Off-topic but, I'm noticing a lot of anime waifu and furry-type illustrations on tech blogs lately on HN.
Can someone cooler/younger tell me: Is this the hand-off to the new generation, or is there a meta-meme I missed?
Can someone cooler/younger tell me: Is this the hand-off to the new generation, or is there a meta-meme I missed?
Too old for this shxt: 80-col formatted plaintext
Greybeards: LaTeX-generated PostScript
Modern professionals: HTML doc with default browser stylesheet
Kids These Days: Anime girl sidebardamn. Got me.
Because I’m tacky…
Did not happen.
I don't think so. This was the default GNU style in the 90s, but even they started using CSS at some point.
Definitely my preference, but too old? They will have to pry my keyboard from my dead hands.
absolutely not
I don't know if the screenshot was doctored, or if the Amazon recommendation engine found a real cluster of customers who are interested in both programming books and programming socks. In any case, I suppose it doesn't really matter because when people spread funny memes ironically it's only a matter of time before people join in sincerely without the irony.
In short the answer to your question is "both".
Notice that an anime girl holding a programming book is in itself a (mild) subversion of gender roles. The stereotypical programmer is male, and the stereotypical programmer is not cute.
I don't think that is going on here, you have to consider that the anime girl is holding the book towards the viewer, my guess is that the implication is supposed to be "Will you explain it to me".
This is not correct. It's hard to explain if you've never seen them in context but rather than "will you explain it to me" they are actually saying "won't you read this?" or "will you learn this language for me?" kinda note. They used to be commonly posted as OP image in programming threads on /g/ with lines like "have you read sicp today /g/?" or similar. There's also another very common variation of this meme for gamedev communities on 4chan with the girl from the anime New Game (see this[0] clip, I couldn't find the meme itself) with a similar vibe.
? Why? There's nothing that indicates this, the history behind these images shows the clear opposite. This to me sounds more like your (unconscious?) biases are showing more than it actually being a thing. Trust me, it's not really how this meme works. If you actually look at most images in that repo the girls are either reading the book, explaining the book, or clearly pushing it (often aggressively) towards the viewer to make them read it.
EDIT: Are you familiar with Serial Experiments Lain? I think that was one of the first ones to pop up with these.
Reflecting upon my own impressions and how these changed, I am more conscious of these points and find it hard to ignore them. Assuming that I am not totally mistaken, which of course might be the case, knowing that others don't see these things pains me. More so when someone like the author of the link publically stands by it.
But you are right though that not every image is like this.
(I'm kinda repeating myself in this thread a bit, sorry but...) I can guarantee you that the anime girls holding programming books has been a thing for at least a decade, so the 2017 creation of that repository doesn't really mean much. Not sure about the programming sock meme but I think it's a bit more recent. However I do think it generates from certain "battlestation threads" on /g/ where people used to post photos of themselves sitting at their PC with those knee-high socks on and the meme kinda spread from there. Way before that screenshot itself.
Makes perfect sense that a meme combining anime and programming would come from 4chan's technology board.
I suppose what made the meme interesting enough to spread is the subversion of the traditional hacker aesthetic. Having a beard voluminous enough to carry The C Programming Language inside everywhere you went was a sign of great experience and wisdom. As a bonus, it also horrified "the suits", who were hackers' natural outgroup.
In the 21st century you just can't annoy the suits the same way because even large corporations don't demand people wear literal suits anymore. Baffling the HN crowd is what passes for iconoclasm these days.
Memes ensued
...I think I like it
Yet here I am with a random username. I do also have a public professional website though.
Again, to me "easrng" means nothing. When starting to read your comment I had no idea what perspective you were coming from, if you were about to agree with me or not. All I know about you are the 99 words you have written in this comment.
Setting aside scams, if you meet someone online, when you get along well and become friends, would you reject the opportunity to meet them in real life instead of communicating virtually? I think most people would take that opportunity. I guess I am still young, and I think that most people my are inclined to agree with me -- especially after the lockdowns.
But what you say is interesting: When I hear "I can craft and change representations of all that I am", I hear someone saying that they can make up a fake persona, instead of being the person they actually and inherently are. An online persona starts blank, just like I have no image of you before our first message. Even the most generic person has something that makes them ever so different from most other people, that they cannot deny.
On the contrary, I think that anonymity makes people more honest, because they don't have to fear the repercussions of saying something that either a real person or an online persona. They both have to hide, while the lack of an identity makes you free.
> I kinda like it, and kinda wish it was just totally cool to have a waifu on my site too without having to lean into irony or identity to "justify" it against this cringe instinct.
it's only once you accept that you are cringe, that you are are free to become truly based.
"anime is trash... and so am I"
I was originally going to say "Hey, just do you" but then I totally get that feeling of "I'm into X just because I like it but for some stupid reason X signifies Y which I really don't care for" and it sucks.
If you are browsing in dark mode, there is no background image. You have to switch to light mode to see it.
So I guess we now know the heathens who drive in light mode ಠ_ಠ
Back then, me and friends spent an insane amount of time on reverse engineering a Japanese file sharing app so that we could build our own server version (like Deluge nowadays) and then we built our own IRC server and our own XDCC download bots so that we could get Anime raws onto a university server and then recode them to make download over ISDN (64kb/s) feasible.
Also, a lot of the Animes featured socially awkward nerd guys who by accident stumbled into their own harem...
With that context, posters of Anime girls together with nerd stuff sold extremely well at Connichi (a big Anime convention in Germany). A friend of mine (who's now CTO of a C++ dev shop) even bought a wax printer so that we could make really high quality A3 posters.
So I guess it's an in-joke for Europeans born in the 80s.
