Otaku

Read on fark that a magazine in Japan now has a test to let otaku get a proper grades for their "otaku-ness" (in lack of a better word)

The forum on fark has a lot of people asking what otaku is, and a lot of people explaining what otaku is. The one that stood up for me is the one that said "otaku are sad people who shut themselves in and don't socialise"

I've never have a long enough attention span to be obsessed with anything enough to be a fanatic, let along an otaku. I watch anime, and I "cosplay" whenever I can at costume party (possibly stretching the meaning of cosplay a little, I know. But in a sense dressing up as Catwoman or Lara Croft kinda qualifies :P). I never really get to an otaku stage though.

I guess, used in its normal sense, I wouldn't really count them as sad. Having an obsession with a hobby isn't really sad. Heck I would like to have found a passion like that too. Not knowing how to interact with people isn't sad. If anything it's a product of society. I know I lost my ability to interact with people for a while after I came to NZ because I was being picked on all the time, and after a whiel you just learn to not tlak to people, and I read all the tintin comics there were in the library. Mind you it's not like I'm like that to start with. It was particularly hard I suppose to go from being one of the popular kid and straight to the one constantly being picked on just because I moved into another country that speaks another language.

People don't just "not have people interaction skill". They normally "lost" in somewhere along the line, and it's a vicious cycle. The most you retrieve, the more people gonna label you as a "freak" and treat you even worse. And then everyone goes around and point the finger at them saying they are "sad" and just not trying hard enough. To me by labelling them "sad" and "disturbed" is probably what caused it in the first place.

I suppsoe I'd be labelled as a geek. I'm damned proud of it. I think I've come into terms with people thinking I'm strange, just because I tell maths jokes. I'm glad that geeks everywhere seems to start to be proud of their geekdom. It's not about being strange, it's about being who they are, and proud of it.

Now I'm just gonna wait til the rest of the world to catch on.

\Then again, geeks are taking over the world anyway. So there. :P