurate translations. I'm a purist that way. English isn't even my native mother tongue anyway (it's Chinese), so it's not like I'm betraying my own people or something if I find the English dub annoying. Also, fansubs were literally the only way you'd get to watch many of the popular anime series like Death Note and FMA: Brotherhood back then, even when "official streaming" was starting to come around because of region restrictions. I doubt many people knew how to VPN back then either in the 2000s. Those were different times, but I doubt anime would become as popular as it did without fansubs.

Tbh the fansub debates were by people who just watched the shows, and not from the actual people who did the translations. It was largely people claiming they wanted accuracy, but was really a long winded argument of “the one I saw first is the canonical translation”. There’s plenty of examples of some things being translated wrong, and people were insistent for years that the wrong one was superior. Which comes off as super hypocritical when your argument was for accuracy and you find out something was wrong, but it’s totally acceptable…

That’s why I mentioned the argument was by a ton of people who don’t speak the language, because they actually didn’t. I’m Japanese and know the language, and when you correct people on things that are completely wrong, and not a common misconception, it’s pretty obvious you don’t know the language.

Back to my previous part about the canary and merch vs your Lara Croft example is the percentage of exposure to the lewd stuff. With Lara Croft, more people are exposed to the actual game, so there isn’t a general perception of the fans being a den of perverts. The promotional stuff is stereotypical of an action game.

With the anime pervert stereotype, there are a ton of shows that don’t just have the lewd fan art, but there’ll be a ton of official posters, promotional art, and various merchandise of the female characters in scantily clad outfits. So if all you see of a series is these females in scantily clad outfits, it’s hard to not think this show is gonna be fanservice, even though it won’t be.

Let’s take Pokémon and not change anything about the game/show. Instead, we’ll replace all the current merch and promotional art to primarily be about all the female characters in scantily clad outfits, people’s perception on Pokémon is going to change drastically.

There’s some shows I’m a fan of, and I recommend it to people, and after a quick Google search, they think I’m getting them to watch something like To Love Ru or High School DxD because even the official stuff is a bunch of lewds.

[Akun]

1 hour ago, Grungie said:

Tbh the fansub debates were by people who just watched the shows, and not from the actual people who did the translations. It was largely people claiming they wanted accuracy, but was really a long winded argument of “the one I saw first is the canonical translation”. There’s plenty of examples of some things being translated wrong, and people were insistent for years that the wrong one was superior. Which comes off as super hypocritical when your argument was for accuracy and you find out something was wrong, but it’s totally acceptable…

That’s why I mentioned the argument was by a ton of people who don’t speak the language, because they actually didn’t. I’m Japanese and know the language, and when you correct people on things that are completely wrong, and not a common misconception, it’s pretty obvious you don’t know the language.

Back to my previous part about the canary and merch vs your Lara Croft example is the percentage of exposure to the lewd stuff. With Lara Croft, more people are exposed to the actual game, so there isn’t a general perception of the fans being a den of perverts. The promotional stuff is stereotypical of an action game.

With the anime pervert stereotype, there are a ton of shows that don’t just have the lewd fan art, but there’ll be a ton of official posters, promotional art, and various merchandise of the female characters in scantily clad outfits. So if all you see of a series is these females in scantily clad outfits, it’s hard to not think this show is gonna be fanservice, even though it won’t be.

Let’s take Pokémon and not change anything about the game/show. Instead, we’ll replace all the current merch and promotional art to primarily be about all the female characters in scantily clad outfits, people’s perception on Pokémon is going to change drastically.

There’s some shows I’m a fan of, and I recommend it to people, and after a quick Google search, they think I’m getting them to watch something like To Love Ru or High School DxD because even the official stuff is a bunch of lewds.

I think that particular zealotry in defending certain fansub groups (in spite of those groups having inaccurate translations) comes down to the kind of fanaticism that defines fandom in general, not just anime fans. DC vs. Marvel, Star Wars vs. Star Trek, Mets vs. Yankees, and of course, Trump vs. Obama. People love to be part of a community defending something, so when someone points out something wrong about the thing they're passionate about, even if it's just a translation group that provided them mistranslated anime, they will be outraged. It's called a circle jerk, and it's especially prevalent in Reddit. Go to the MCU's subreddit and point out any flaw at all about any of their Marvel show and you'll be bombarded with downvotes and criticisms (of your "misinformed" opinions).

I was there when the fansub group, "gg" was praised like the second coming of Christ (they've put out good stuff, but most of the time, they're trolls when translating shows they don't like). Even HorribleSubs was praised in spite of their well-deserved name just because of how fast they translated (no matter how inaccurate). So I had a pretty good idea just how fanatical these elitist fans could get back then in terms of defending not just fansub groups, but subtitled anime in general (over dubbed anime). To be fair, I do also prefer to watch my anime subbed even now because of, again, purist reasons, how I want to hear what the original voice acting was like and the kind of acting direction they went with. I like that kind of authentic experience. But my point is that while I do agree with them on some level the appeal of subbed anime... it's not fair to assume every dub is horrible trash, especially in 2022 when English dubbed anime has improved A LOT. A lot of these fanatics are blatant elitists who are defending (from an extremist position) a name that has nothing to do with their personal lives, much like Marvel and Star Wars fans.

