[ SECRET POST #2727 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2727 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 082 secrets from Secret Submission Post #390.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm kind of speechless at the amount of knee-jerk mockery you're getting in the comments for what seems like a fairly straightforward complaint: that denigrating people who treat Japanese media and culture like a cute accessory to their own self-presentation can overlap with denigrating Japanese words and things.

[(Anonymous)]

OP used a social justice keyword, time to mock them for being an SJW.

Alternately: OP isn't a ~real~ Japanese, time to belittle their relation to their parent culture.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

I'd expect that from a few of our trolls. But the rest of the comm? WTF. There has been no serious conversation about the OP's secret. It's all spiraled off into people talking about language and their own ethnicity. Or else making stupid, stereotyped jokes about the Japanese. I wondered why there weren't more Japanese people commenting on anime fandom. If this is why ... if fans from other countries normally react this immaturely to their having anything to say, I'm actually ashamed.

[(Anonymous)]

Japan, for whatever reason, seems to be one of the exception in fandom when it comes to racial sensitivity. If you say anything racist about Asians in general, you'd get rebuked, but if it's just about Japan, you're more likely to get a pass.

[(Anonymous)]

Japan is like fandom's/the Internet's rich eccentric uncle, where it's OK to talk smack about his eccentricities because he's rich so it really can't bother him THAT much.

[(Anonymous)]

*frowns* Why?

[ketita]

Apparently not many people feel this is a legitimate complaint, and thus they are not commenting seriously. fwiw I did post a serious comment, and a few others did as well, which you don't seem to be addressing at all.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Let me amend that to "reading all the comments resulted in finding very few that weren't attacking/making fun of the OP were addressing the OP's complaint at all."

You seemed to be taking issue with the definition of Weeaboo, and asserting that it wasn't offensive to use a handful of common* Japanese words derogatorily because that isn't the same as knowing the language. And no, it isn't, but I don't see why that makes it automatically not-offensive.

*common in anime culture.

[(Anonymous)]

[HTML was missing a forward slash, sorry about that.]

AYRT

Let me amend that to "reading all the comments resulted in finding very few that weren't attacking/making fun of the OP were addressing the OP's complaint at all."

You seemed to be taking issue with the definition of Weeaboo, and asserting that it wasn't offensive to use a handful of common* Japanese words derogatorily because that isn't the same as knowing the language. And no, it isn't, but I don't see why that makes it automatically not-offensive.

*common in anime culture.

[ketita]

tbh my issue is conflating mocking weeaboos with mocking Japanese culture. Because the reason weeaboos are mocked is because they themselves are perceived as disrespecting actual Japanese culture.

[(Anonymous)]

Probably because they talked about appropriating language, which is a giant oxymoron. You can't appropriate language through media/trends that were willfully given and marketed. Those things are doing what they set out to do: build themselves a place in its public consciousness. Using Tsundere to describe a certain type of character trait isn't appropriation because it's the only term associated with those characteristic.

If someone looks down on Japanese people simply because a few westerners use Japanese culture as an accessory, the problem runs deeper than them using 'kawaii' in a mocking way.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

It's public's consciousness*

[(Anonymous)]

Appropriation of language totally can occur when you repurpose it in nonsensical ways or give the words connotations that they don't have in their home context. "Kawaii" literally just means "cute" in Japan, so when weeaboos call things "kawaii", that's a kind of appropriation--we already have the word "cute" in English, so there's no reason to call things "kawaii" except to use the Japanese language as an accessory. That's not the same as calling something tsundere, because tsundere is a Japanese media trope that has no Western equivalent. When anti-weeaboos turn around and repurpose the weeaboo's usage of the Japanese language, then that's just adding a degree of removal from the source, and arguably making it worse because it's making neutral terms in the original language into insults. So when, say, someone talks about a Western fandom m/m ship as "teh kawaii yaoiz" as a way to imply it's an embarrassing ship that only bad fangirls would like, then that's appropriating the language.

(I would also argue that removing terms from the negative connotations they have in their original language, like the way Western fandom uses "otaku", is also appropriation. Westerners proudly self-identify as otaku, but in Japan, the word has starkly negative connotations of a person who is basically human waste and a drain on society. There are people who self-identify as otaku, of course, but they're like the bronies of Japan (because, unlike what weeaboos believe, Japan is not an accepting paradise for anime-loving perverts). Nobody who isn't them thinks that being one is a good or affirming thing to be. So self-identifying as such, as a Westerner, is really misunderstanding the word.)

[(Anonymous)]

No, that's called borrowing words. Most languages contain many, many words not originally from there, and in many cases, the original meaning has shifted to fit the local culture.
Look at all the Chinese words that were loaned into Japanese and Korean and their meaning shifted. It's a natural side effect of language use.
Look at sushi in most places where it's not really that similar to sushi in Japan but is still called sushi.
Look at all the English words loaned into East Asian languages, and how their meanings have changed as a result.
Look at all the many, many words in English that are originally from Yiddish.
This is a perfectly natural phenomenon. Stop trying to earn sjw brownie points.

[(Anonymous)]

When a word is taken into a language because that language has no term for what it's describing, that's valuable dissemination of language, ie not appropriation.

When a word that already has a perfectly functional equivalent in the recipient language is taken, that's a pointless and senseless use of the language, ie appropriation.

[(Anonymous)]

Are you for real?

Do you honestly think something like kaput is appropriation because we already have broken?

[(Anonymous)]

Do you honestly see "kawaii" becoming popularly disseminated as a synonym for cute? No, people only use it because it's Japanese and it makes them feel cool to use it.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah seriously, why do languages have synonyms at all! There should only be one word for any given thing! Any more is just appropriation!

Because the English language had no word for shmuck, glitch, heimish, or klutz.
Korean couldn't find a different word for "news" than "nyusu" despite the fact that the Chinese managed quite well with xinwen. And of course undong could never possibly be used to mean seupocheu (sports).

You're right, every single word ever loaned is because the other language had no word for it. Nobody but English speakers have sex or shit, that's why "shit" and "fuck" have been borrowed across borders.

[(Anonymous)]

You do realize that English language vocabulary entering into other languages' lexicons usually happens because Americans and other Anglophone nations have forced their cultures on other countries, right?

[(Anonymous)]

...no lots of geeks in Japan self identify as otaku and in a positive way. Just like someone can seen "nerd" or "geek" as an insult in English where another person who self identifies that way doesn't see it as negative.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

"Appropriating language" struck me as poor word choice, maybe, but their secret expressed what they were saying in enough different ways that I didn't assume it meant anything like what people are extrapolating from that. The OP was saying (I think) that some of the ways people insult weeaboos are actually insulting to Japanese culture. There's a difference between "your fandom behavior is inappropriately exoticizing" and "all I have to do to prove you're worthless in a public space is mimic you badly by saying random nonsense in Japanese." The latter is not an argument. And I can definitely see how someone would think it's just as hostile to Japanese media as it is to weeaboos.

I don't think many people are hostile to Japan simply because some Westerners unhealthily idealize Japan. I do think that Weeaboo-ness is overly generalized in the US because it sees Japan as cultural competition, and has a vested interest in American kids identifying first and foremost with American media.

[(Anonymous)]

And by "SA," I meant "AYRT."

[(Anonymous)]

I do think that Weeaboo-ness is overly generalized in the US because it sees Japan as cultural competition, and has a vested interest in American kids identifying first and foremost with American media.

Everything has to be a racist conspiracy theory with you, doesn't it?

[(Anonymous)]

Try harder, troll.

[(Anonymous)]

It's trolling to think you're an SJW piece of shit?