The further we dig into these surveys the more obvious it becomes that our sample group is a diverse bunch that surprises me more and more. As we say in the previous post about attractiveness, you might have gotten the same results by polling random passersby on the street. I think the same could be said for many of the answers in this section as well. Okay, so maybe the majority of respondents being students isn’t surprising. But as you’ll see there seems to be specific areas that really define the otaku group.

What are little otaku made of?
Action and mecha
And cat girl tails,
That’s what little otaku are made of.

What are little fujoshi made of?
Doujinshi and fanfiction
And everything BL,
That’s what little fujoshi are made of.

-The Great Poet, Hisui

That silliness aside what does go into making an otaku? What factors say that someone becomes an otaku rather than a video game player or a sport fanatic? Are these mutually exclusive? Do any any hobbies or interests foster otakudom or hamper it? Our recent review of the second Mechademia reminds of an article in the first by Susan Napier. She states that early anime fandom was made up of mostly of Asian male Computer Science students. If that was ever true this is clearly not the case anymore? But is there a dominant theme in what sets one down the path of hardcore anime fandom? Lets try and find out.

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#0094
People never seem to pay attention to me so I take that as a sign that I am average looking.

This part of the survey is really about how otaku see themselves, not how the outside world sees them. Though of course our own opinions, whether we like it or not, are largely based on what we have experienced in the world around us. Here, more than ever, honesty is about taking away any facade you may have in the presence of others and telling it how you really see it. And in this way the results may not be the “truth” but they are a way to gauge confidence, self-esteem, and to understand how we measure up to our fellow otaku.

Over the years I have learned one simple fact: Everyone views events through their own unique filter. You can have 100 different people experience the same event and get 100 different interpretations. The simplest example is asking someone if a glass is half-empty or half-full. But each person paints their view of the world from their own individual paint set. Some colors come from birth and upbringing and some colors come from experiences in life. But the pictures each person creates have a style that come from our interpenetration of events as well. This goes for internal perception as well as external. The next few Otaku Diary posts will look at the self portraits that a participants drew of themselves. How does the otaku surveyed view themselves? Do otaku see themselves as half empty or half full?

#0069
I know I have the potential to fit my own views, but unfortunately I got dealt a hand that hasn’t made my appearance easy.

I don’t think it would surprise anyone to hear that many otaku don’t have much confidence when it comes to themselves, in this case their outward appearance. This is a long discussed issue for many adolescents but it can come down harder on the geek/nerd/dork variety leading into an adulthood plagued by putting no stock in their appearance. Looks can be a major factor in bullying or isolation as well, two things that in our previous survey showed to be very prevalent in the group. This can have varying results between being able to value others beyond them not being (or being) conventionally good looking or becoming bitter to the point of rejecting anything that has to do with outward looks. However, those resulting characteristics weren’t apparent. But looking at the overall reaction to this question, I have to say I’m rather impressed with the positive results. It seems quite natural and possibly the reaction you would get should you ask 40 random people on the street the same thing.

#0045
I wouldn’t, but I must be with all the girls that I attract. Somedays I see it, others I don’t.

#0036
No, something is always out of place. Either my skin, or I have put on some weight and have a disproportional gut, or my hair looks awful-even if it all was fine, I’ m not really a looker.

Simply put the pretty people of the world as less inclined to get into geeky hobbies. That does not mean that everyone who is a geek is average looking or unattractive. Especially after more women have entered into anime and manga fandom, the overall attractiveness of the average con goer and anime club member has slightly increased. But our results seem to indicate overall otakudom is filled with those people who are not so good-looking that everyone gathers around them. But they also indicate it is not just made up of the dregs. We see a decent bell curve of attractiveness in our participants. This more honest self-evaluation of appearance is what I expected. I think people are better able to judge how attractive they are because it is easy to gauge other people’s reactions to them. Individual prejudices will cause some people to be overly harsh on themselves and others overly generous but overall it is easier to see if people think your are appealing than if they think you are smart.

#0030
In short, yes. I’ve seen such insane amounts of stupidity both in person and via news sources and such that the average person is clearly not very intelligent.