Regarding the anime merch... I understand how such perceptions are formed because of such scantily clad goods. In fact, I'd even go on to say that most of the popular mainstream shows (mostly shounen shows like Dragonball, One Piece and Fairy Tail) have included fanservice as part of the show even today. I was turned off so much by Fairy Tail because of said fanservice, the way they treated Lucy's sexuality like a cheap punchline, that I dropped it completely. I think it might have something to do with their fanbase, because I heard that they put in such fanservice for profit reasons or something, to ensure their merch sells, maybe. Something interesting, however, is that while American shows like Xena: Warrior Princess (which had a bunch of scantily armored scenes) have largely strayed from fanservice by the 2010s because Americans became more progressive, Japan hasn't really changed much the last time I've seen an anime series. I think fanservice is probably part and parcel of anime even today, but I may be wrong.

That being said, while I agree such a thing might give people the wrong idea... I still don't agree that it's a fair assessment to judge all anime by it, especially with my own experience of mature and psychological anime that contained zero fanservice whatsoever. I think that if people bothered to do their research, if people bothered to actually look up good shows written by respected writers and even respected anime studios, their perception might improve. And the thing is, I'm not just applying such an open-mindedness to anime only, but also animation in general. I grew up in the Pixar era, so I had a very solid foundation of animation being more than just silly cartoons. Films like Toy Story, Up, Ratatouille, and even Finding Nemo convinced me that animation was a fluid medium that could allow stories for all ages, even stories only adults could understand. It's not really the same thing, and anime has a harder uphill battle to fight before its name could be redeemed, but I'm sure there were at least a number of people back then who believed animation was for children only, or that superhero films were silly cape flicks even. Their perception was unchallenged until someone came along and showed them what one could do with the medium. And so, it's like, just go watch Ghost in the Shell or Akira and tell me anime's just for the perverts only. Or better yet, the wholesome Hayao Miyazaki films. People simply just need to do their research and not let their perceptions blind them to the truth.

I think in terms of recommending anime to someone, I guess I didn't have that problem as often (though it still happened, rarely) with people getting the wrong idea because the shows I recommended were usually the aforementioned mature content that lacked fanservice or scantily clad women, shows like Technolyze or Aoi Bungaku Series, the very psychologically-driven kind of shows where your summary of the show or the Googled images shouldn't really contain any suggestive content. I think that it is possible to change people's perception of anime given the right content. Just don't search for lewd shows - which, I emphasize, is entirely possible with anime - and stay to the more mature or wholesome content even like Miyazaki films. I doubt there's Miyazaki merch around with scantily clothed figurines, probably because most of Miyazaki's characters are children.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Akun

[Grungie]

2 hours ago, Akun said:

I think that particular zealotry in defending certain fansub groups (in spite of those groups having inaccurate translations) comes down to the kind of fanaticism that defines fandom in general, not just anime fans. DC vs. Marvel, Star Wars vs. Star Trek, Mets vs. Yankees, and of course, Trump vs. Obama. People love to be part of a community defending something, so when someone points out something wrong about the thing they're passionate about, even if it's just a translation group that provided them mistranslated anime, they will be outraged. It's called a circle jerk, and it's especially prevalent in Reddit. Go to the MCU's subreddit and point out any flaw at all about any of their Marvel show and you'll be bombarded with downvotes and criticisms (of your "misinformed" opinions).

I was there when the fansub group, "gg" was praised like the second coming of Christ (they've put out good stuff, but most of the time, they're trolls when translating shows they don't like). Even HorribleSubs was praised in spite of their well-deserved name just because of how fast they translated (no matter how inaccurate). So I had a pretty good idea just how fanatical these elitist fans could get back then in terms of defending not just fansub groups, but subtitled anime in general (over dubbed anime). To be fair, I do also prefer to watch my anime subbed even now because of, again, purist reasons, how I want to hear what the original voice acting was like and the kind of acting direction they went with. I like that kind of authentic experience. But my point is that while I do agree with them on some level the appeal of subbed anime... it's not fair to assume every dub is horrible trash, especially in 2022 when English dubbed anime has improved A LOT. A lot of these fanatics are blatant elitists who are defending (from an extremist position) a name that has nothing to do with their personal lives, much like Marvel and Star Wars fans.

Regarding the anime merch... I understand how such perceptions are formed because of such scantily clad goods. In fact, I'd even go on to say that most of the popular mainstream shows (mostly shounen shows like Dragonball, One Piece and Fairy Tail) have included fanservice as part of the show even today. I was turned off so much by Fairy Tail because of said fanservice, the way they treated Lucy's sexuality like a cheap punchline, that I dropped it completely. I think it might have something to do with their fanbase, because I heard that they put in such fanservice for profit reasons or something, to ensure their merch sells, maybe. Something interesting, however, is that while American shows like Xena: Warrior Princess (which had a bunch of scantily armored scenes) have largely strayed from fanservice by the 2010s because Americans became more progressive, Japan hasn't really changed much the last time I've seen an anime series. I think fanservice is probably part and parcel of anime even today, but I may be wrong.

