Otakus, those little people who love manga and anime, always enjoying conventions and meeting cosplayers… recently a fierce debate has been established among Japanese forums about the social skills of this community, claiming that they have no social skills at all, something that, depending on the people, may be a misleading statement, are we so bad at being social?
Claim that being an Otaku makes you a bad socializer
There has been a thread on Japanese forums, the great Yaraon forum, that features the following remark: “Why are today’s otaku so bad at socializing?”. Offering an ongoing debate as to why these words, knowing about the track record they have in society, as those sitting behind the salon, this might not be so alarming, but in the forum they make reference to how anime and manga lovers today are losing their social skills.
Fans immediately came forward to offer their opinions regarding the statement: “Times are different, before the word Otaku had a different meaning than it does now”, “Not having social skills does not only encompass Otaku, it can be anyone”, “I don’t think it’s right to narrow social groups just because of a stereotype”. Almost as a whole, users have determined that possessing these Hobbies does not define social skills.
Those of us who live in the West observe the differences there can be about Anime/Manga/Video Game lovers, to those of Japanese origin, who can sometimes be somewhat different in their definition. Now, regarding the perception of people with poor social skills, it may be due to a group that, by spending too much time in their hobbies, tend to lose these skills, something that we have analyzed in depth in this note about the times in video games and how bad it can be to overdo it.
The history of Otaku culture has had its stages, but, in its beginnings in Japan, we are depicted as people who spend a lot of their time in the bedroom consuming instant products, watching anime series, collecting things related to these. Of course, it’s a stereotype promulgated by the Japanese society itself to prove some points, when in reality an Otaku has always been a person who has always been a person who has a passion for something. If you want to watch the thread and comments from the Japanese forum, you can do it from here
So we jump a few years into the future to find the new definition of Otaku, which only encompasses anime and manga lovers, however, video games are related to the above. Now, the social environment can be complicated by the time spent watching series or playing games, although as some forum users said, it does not mean that social environments cannot be developed, although let’s remember how the environment was for Otakus in the first decade of the XXI century here in the West.
