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Comment by random9749832 | Hacker News Reader

When you are a teenager it is so easy to treat your time as if it is unlimited and start sinking 1000s of hours into some MMO or other games that before you know it you are in your 20s with no girlfriend, job, skill or self-confidence.

Then you got Japanese entertainment like Hatsune Miku, idols and visual novels/anime that take advantage of lonely people with make-believe girlfriends.

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It may not be accurate to paint large amounts of time spent MMOs and the like as a net negative, though. Speaking personally as someone who grew up in a tiny town where there’s nothing for young people to do, WoW and the small nerdy circle of friends that came with it almost certainly kept me out of serious trouble in my teenage years and I think ultimately helped steer my trajectory in such a way that allowed for a more successful adulthood, even if it was a distraction from shorter term development.

Of course this is something that will vary greatly between individuals, though. For some the depths of obsession are much more deep and destructive.

Lots of visual novels/anime are about shut-ins tremulously venturing out into the world and eventually making friends, usually after a lot of anxiety and misunderstanding. I think they'd probably have an encouraging effect. I remember one where a woman confesses her condition to the person in the next apartment, and is advised to start small by visiting the convenience store. She manages it, and is incredibly proud of herself. Soon she is making lists of convenience stores, and has visited every convenience store in a five-mile radius! And now her problem is to diversify, but, you know, it's a start.

How encouraging is it really if there is lots of VNs about shut-ins? Seems like just more escapism. How many does the average person play before they start going outside?

I guess somewhere in the region of twenty, sixty-two, or maybe five? How could I possibly know the answer to that question? But it seems good if the stories you're consuming discuss your issues and inspire some cognition about your life.

It was rhetorical. Thought I made it clear with the preceding sentences.

OK, so you were rhetorically saying "this can't often help", and I was rhetorically replying "maybe it sometimes does", but neither of us really knows, except I don't think they're bad.

Note: Miku is a vocaloid, basically a voice bank licensed to producers who generate and tune a pre-existing voice with their own lyrics/music. Some of the music produced by these artists are actually amazing and it gets even better when a human singer covers the songs. (See supercell+Ado 恋は戦争) Yes I know about the Idol part and I couldn’t care less.

It’s the people like you that generalize a whole culture that ruin it.

Yikes dude, stereotype much? Anime actually got me out of my "hikikomori" phase by encouraging me to study and get a gf. You can laugh but it's true :).

Hey now, Vocaloid tuning takes effort and creativity!

Considering the strong inability of modern women to show interest in the average man, I find your comment offensive. The thing is, these people wouldn't get girlfriends either way and now you're just here to bully them. Some people simply aren't cut out for having a girlfriend or having children. Forcing them into doing that just to satisfy what a literal "random" person on HN said is absurdly cruel. You don't care about their lives so just shut up.

Those 1000s of hours are what got me my job, skill and self confidence. It's people like you who hate it when others are self confident.

Wait, what's wrong with Hatsune Miku? It has relatively broad appeal; performed at Coachella.

I think they’re describing a stereotype that’s a decade behind the times.

Nope, Hatsune Miku fans have been and will always be weeaboos, with all of the negative pejorative that word entails.

Why would you define Japanese culture by non-Japanese? I presume the majority of Miku fans are Japanese?

> weeaboo

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywgxey/we-asked-j-culture-fa...

That article really drove home to me why we fought the US revolutionary war.

>with all of the negative pejorative that word entails

Maybe try engaging with the people instead of lumping everyone together? ACG culture is not niche anymore. There are literally big concerts with Hatsune Miku all over the world.

Sad I have to disclaimer this: I am not a fan of Hatsune Miku.

> weeaboos

What a sad, reductive take. (Not to mention most of the fans are Japanese themselves.) It would do good by you to go outside and get to know folks who have dissimilar interests than you.

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