Anime & Manga What is a Weeaboo to you?

[Fate]

To me, a Weeaboo is:


A person who is a wannabe Japanese, they speak Wapanese, and they end EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE with Desu.

 

[JayTee]

A weeabo is someone who insists that only Japanese made media is worth paying attention to, and that everything else is a shitty knockoff or somehow inferior.

 

[ninbinz]

For a second there I thought you were about a wereboo but instead you're talking about an inconsequential part of the human population.

 

[J0ker]

 

[JayTee]

Huh, I didn't realize that "wolfaboos" was the new term for furries.


I like the term "furries" better.

 

[J0ker]

Huh, I didn't realize that "wolfaboos" was the new term for furries.
I like the term "furries" better.

"Furries" makes me think of creepy 35 year old neckbeards in poorly made fox costumes.

 

[Fate]

A furry is someone who is a fan of anthropomorphic animals.


A wolfaboo is someone who is obsessed with wolves.


Totally different.

 

[JayTee]

So, a furry is the final form of a wolfaboo.


Makes sense.

 

[J0ker]

So, a furry is the final form of a wolfaboo.
Makes sense.

 

[Fate]

Considering Im a furry, I would know. They aren't even close, like I said.

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

1) Three wolf moon, and the college pagans who can't wait to tell you about their noble and fierce spirit animal.


But also) Weeaboo is a colloquial term for white kids, with all the colonial history they haven't had the impetus to deconstruct yet, fetishizing Japanese culture. It's just a form of benevolent racism. The details are interesting from a taxonomic standpoint, or for examining the origins and effects of the specific manifestation and its forms, but the basics are nothing really new or special. Compare it to the fetishization of native Americans common among "wolfaboos", say, and all that Noble Savage crap. An inadequate understanding that fixates on and exaggerates the most popularized differences, whether realistic or not.

 

[Bagel]

If someone were to be half-japanese but always put Japan and Japanese things on a pedestal, would that make them a half-weeb or just patriotic? (My friend also suggested "elitist" hah).

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

I think it just means that feeling like an outsider, and processing an absent history in a racist culture, is hard. So people do what they can to assert the identity they think will make them feel best. The difference is that he has no choice about processing his Japanese heritage. Maybe he's doing it in a clumsy way, but it's not as though he'll ever have the option of not being connected to it, good parts and bad. This isn't the case for the stereotyped weeaboo.

 

[Bagel]

[QUOTE="Shining Lotus Sage]I think it just means that feeling like an outsider, and processing an absent history in a racist culture, is hard. So people do what they can to assert the identity they think will make them feel best. The difference is that he has no choice about processing his Japanese heritage. Maybe he's doing it in a clumsy way, but it's not as though he'll ever have the option of not being connected to it, good parts and bad. This isn't the case for the stereotyped weeaboo.

[/QUOTE]
That's a really well thought-out response, thanks.

 

[Polaris]

[QUOTE="Shining Lotus Sage]I think it just means that feeling like an outsider, and processing an absent history in a racist culture, is hard. So people do what they can to assert the identity they think will make them feel best. The difference is that he has no choice about processing his Japanese heritage. Maybe he's doing it in a clumsy way, but it's not as though he'll ever have the option of not being connected to it, good parts and bad. This isn't the case for the stereotyped weeaboo.

[/QUOTE]
I agree with what was said above.


Weeaboos can go as far as to deny a half-Japanese person's ties to Japan on a ridiculous, baseless accusation that being half is being 'imperfect' or because a half-Japanese may not necessarily know Japanese culture and language well (or maybe not at all) and weeaboos can say this easily as if they have the right to say so without thinking of why half-Japanese people do not or cannot reconnect with their heritage easily.

 

[KillGill]

I think people are putting labels of the Weeaboo in to many places. By saying those who speak Japanese and like Japanese media but aren't Japanese are Weeaboos, then I'm a Weeaboo.


Best definition I can Find:


A non japanese person who basically denounces their own culture and calls themselves japanese. They try to learn japanese through the anime they watch and usually end up pronouncing it wrong and looking like a complete idiot.


KEEP IN MIND: that a non-japanese person can like the culture, watch anime, speak the language and RESPECT THE CULTURE, while still keeping in touch with there own.

 

[Bagel]

I agree with your statement, but coming from a half-Japanese (aka me) I do have to admit it irks me when non-japanese individuals with no relations to japanese people/having japanese heritage in their family wear traditional clothing at festivals and such, but it doesn't necessarily make them a weaboo.

 

[JayTee]

Interesting, why would you have a problem with them wearing traditional clothing at festivals where that style of clothing would be worn? From my western non-japanese perspective, I would do it to be respectful of the culture I currently find myself in. Is this some how in error?

 

[Bagel]

Actually, I do agree with you completely. I guess it's just that in my own past personal experiences, they were all weaboos (constantly related activities to anime and even ran an anime stand). To be honest I'm pretty biased about this, and in my last post I just wanted to make a small comment, nothing much.

 

[JayTee]

Fair enough, no worries ( )

 

[Polaris]

I'm not understanding how it's being respectful to wear clothes that you have no cultural ties to in a festival, but okay. (From my experience, I don't think people deliberately wear traditional clothes in a festival unless they are performing for that festival in some way.)

 

[J0ker]

I'm not understanding how it's being respectful to wear clothes that you have no cultural ties to in a festival, but okay.

No more silly St. Patties day clothes for the non-Irish, then?

 

[KillGill]

I'm not understanding how it's being respectful to wear clothes that you have no cultural ties to in a festival, but okay. (From my experience, I don't think people deliberately wear traditional clothes in a festival unless they are performing for that festival in some way.)

It's not just that... It would be like a guy coming to america dressed in a cowboy costume, repeating the phrases "Howdy" "Murica" and "Would you like fries with that?" and thinking that's how american culture is in a whole

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

[QUOTE="THE J0KER]No more silly St. Patties day clothes for the non-Irish, then?

[/QUOTE]
That's a really good example. St. Patrick's Day is a fairly minor holiday in Ireland, and a sober one at that. The green beer is a wholly American phenomenon, and the libertine excess plays into the Stage Irish stereotype the Brits cultivated while they were annexing their neighbors.


So yeah, that's pretty colonial caricature, and racist by several meanings of the term.

 

[Polaris]

It's not just that... It would be like a guy coming to america dressed in a cowboy costume, repeating the phrases "Howdy" "Murica" and "Would you like fries with that?" and thinking that's how american culture is in a whole

Exactly. As a half-Japanese as well, it's really annoying and disturbing to hear people come up to me all the time and start saying or asking me in relation to stereotypes about Japanese people ("Do you eat sushi at home all the time?"; "You're not very gentle and kind for a Japanese."; "You're dark for a Japanese."; etc.).


I'm tired of being a walking translator for people and then being told I can't call myself a Japanese because I'm not fluent in Japanese and don't know everything about Japanese culture.


Then you see weeaboos shouting "kawaii" and "sugoi" and random Japanese words that they probably learned from anime/drama and then profess that they are Japanese inside or were Japanese in a different life. No, you cannot just wear my ethnic culture.