27 Jan 2010

Are you Weird?

Still occupied with arranging my backup files.

Meanwhile here’s a set of Hikikomori-related Subnormality comics for those wondering if this blog is abandoned or not.

P.S. For those unfamiliar with this series, the artist tend to put lots of text in the panels so you might prefer going to the permalinks one by one instead.

Here’s the list of links:

http://www.viruscomix.com/page500.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page509.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page489.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page486.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page483.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page481.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page476.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page471.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page469.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page465.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page467.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page456.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page454.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page452.html


http://www.viruscomix.com/page466.html

…and

7 Things Good Parents Do: http://www.cracked.com/article/195_7-things-good-parents-do-that-screw-kids-up-life/



Weird.

notfunnyagain.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page500.html

Anxious:

shine%20s.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page509.html

Cramped:

werefuckedwerefuckedwerefucked.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page489.html

It Should Be Illegal to Be a Jerk

illegal%20to%20be.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page486.html


Trolled

trolls%20of%20tirol.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page483.html

Embarassed…

odeon.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page481.html

Exploring

thecalendarfinal2.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page476.html

Wondering

thereareonekindofpeople.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page471.html

Tatemae

enrahaenraha.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page469.html

Honne (…or why bars are like online communities)

7diab.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page465.html

Friendship

sub100.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page467.html

Charisma

beautifulfood.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page456.html

Direction

fuckyoupacman.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page454.html

Apathy

macerator.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page452.html

Peer Pressure

theserviceisfun.jpg

http://www.viruscomix.com/page466.html

…and finally something from Cracked.com:

You’d Think…

Peer pressure is the thing that makes kids smoke cigarettes, do drugs and read pornographic magazines by the time they reach middle school. As countless PSAs and after-school specials taught us, we must teach our kids to be themselves and never give two halves of a fuck about what their “friends” think.

But in Reality…

Remember that smelly kid in school, who never washed his hair, had no friends and once pissed in the sink at that party he wasn’t invited to? That’s your kid, without peer pressure. A study conducted at the University of Virginia showed that kids who were exposed to peer pressure around the ages of 12 and 13 turned out to be way more well-adjusted than the ones who weren’t. They better understood the need to accommodate and make compromises when confronted with social pressure, rather than the “I’ll just take my ball and go home” attitude they adopt otherwise.

The kids who were taught to be themselves no matter what didn’t become walking clones of James Dean. They actually turned out less engaged, socially challenged and statistically less intelligent, their GPAs dropping almost an entire letter grade.

Maybe more importantly, when you actually give a damn about how people view you, it develops a skill of reading the most subtle changes in people’s emotional states, leading ultimately to a heightened sense of empathy. In this socially awkward age of the Internet, it turns out peer pressure at the right time can basically give you superpowers.

http://www.cracked.com/article/195_7-things-good-parents-do-that-screw-kids-up-life/

Posted via email from A Hikikomori StopGap | Comment »

