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Kids These Days: Anime girl sidebar
Please tell me you used Stable Diffusion to generate this repo after seeing this post on HN, and not that this is some kind of odd almost-rule-34 fandom domain.
I believe a predecessor to that meme would date back at least to the early ‘90s, as demonstrated by the plot point in Wayne’s World 2 in which Olivia d’Abo’s character was approvingly identified for holding a book on Unix network programming.
The relevant meta-meme is the "programming sock". A humorous screenshot of an Amazon recommendation that said one of those knee-high socks with pink stripes was often bought together with a nerdy book like "The C Programming Language". People started referring to those kinds of socks ironically as "programming socks".
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.
That repo and the programming sock screenshot are both from 2017. They might have a common ancestor, or refer to the same subculture.
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.
> That repo and the programming sock screenshot are both from 2017.
(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.
Thank you. I suspected a common ancestor, but I didn't know what it was.
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.
Nah the screenshot started it. Someone posted a similar one to /g and the responses said that it was an esoteric secret that womens socks and underwear made you a better programmer.
> 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".
> 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.
I have seen it, but I think that "won't you read this?" or "will you learn this language for me?" is just a front for "explain this to me", especially when considering the body language.
> is just a front for "explain this to me", especially when considering the body language.
? 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.
I browsed /g/ as a teen, watched lain and everything, but have since decided to consciously distance myself from this culture, to a certain degree because there is a sort of implicit "sexism" (in some broader sense) that I don't feel comfortable with anymore. The longer I stay away, the more obvious things like the way they draw faces and bodies, the often infantilizing postures combined with a kind of sexualization is. Keep in mind that drawn images can easily exaggerate human features that are not healthy or even anatomically possible, but that still serve symbolically as sexual indicators. This has become worse and worse over time, because fan service is good advertisement for publishing houses. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_slice_of_life_anime and compare how the style has changed since the late 90's up until today. I think it is a lot more homogeneous and the appearance is more formulaic. Part of this might be that computer animation is more common place, but the other one is that a sense of beauty has been reduced to a mathematical problem of relating various proportions. It is also because I was part of this culture, that I know there is an explicit and intentional sexual aspect to all of this.
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.
Perhaps it's a self-fulfilling meme at this point, but searching "programming socks" on Amazon right now still only recommends socks like that. Definitely not doctored
I get totally different vibes from the chat-esque furry avatars, which I see as both an extension of the increasing fluidity of identity on the internet/AFK/remotely and a push for representation and "positive shamelessness" (am I just trying to say "self-acceptence"?). Waifus still come across more ironically, clearly memes in casual settings, and without those aspects of identity and representation. Stuff like VRChat/Vtubers blurs that line and brings identity fluidity back into the picture, but that doesn't feel like what's happening here, nor does it's appearance on literally every page carry the tone of irony needed to combat cringe, but... 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. Maybe that instinct comes from a specific subculture on a younger internet which, although still present, need not color the spread of these aesthetics forever. Like rage memes, which come from eg. SA/4c but have been widely adopted to the point of belonging more to "the internet" than specifically to their roots.
The nature of communication on the internet makes for some very weird signifiers - I remember getting into fountain pens and finding out that a pretty undesirable group was into them as well and it was on the cusp of being a signifier for politics I don't agree with. Luckily it never got to that threshold, but basically something can become a signifier for something else just by virtue of volume - Pepe is probably the best, clearest cut example, with different groups literally mass posting pepes as much as possible in a battle to "own" that signifier.
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.
Would you expand a bit on the fountain pens as a symbol of subculture/political stance? An otherwise well-adjusted friend of mine has been into fountain pens for a while and I would like to know more.
> "positive shamelessness" (am I just trying to say "self-acceptence"?).
> 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.
I find that there is something inherently suspicious in having a parallel online identity. I respect anonymity, but for some reason people constructing a parallel world and personality online always irritates me.
I think the difference is that I usually don't notice usernames, unless I want to check if the same person wrote two comments. In this sense, they are just opaque identifiers, or a trivial identity that doesn't express anything in itself. An online identity is something more, because it usually comes with a personality, an image, a history. To me it isn't even that something is being hidden, rather that a lesser version of oneself (merely virtual) is being overvalued. This argument could be extended to people who might base their online Instagram/TikTok/etc. persona on that of their real life, but glorify it beyond recognition, while at the same time reducing its being to digital communication.