[edit] Oh, right, I should explain what Furcadia is. It's apparently based on Multi-User Dungeon type technology, but has a graphical frontend and was driven by user-generated content. Essentially, it was Habbo Hotel for furries, four years before Habbo Hotel even existed.
The loop continues.
Combine with a greater acceptance of non-traditional personal identities, and you get professionals using anime and furry avatars and decorations. Practically speaking, it's not really any more or less professional than O'Reilly using animals to create an identity for its programming book covers (so long as you're not wearing a fursuit or sailor moon leotard to work).
What's risqué in OP's picture?
I'm in my mid 30's. I started blogging about cryptography and security under my furry handle (and with blog posts adorned with furry art) at the start of the pandemic.
It gave me something to do that was both productive and fun.
Suppose it's challenging why having an anime character next to a blurb of text is embarrassing.
As much as I hate "both sides" discourse[0], it's interesting that I see the same memes in both right and left contexts - I wonder of a creation of a "second language" to discuss divisive politics is enough of a force to spread it, or of it is intentional coopting of another sides language to dilute it.
E: [0] HN is not the place for the rest of my feelings on this. Both sides aren't the same is enough to suffice here.
What exactly is embarrassing about this?
The author probably likes seeing an anime girl, and feels that displaying one on their page expresses an interest in anime, tech, and a casual tone for their writing.
I have no issue with it in its original Japanese setting and I wasn’t aware of its use by the LGBT community but it seems far less depressing in this case.
Watching someone be genuinely enthusiastic about something is wonderful. Society has far too much cynicism, and watching it beat that into children as they grow up is no fun. I see a lot of adults who treat things that way.
Maybe it's a generational thing, maybe it's my circles, but I've seen plenty people appreciating and gushing about people sharing their interests. It's even in the memes, here's an example:
> Everyone wants an autistic gf who infodumps abt video games and linguistics and whatever up until day 43 of the relationship when you get a paper cut and she starts trying to drink your blood
But isn't the question what they are being enthusiastic about? I would certiainly agree that there are some things that considered noble and respectable (helping the sick, science, the right kind of activism for the right kind of people, ...) that most admire. At the same time I think most recognize that there are destructive or non-productive things one can be enthusiastic about to the point of obsession. While having an anime girl on your website or being a furry is usually not destructive and ignore the cultural popular images of people like these, then they are at least non-productive in the sense that neither society nor the individual themselves grows from engaging with the topic. You can study engineering and improve human technology or write and learn how to better express yourself, but I don't see how anyone can progress as an anime weeaboo beyond a self-contained culture that might value if you know the names and details of all characters by heart. As soon as you step out of this bubble, the value disappears.
> Maybe it's a generational thing, maybe it's my circles, but I've seen plenty people appreciating and gushing about people sharing their interests.
I don't know what generation you are referring too. I'm Gen Z and obviously have different feelings about this. Sure, I enjoy talking to people who share my interests, but I know when and where the right place is. I don't go out with friends and insist on talking about e.g. Emacs, and I certainly don't want to be perceived as someone who superficially is only interested in my own topics, not caring to engage with topics that others care about.
(Btw. thank for your respectful tone, I appreciate that).
A lot of these people tend to be quite isolated from society in general, so they end up losing their sense of embarrassment entirely. Doing things that other people find weird or that make other people uncomfortable ends up becoming a sort of hobby for them (and often becomes their personality entirely) since they effectively have nothing to lose over it.
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it, but I vouched anyway. It’s an interesting perspective I hadn’t considered before, and broadened by horizons a bit.
The comment I responded to was dead. I don’t feel it really violates the site guidelines. Although some people might take it personally, which could make it sort of flame-bait-y and result in flags.
In at least one case I know of, by being so outrageously competent that they know it won't hurt their ability to get a job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itasha
As an example, I believe to recall the first time I felt this way as a child, perhaps age 4 or 5. There was some sort of a meeting and somehow a kid felt prompted to go up to the whiteboard and start explaining everyone the Bionicle alphabet (https://bionicle.fandom.com/wiki/Matoran_Alphabet) with unreasonable enthusiasm. I was into Bionicles myself, but remember thinking to myself, "Don't you know how you look like? Don't you know that nobody cares? Have you no sense of how others perceive you? If I hadn't seen how this looks like, would I have done something like this eventually?". I don't know how others brush these impressions away with a "Good for him".
Anyway, to answer your question: I'm not sure there's any personality traits I would call "embarrassing". There are some I would call harmful, sure, and there are some that are associated with being socially inept or less cool, but I don't think there's a category of personality traits that are just embarrassing.
To your specific example: Being enthusiastic about things isn't embarrassing; it invites others to share that enthusiasm, either because of a shared interest or simply because watching someone be enthusiastic about something is enjoyable.
Proof: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/01/i-told-you-so-2021-edition/
I'm friends with the both on steam and they are both very very very into gaming (like 4-5 hours a day at least) so I always thought it was related to that somehow.
What happened? Anime and furry fandom became more socially acceptable across contexts. Why? Probably because of the ridiculous degree to which we are connected online and the way this has eroded our ability to segregate identities. A lot of people you have seen online have always been huge losers, but many of them are more open to flagrantly displaying it now.
Is this good? Dunno. I think making some of these subcultures more mainstream can suck for the subcultures themselves. I've never found it all that off-putting personally, but that could just be a reflection of my own biases as a long-time online loser.
What you call a "flagrantly display", I call a typical, progressive break from meaningless social conventions. People like cute drawings and post them on their websites, so what? And I think it provides good visibility to those communities to demonstrate the skilled and creative people that inhabit it.
I realize now this attitude may seem unnecessarily self-deprecating, though. Oh well.