Epistemology of Otakus (2) – Applying the concept of Otaku

From the previous post, we learn that originality is vital to the identity of otaku in distinguishing them between crowds of fans. Fan’s movement are collective in nature, which implies that the mindset of fans, say in ACG, will be monotonic. From this, we can further derive a fact that Fan’s ideologies are nearly homogeneous in a given ideologies. For example, all ACG fans prefer entertainment with others and sharing of sensate feelings, which is formulaic and lacks variation. These alone can, in terms of consumerism, already disprove the originality postulate of fans. That is, Otakus can never be fans.

Usually fans are participants of collective behavior (e.g. otaku manifesto event in HKSAR, 2009-03-29) rather than leaders. Those lead fans must contain authority to manipulate the ideology of the participants. In return, Fans’ sensate feedback reinforces the conformity of ideas to the leader. This again violates the originality postulate of otakus. That is, Otakus will not directly communicate with fans in intimate and imitative ways.

Still, otakus will perform social movement without straightforward interception. Since otakus are alone, their decision and the creativity inside (i.e. orginality in action) are not restricted, so they will try their own best to improve the whole situation[s] they concern. This can be done by frequent strategic exchange with non-primary groups. For example, an otaku focusing on high school educational system and the tutoring can initiate justificaton aganist infotainment by those who identity with his/her youtube podcast. Then audiences will react in different fields of interest that can associate with the otaku’s ideology as feedbacks .That is, Otakus insist spreading influences individually with times to reduce the chance of conflicts of vested interest with collective groups.

By virtue of this, otakus can lead ideologies, not people, as least manpower as possible. Let’s look at how such a  part of otaku’s epistemology can be applied in ACG fields.

Consider an anime, Pretty Cure. (see pics below)

To distinguish between ACG otakus and ACG fans,
we, as mentioned in previous post, do not count the number of collections.
Instead, we focus on the originality postulate to testify some of otaku’s epistemology mentioned in this post.

Most of the ACG fans (~82%) just get visual entertainment as private ideologies (sensate feelings) without any reflection. This is severe among male audiences, especially those strongly influenced by excessive androgen level since the stage of puberty. Such anime fans will resort to fetishism of what female protagonist[s] they are interested in. With vast population of such male audiences, it is concluded that they are lead by the story instead of leading the ideology of all other audiences. Hence, these ACG fans are NO otakus.

On the other hand, female audiences will concentrate on the validity of reality the metaphors the anime episode has told. Hence, they tends to introspect themselves and produce articles as their wholehearted insights. Those failed to do so are sensate and thus collective (having the tendency to mimic some anime snapshots that can be recycled to impress others in sensate ways), which violate the individual thinking corollary by originality postulate.

By theoretical IQ postulates, according to standardized normal distribution, only 2% of people have IQ>130 as of standard deviation larger than 2. But this is valid only for males. Since females are ambidextrous, those having IQ>115 (i.e. standard deviation>1) can already show comparative capacity of self-reflection with the 2% males. The population is about 16% among all females. This implies that otakus have to be feminine for effective communication with the similar species.

In order to perform effective self-reflection upon which one is familiar with (i.e. anime), they need to explore more knowledges to reduce the chance of commiting wrongdoings owing to ignorance. Then they need to set orientation of their further incremental ideological contribution by making good use of what they are excel in. For a virtual example, Mary, watched the whole episode[s], tends to use her field of study of literature to consider the correlation between the bless and the evil, and eventually produce an expository essay on reflection of the sevens (原罪) of human, which can get resonance with many of her audiences, friends inclusive. Then Mary can lead their friends’ ideology towards concerns of humanities. Her work is individual and she needs no participation of the fans club of the anime. With this, Mary is basically an otaku.

After reading this article, you will then realize that otakus are omnipresent although they don’t use such a nomenclature, This comes another problem: How can we classify these otakus more precisely? Think about it. I will discuss it in the next post.