I don't think it's right to say that an online identity is lesser. In many ways "easrng" is more real, more me than my irl identity, because online expression is easier for me. I can craft and change representations of all that I am, in ways that I can't really offline (without significant amounts of time, energy, and potentially money.) I don't know if this is a young/old divide or a neurodivergent/neurotypical divide or a trans/cis divide or what, but I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.
To me, it seems lesser because online communication is inherently lesser to real life communication. It always appears as a restricted emulation of of "the real thing". Even now, you don't know my tone, you don't see my body language, what I emphasise, etc. I started writing this sentence, then rephrase it because it didn't sound good. I cannot hide this when speaking face-to-face.
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.
It's not an emulation, it's just different. As for not being able to convey tone? skill issue. You can do it, emojis help, formatting helps, even with plain text you can repeat punctuation or AlTeRnAtE cAsEs or whatever, that's without even getting in to 1337speak style typing quirks (there's more than just replacing E with 3). I frequently rewrite messages before sending, but I do that irl too, I just say corrections out loud which is harder for the person listening to track than if I just had an textfield to compose what I wanted to say. As for usernames, they don't mean anything, they're just pointers to the people who use them. You say I can make up a "fake" persona, but what does fake even mean? Why does it matter if who I am online isn't a 1-to-1 copy of my irl self? They're both reflections of my personality, and that's what matters. And psuedoanonymity isn't the same as anonymity. I have an online identity, I have people who know me by it, and I wouldn't want to just throw all those connections away. If I said something fucked up, I would presumably lose my friends and such, and sure I could make a new identity but making a new identity and forming new relationships isn't a trivial thing to do. Just because you can't see my body doesn't make my identity any less real imo.
20 years ago, programming skills and access to Anime in Europe were highly correlated.
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.
It's really funny hearing someone ask if this is the hand-off to the new generation, when the fact is that furries were working on the internet well before anybody else cared. Furcadia came out in 1996!
[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.
Individualism is big for those generations, and identifying yourself with your favorite anime girl/pop culture element or the character you designed with the elements you like is a way to differentiate yourself from others. The furry/anime communities also tend to be pretty technically inclined, so I imagine there's just some natural overlap.
My take: People have used animals, drawings, and random photos as avatars since avatars were a thing. Anime has been growing in popularity and reach over the past decades, and the new (and broadly available) "Holo-live" style animated YouTube and Twitch avatars have created its own boom.
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).
Not sure about the trend in general, but this particular image (Anime girl holding a programming book) made me think it was a reference to these manga guides on various math/science/engineering topics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manga_Guides
I don't think it is related to a new generation or something like that since i remember people using anime wallpaper backgrounds and avatars (in MSN Messenger, etc) since the early 2000s. It is just that in recent years anime became more popular in general than it used to be even 10 years ago, so you are more likely to see anime stylized characters nowadays.
I'd say its a shamelessness type thing rather than a new generation thing. People can like what they like, however it definitely reduces the message when its plastered on a blog filled with risqué anime girls or furry art.
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.
Why would that be funny? I just wonder how these people have no sense of embarrassment. I suspect part of the reason is that isolated communities encourage this kind of behaviour.
Not sure if this is what's going on here, but I've noticed sometimes isolated communities don't want too much attention and front load these types of things as scarecrows to keep the general public away.
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.
honestly that's probably a great filter for "interesting" clients, if you want to keep the fortune 500 bureaucracy away and just work instead of push papers all day
It's basically 'book babes'. Booth babes went out of fashion a while back for good reason. This kind of thing is relatively harmless in the instance but in aggregate puts out a vibe.
I think in some parts of US culture not that familiar with Japanese culture there is the misconception that anime is all tentacle porn or something and so you should be embarrassed for liking anime.
While that stereotype still exists in some corners; I've actually found that there is more mainstream understanding and acceptance of anime these days. I work in an office that terminally online folks would call “full of normies”; but I have found people here are at least aware of anime, if not active consumers. These days, it's not “cringe” to enjoy anime itself, and I'm guessing that the majority of commenters in this particular thread are over-analyzing the presence of an anime girl on a website.
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.
It's likely the reason they don't feel embarrassment is because they couldn't care less about your unwarranted judgement, and delight knowing that some people actually take the time to be upset about it.