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27 Aug 2009

There used to be this poll on the AnonIB boards which I hated because I got the sense that the poster made it just for the sake of making a poll. It was made even worse when it became one of the popular recent threads before the board went down. “Worse” in the sense that polls were often among the most useless but popular topics in any forum community — the fact that it holds true for one of the more well visited English speaking Hikkikomori boards symbolized to me the disappointing fact (at least as far as English speaking Hikkikomoris go) that being an online Hikikomori still has very little to do with being about Hikkikomoris but are just no different than being any random forum member except you write the word Hikki more. This gets to me because I am not just a random poster on a random forum about a random subject that’s on the internet. I consider myself a Hikkikomori and when I see something as useless as an internet poll thread being valued alot by the likes of a community who claim “they hate their life so much but can’t do anything about it” or “they’re doing it for a path they believe in” to me this is like being an oppressed black man in a parallel universe where the internet as it is today existed during the American civil rights movements and seeing most people in there bumping up threads asking how long they were oppressed while threads discussing more important and urgent matters get ignored. I’M NOT SAYING DON’T REPLY TO POLLS! Hell, I answered it too. BUT! Come on… You’re telling me as a group “Feel Good, Huggy Bear, Dig Dotting” questions that ain’t worth shit to most people gets us more talkative than topics concerning defining Hikkikomoris, finding solutions for social acceptance as a minority or discussing solutions for the Anxiety Based Hikkikomoris?! Fuck!!! This is our identity we’re talking about here! You don’t just log off and become somebody else. You don’t just close the AnonIB tab or window and suddenly stop becoming Hikibeara. This isn’t Windows vs. Linux. You don’t get to go back roleplaying as Jeff Albertson for every “Internet Topic.Replied.” You only stop being a Hikkikomori when you finally decide to or when you have been proven to not fit the definition. …this hatred for it eventually made me go “Fuck! I might as well turn the data into a graph.” but then I realize; “Fuck, I don’t know how to turn it into a graph.” So instead I just used Compendium and exported it as a jpg. I did make a topic over at Hikikomori PHPBB asking if anyone can be bothered to make a graph of the poll data. This is just the answers for How Long were you a Hiki? though. I’m not really sure how to group the other answers just yet. (You could even say this image didn’t turn out so well as I had to fit the entries in ways to simulate a graph and this was just in dealing with numbers.) Edit: sigh. Looks like the texts get muddied when uploading so I guess I’ll just have to drop this idea until I can find a better alternative. Edit: Looks like the image wasn’t as unreadable after all. Here are the graphs offered by other Hikikomoris: http://hikkikomori.tumblr.com/post/175558740/how-long-have-you-been-a-hikikomori-graph

There used to be this poll on the AnonIB boards which I hated because I got the sense that the poster made it just for the sake of making a poll.

It was made even worse when it became one of the popular recent threads before the board went down. “Worse” in the sense that polls were often among the most useless but popular topics in any forum community — the fact that it holds true for one of the more well visited English speaking Hikkikomori boards symbolized to me the disappointing fact (at least as far as English speaking Hikkikomoris go) that being an online Hikikomori still has very little to do with being about Hikkikomoris but are just no different than being any random forum member except you write the word Hikki more.

This gets to me because I am not just a random poster on a random forum about a random subject that’s on the internet. I consider myself a Hikkikomori and when I see something as useless as an internet poll thread being valued alot by the likes of a community who claim “they hate their life so much but can’t do anything about it” or “they’re doing it for a path they believe in” to me this is like being an oppressed black man in a parallel universe where the internet as it is today existed during the American civil rights movements and seeing most people in there bumping up threads asking how long they were oppressed while threads discussing more important and urgent matters get ignored.

I’M NOT SAYING DON’T REPLY TO POLLS! Hell, I answered it too.

BUT!

Come on… You’re telling me as a group “Feel Good, Huggy Bear, Dig Dotting” questions that ain’t worth shit to most people gets us more talkative than topics concerning defining Hikkikomoris, finding solutions for social acceptance as a minority or discussing solutions for the Anxiety Based Hikkikomoris?!

Fuck!!! This is our identity we’re talking about here! You don’t just log off and become somebody else. You don’t just close the AnonIB tab or window and suddenly stop becoming Hikibeara. This isn’t Windows vs. Linux. You don’t get to go back roleplaying as Jeff Albertson for every “Internet Topic.Replied.”

You only stop being a Hikkikomori when you finally decide to or when you have been proven to not fit the definition.

…this hatred for it eventually made me go “Fuck! I might as well turn the data into a graph.” but then I realize; “Fuck, I don’t know how to turn it into a graph.”

So instead I just used Compendium and exported it as a jpg. I did make a topic over at Hikikomori PHPBB asking if anyone can be bothered to make a graph of the poll data.

This is just the answers for How Long were you a Hiki? though. I’m not really sure how to group the other answers just yet. (You could even say this image didn’t turn out so well as I had to fit the entries in ways to simulate a graph and this was just in dealing with numbers.)

Edit: sigh. Looks like the texts get muddied when uploading so I guess I’ll just have to drop this idea until I can find a better alternative.

Edit: Looks like the image wasn’t as unreadable after all. Here are the graphs offered by other Hikikomoris: http://hikkikomori.tumblr.com/post/175558740/how-long-have-you-been-a-hikikomori-graph

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