Topic: Thought about weaboos / Asian culture on the internet
+Anonymous A — 6 months ago #67,567
Somebody on here made a post about weeb culture and imageboards. I was just thinking about it, and I consume content on the internet from countries in Asia but I’ve never really watched anime. I went down another pipeline.
Instead what happened was, in middle school and high school, I was a massive nerd and I’d spend all my free time coding, so I started watching videos on YouTube from software engineers talking about software. So there was this one guy Joma Tech (who has weird drama surrounding him but whatever) who made videos on YouTube about coding made some community post saying he liked a video from another Asian YouTuber Arpi Park who made some video called "honey nut cheerios" or something about his experience growing up as an Asian American. And Apri Park was a college YouTuber at Stanford studying communications (although briefly he took some coding class and made a game or something), and I’d watch his videos about being a student at Stanford while I was in high school. But one of his videos where he was showing off his dorm room had a rap song in the background.
So then I looked in the description and found it was a song called "lil uzi" by an Asian Canadian rapper called Eric Reprid. And he doesn’t make great music or anything and it’s not a particularly good song, but at that point I had had zero interest in rap music in my life and I thought it was kinda catchy. And then YouTube recommended me It G Ma by Keith Ape and Kohh. The first one is a Korean rapper, the second is a Japanese guy who makes trap music / metal music / trap metal. And then I went down this whole rabbit hole of Korean and Japanese trap music. Which is ironic because I’m a black dude and I never really listed to music before that.
It’s also kinda ironic since I’m a black dude and that’s how I started listening to rap. Before that I never really did. Despite the stereotypes, there are actually a lot of black people who have a stigma against rap music / rap culture. There’s a whole Protestant evangelical religious thing (not Protestant but most blacks are) combined with a classism thing like "oh that’s ghetto we’re better than that" thing going on. So like even now I’d never actually say I like rap music. Which is super ironic the more I think about it.
·Anonymous A (OP) — 6 months ago, 5 minutes later[T] [B] #671,024
It’s ironic on multiple levels, rap music is a black thing, not an Asian thing, but I became interested in rap music through Asian guys on the internet because a lot of black people have a thing against rap music.
·Anonymous A (OP) — 6 months ago, 7 minutes later, 12 minutes after the original post[T] [B] #671,025
Although the classism thing is interesting because a lot of rappers are pretty wealthy / successful. But a lot of black people still look down on them because of a lack of class. It’s not necessarily about where people end up, but more about where they came from. If you came from "the streets" it doesn’t matter if you become a millionaire or a billionaire, you are where you came from. Also a lot black people are still super religious and very conservative (even if they vote democrat and are pro DEI or whatever). They’re just liberal because they’re not white, basically. That’s like the entire reason.
·Anonymous A (OP) — 6 months ago, 6 minutes later, 18 minutes after the original post[T] [B] #671,026
But then it’s also interesting because blacks in Africa are similar to blacks in America in that they’re generally pretty religious. Except sometimes blacks in Africa say they don’t like black Americans and they find black Americans embarrassing because of rap culture because that’s what they see in the media so they think that black Americans are more different from them than what they actually are. But most of those artists are promoted by rich white dudes. Sometimes white people will turn that into a race thing like "see, African Americans just have a shitty culture look at how successful black immigrants from Africa are!" Except it’s not really a race thing because I’ve been to Europe and white Europeans feel the same way about white Americans, they’re just a little bit more polite about it. They’ll make conversation by talking down to America but they’re like "oh it’s not you we just mean all the other ones." Lol
·Anonymous A (OP) — 6 months ago, 10 minutes later, 29 minutes after the original post[T] [B] #671,027
@671,025 (A)
And honestly I’m not even faulting black Americans for that. Some people will say stuff like "when will blacks get over the Democratic Party? Most blacks have deeply conservative values." But actually, it’s probably smart. The race thing actually is more important than all the other culture war and anti religious stuff on the left. You can’t support the people who don’t think you should have rights just because they claim to believe in the same God. That would be stupid.
+Anonymous B — 6 months ago, 6 hours later, 6 hours after the original post[T] [B] #671,044
I think a big reason rap is promoted by rich white people is because it reinforces the stereotype that blacks are less civilized than white people. Make a few black guys rich and parade them as fools in the media and you tarnish the entire race. And since other countries don't see the same behavior, they think it's just African-Americans.
We hosted a Chinese student many years ago, and the impression he had of Americans was basically black people act like gangsters and white people act like Charlie Sheen. He also listened to rap music, but it was all Chinese as far as I could tell. The English music he listened to was mostly top-40 pop stuff I think.