This always comes up in these discussions, my impression is that there is some kind of a split when it comes to understanding the concept of embarrassment. It is not about the individual judgement of people and being upset is the wrong word, but it is difficult to find the right words to explain it. When thinking to myself why I'd never do these kinds of things, setting aside the lack of interest, I wouldn't want a kind of general perception that people have of me to be associated with these cultural symbols. It is an interesting question, especially because it appears obvious until I reflect on it. I guess I am not the only one who feels like this, and some people get upset because it is difficult to articulate these "unwritten rules of behaviour in polite society".
To me it's sad that you took that lesson away from that. :(
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
> Watching someone be genuinely enthusiastic about something is wonderful.
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).
I'm...not sure why it would be embarrassing? People have things they're interested in that aren't related to work, and besides, the suit-and-tie image of the workplace is deeply rooted in a load of nonsense (nonsense which ought to be recognized as nonsense, but which is often confused for professionalism).
If you check my other replies in this thread, I've tried to describe why I feel the way I do. But if I may, I'd be curious to hear what you'd consider to be "embarrassing", not as an act but as a personality trait.
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".
I used to have something similar to this, as a teenager. I pretty quickly realized I was drawing arbitrary lines delineating things that I found cool as being better than things other people found cool, treating other people's interests as somehow more embarrassing than my own even though I was a textbook cargo-pants-wearing wannabe-hacker nerd. Between that and my struggle with depression, I ended up deciding that it's more important to enjoy things than to look cool.
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.
I'm curious why you think that's something to be embarrassed about. I feel like it's a cultural thing but for example here in Japan it's very common to see this style everywhere (on TV, on billboards, on the train, on random websites, etc) and several of my coworkers also have these kinds of backgrounds or posters at work (in an open office).
It was frankly weird and bit disturbing to see some of the neckbeards in engineering school obsessing about cute depiction of young girls. To this day, it definitely colours how I see random use of anime girls on CS related topics.
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.
There are a surprising number of pedophiles (who will immediately 'correct' people to use the term "ephebophile" instead) amongst the techbeard community. I agree it becomes uncomfortably apparent after spending a bit of time with these types.
I don't know, this is mostly instinctual, but my guess is that this is subconsciously associated with the kind of cultural image of an anime enthusiast or furry as socially inept, meagre or generally nerdish.
Or perhaps they simply see no reason for it to be embarrassing, because they have a different set of values, coming from a different culture which we, as old people, simply are not part of.
> I just wonder how these people have no sense of embarrassment.
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.
That is a good point. If you don't need to deal with everyday people to socialize, you don't have to adapt your behaviour to the mean expectation of what is proper and not. I remember reading an interesting socialist argument once, that this is historically unique because capitalism allows people to reduce social relations to that of monetary exchange. As long as you can pay your bills and buy what you need, nobody can complain. It is this perspective that people who retort with "Why do you even care?" implicitly hold, that I am not a fan of.
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.
even for us youngsters thats still considered pretty weird and nobody normal is involved with it. unfortunately, it seems like it has a tendency to pollute technical circles since when i run across it it's usually there.
It is the classical phenomenon of when most people of a distant group are normal, but a minority is peculiar, that you don't notice the normal ones because they are overshadowed by the minority. E.g. when in school, I always remember not wanting to get into trouble with older generations, but then wondering why the younger ones did so when I was older. It is probably the number of trouble-makers didn't change, just that while I was younger I didn't blend out all the normal ones who were my age, which I did when I was older.
I mean I know two pretty normal programmer current/past coworkers who use anima girls as their main avatar at work. Is it weird? Kind of. Are they otherwise pretty normal people? Yeah.
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.
The funny thing is that while I don't doubt in my mind that a lot of the folks with anime/furry illustrations in their blogs are generally younger, I suspect many of them are still knocking on 30 at least.
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.
Generally agree, but I do have to bristle with the "huge losers" sentiment. The fact that furries/weebs have a strong visibility in the professional software/IT space should be a signal that those people aren't losers, and are in fact doing quite well for themselves. And if you're in the industry, then you need to do yourself a favor and remove that label from yourself.
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 mean, the truth is, it's obviously not that weird. It's a reflection of culture, at least in America, that I regard such things in this light. Still, I mean it with affection. The fact that it was somewhat outcast culture also freed it from the bounds of giving a damn about social acceptability, which led to some very free creativity. I always embraced this.
I realize now this attitude may seem unnecessarily self-deprecating, though. Oh well.
Can someone cooler/younger tell me: Is this the hand-off to the new generation, or is there a meta-meme I missed?