That being said, while I agree such a thing might give people the wrong idea... I still don't agree that it's a fair assessment to judge all anime by it, especially with my own experience of mature and psychological anime that contained zero fanservice whatsoever. I think that if people bothered to do their research, if people bothered to actually look up good shows written by respected writers and even respected anime studios, their perception might improve. And the thing is, I'm not just applying such an open-mindedness to anime only, but also animation in general. I grew up in the Pixar era, so I had a very solid foundation of animation being more than just silly cartoons. Films like Toy Story, Up, Ratatouille, and even Finding Nemo convinced me that animation was a fluid medium that could allow stories for all ages, even stories only adults could understand. It's not really the same thing, and anime has a harder uphill battle to fight before its name could be redeemed, but I'm sure there were at least a number of people back then who believed animation was for children only, or that superhero films were silly cape flicks even. Their perception was unchallenged until someone came along and showed them what one could do with the medium. And so, it's like, just go watch Ghost in the Shell or Akira and tell me anime's just for the perverts only. Or better yet, the wholesome Hayao Miyazaki films. People simply just need to do their research and not let their perceptions blind them to the truth.

I think in terms of recommending anime to someone, I guess I didn't have that problem as often (though it still happened, rarely) with people getting the wrong idea because the shows I recommended were usually the aforementioned mature content that lacked fanservice or scantily clad women, shows like Technolyze or Aoi Bungaku Series, the very psychologically-driven kind of shows where your summary of the show or the Googled images shouldn't really contain any suggestive content. I think that it is possible to change people's perception of anime given the right content. Just don't search for lewd shows - which, I emphasize, is entirely possible with anime - and stay to the more mature or wholesome content even like Miyazaki films. I doubt there's Miyazaki merch around with scantily clothed figurines, probably because most of Miyazaki's characters are children.

The perception, at least in the US, has changed quite a bit as it got a lot more mainstream in the past decade thanks to legal streaming. It especially helped increase the variety of shows that people saw.

It’s amazing the variety of shows people I meet irl know about now. So I feel vindicated for the shower I loved back then now getting their long awaited popularity.

[Kyng]

On 11/1/2022 at 4:18 PM, Shagger said:

Dog years and cat years. This is a concept created for the truly stupid.

 

The year itself doesn't change just because it's from the prospect of a different animal. Time is a constant. Different organisms have written in thier DNA a great many things. How they grow, thier instincts, thier appearance, everything including thier lifespan. These genetic codes vary, so the lifespan varies as well. No two people are actually generically coded to live for the same amount of time, never two species. These dog and cat years are for people who understand the basics of life. Dogs and cat's don't live as long as people, it's that simple. Seriously, how stupid do have to be not get that 13 year old dog is quite old just a because a 13 year old human isn't considered old?

 

Still, if people insist they this metaphor to understand this incredibly simple premise, then I say why stop with just Dogs and Cats? How about Redwood year or Giant Tortoise year. Or on the other end of the scale, how an Apply year or a house fly year? Or maybe it would actually be easer to just understand that the human lifespan is a not fucking calendrer.

Yeah, the whole "1 dog year = 7 human years" thing doesn't really work, because dogs don't age in the same way that humans do: they reach maturity at an earlier stage of their lifespan. Furthermore, the oldest dogs are considerably more than one-seventh of the age of the oldest humans: you sometimes get dogs living past 20, but you don't get humans living past 140!

I've read that a more accurate equivalence would be: the first year of a dog's life is equivalent to 21 human years, and every subsequent year is equivalent to 4 human years. So, for example, an 8-year-old dog would be the equivalent of a (21 + 7*4) = 49-year-old human. 

[The Blackangel]

Narcissism. I never understood why or how people would worship themselves. I've met several and pretty much told them they were pathetic losers, but were too stupid to realize it. Everyone can (and will) be egotistical a few times in their life. But as long as that ego isn't overinflated, then I see no problem. Nobody's perfect, despite what these morons think. I'm a bitch, but I sure as hell don't worship myself. I have better things to do with my time than kiss my own ass.

[killamch89]

The next thing I never got - why do people willingly mess with wild animals and then they're surprised when the animal hurts/ tries to kill you. What the hell were you expecting? They're not pets.

[The Blackangel]

On 11/15/2022 at 9:53 PM, killamch89 said:

The next thing I never got - why do people willingly mess with wild animals and then they're surprised when the animal hurts/ tries to kill you. What the hell were you expecting? They're not pets.

They're usually trying to prove how "brave" and "strong" they are. Typically it's men doing this shit. If you're not a zoologist of some kind, or involved in animal studies, you have no business playing with a copperhead. Even then, you should be careful as hell. Hunting is in it's own boat, as you're trying to kill the animal in question.

But otherwise, just leave them the hell alone.