+Anonymous C — 6 months ago, 11 minutes later, 7 hours after the original post[T] [B] #671,045
@previous (B)
I’m not familiar with Charlie Sheen so I had to google it, but it seems like he’s mostly in comedies? Although, to be fair, now that I think about it, in terms of cultural exports, blacks mostly seem to be in music and a lot of actors seem to be white (with notable exceptions obviously), so it kinda makes sense.
·Anonymous C — 6 months ago, 5 minutes later, 7 hours after the original post[T] [B] #671,046
In terms of stereotypes though, I would agree that part of the reason why rap is promoted so much is because it does reinforce certain negative stereotypes. Yet at the same time, that also kinda backfired since there are people who aren’t black have copied it because they think it’s cool. I feel like it’s similar to the question of violent video games. In America, people have blamed school shootings on video games that are shooters like call of duity or whatever. Personally, I think it’s dumb to blame video games instead of blaming gun laws and it was probably some excuse the NRA made up. But that could be another instance of some form of entertainment promoting something negative. In the case of video games maybe it’s masculinity with aggression or glorifying violence or something. But then it’s also dependent on whether the people consuming it are smart enough to know it’s fake or a fantasy. Like there’s a difference between consuming rap music and thinking being in a gang in real life is cool the same way there’s a difference between playing a video game and actually shooting up a school IRL. Obviously though, white people who have a bias against blacks won’t care or think about any of that very deeply.
·Anonymous C — 6 months ago, 18 minutes later, 7 hours after the original post[T] [B] #671,048
@previous (C)
Elaborating on the "copying" thing: something I have noticed is that even though rap and kpop appeal to very different audiences (rap appealing mostly to males and kpop often being pretty girly), some K-pop songs with very girly lyrics sound oddly similar to tracks from rap music. Then randomly I stumbled on a video on YouTube where some guy was explaining that actually it’s not a coincidence and giving several examples of it. A lot of K-pop music is actually inspired by sounds from underground rap genres. Which is interesting because K-pop has a completely opposite vibe from trap music, it has completely different lyrics and subject matter and is meant to appeal to a completely different audience but there are some K-pop songs I’ve heard that sound really similar to trap music I’ve listened to.
https://youtu.be/BUQs5Mw0sFQ ·Anonymous C — 6 months ago, 4 minutes later, 7 hours after the original post[T] [B] #671,049
@previous (C)
Like hypothetically, if I was a girl instead of a guy, and I liked the same sound, it’s possible I would end up listening to music with a completely different message but with basically more or less the same sound, but that makes it a different genre.
·Anonymous B — 6 months ago, 1 hour later, 9 hours after the original post[T] [B] #671,053
@671,045 (C)
Charlie was kind of at the peak of his fame at the time, and was in Two and a Half Men with his character essentially being based on him and written for him, and our student was heavily influenced by that show. Since Charlie was doing pretty much the same things in the show that he was in the paparazzo media like TMZ, there was kind of a double reinforcement that this was how Americans acted, so when our student arrived he tried to emulate that because his goal was to become an American.
@671,046 (C)
The video game argument is just a misdirect/scapegoat. Violent crime took a huge downturn in the early '90s, the same time as video games were becoming commonplace in people's homes. Whether the NRA actually came up with that angle I can't say, but they're absolutely complicit in the rise of school shootings. Any 'conservative' who doesn't toe their line will be out-campaigned by an alternate in the next election.
Of course there are exceptions, but I'm not aware of a single case where that person wasn't either being treated for, or had been recommended for treatment of some mental illness. Which is the other prong to this issue: the failure to take mental health seriously. We're not talking about 6-year-olds with no concept of the permanency of death shooting up their schools. Any mentally healthy tween/teen can discern the difference between dying and respawning in a video game and dying for real. (With the potential exception of individuals with down syndrome and some levels of autism, but these fall into the mental & developmental disorder category, which is still related to mental health. Also I don't think any down syndrome individuals have gone on shooting sprees.)
@671,048 (C)
In general there's going to be a certain amount of copying going on in music because everybody has different tastes and so when people make their own music, they're going to combine the elements they like from the music of others. I can attest that I've noticed a similar phenomenon with the Japanese music I've listened to. I'm mainly a rock/metalhead, but I can also enjoy J-pop. At first I was just kind of forcing it because I was a weeb who didn't have enough disposable storage to torrent series in the early 2000's so music was more economical. But later as I matured I realized 2 things: firstly that because the lyrics are unintelligible to me, I could enjoy songs witch catchy beats without judging them by their lyrical shallowness/banality which is what turns me off to a lot of English pop songs. Secondly, there seems to be more utilization of 'rock' elements than in western pop, such as guitar solos and an energetic rather than melancholic or moody performance style.
(Edited 30 seconds later.)