On the other hand, if there is one thing that a majority of otaku seem to agree on, it’s that they have a higher intelligence level than the everyday person. This isn’t surprising, but setting the results of perceived intelligence against perceived attractiveness shows where and what the confidence levels are. Being smart sets them apart, this explains why other people don’t understand them, and this can be how they take pride. For a lot of people, being smart was who they are, it came somewhat naturally to them from an early age. In an extreme case it could be even used as something to hold over people, to exert strength in lieu of say popularity or charisma. It’s almost as if aren’t good-looking you have to be smart, or atleast you have to think you are. Being a fan of anime and manga may not make you automatically smarter, obviously we have all seen conversations that would blow that theory out of the water, however geeky hobbies to tend lead its participants to theorize, debate, and converse on a different level.

#0044
I consider myself worlds beyond the average person.

#0009
Work in any job that interacts with the general public on a daily basis and you’ll soon discover that the average human being is pretty damn dumb.

#0039
Yes, and I have the IQ scores to prove it.

#0034
I’d usually prefer not to come out and say it directly like that, but at least if you’re talking about “book smarts” the answer would probably have to be yes.

Where as the we had a nice bell curve with attractiveness we had no such phenomenon with intelligence. People were much more willing to brag how much smarter they were than the average person. I think that comes from two major factors. The first being that like many geeky hobbies, it draws people who tend to be smarter. Clearly not everyone who is intelligent is drawn to doing geeky things and not everyone doing geeky things will be smart. But I want to believe that anime  attracts a more intelligent crowd than more mass media materials. The other reason for the higher numbers is your evaluation of your intelligence is so much more internal therefore easier to paint yourself as smart. Unless your self-esteem is broken or experience has shown you be to utterly outclassed by your peers, you tend to think of yourself as intelligent because intelligence is all in your head. It is much easier to assume everyone is wrong about you not be so smart than it is to assume that everyone is wrong about you actually being hot.

One word questions are difficult but also telling. What is the word that people would walk away with after meeting you for the first time? Some people cheated and gave more than one word, so for them I had to just pick from the list of options. Only one person flat out refused to answer it. We had a couple of overlaps, but for the most part everyone came up with something all their own. While I think this type of question is very difficult, it is also very telling. Some said things along the lines of “I hope it would be . . .” or others answered with just the word, as if they knew it without any doubt.

Creative, Arrogant, Grumpy, Insane, Otaku, Strange, Eccentric, Intellectual, Enigma, Anxious, Interesting, Unique, Pragmatic, Funny, Energetic, Nice, There, Unpredictable, Villain, Lazy, Hidden, Awesome, Asshole, Sincere, Thoughtful, Roadrunner, Social, Unforgettable, Excited, Shy, Even-keel, Quiet, Opinionated, Verbose, Passionate, Nice, Inward, Eccentric, Weird

I was impressed that we had few overlaps in the words. The question seems to ask what other people think of you. But in all actuality it mostly shows what you think your most prominent feature is. Everything from extremely positive to extremely negative. There was a tendency to go for the more unusual, off kilter, or inwards words but I think that is the tenancy of most nerds. Please note that even words that seem similar have very important distinctions. “Shy,” “quiet,” and “there” might all seem the same but they imply very different things. In my opinion shy implies a positive connotation. Someone who has a lot to offer but is not able to easily show that to others. Quiet is much more neutral. It implies nothing other than the person is not quick to open up to others. The word there on the other hand is quite negative. It implies people have gone out of their way not to connect to the person and perhaps have reason to. It is amazing to me how much of a person you can get from a single word. Also people tend to be slightly more unguarded with such questions.

#0099
I don’t have much of a presence or personality, so I’m not that memorable. The best one could probably say years later was that I was just there.

An interesting question that arises in my mind is whether or not looks has anything to do with people becoming engrossed in their chosen hobbies. Does one influence the other? Obviously not everyone who is attractive avoids geeky hobbies like the plague and likewise not every intelligent person has participated in a game of “Who would win in a fight?” I also find it telling that almost everyone found themselves to be smarter than the average person, I wonder how that would stack up if we changed to the question to “Are you smarter than the average anime fan?” In any case, people seem to take much pride and perhaps just a little bit of devilish joy in saying they are brighter than most bulbs.

If it is a a school, a job, a hobby, or anything else there is a certain type of person that is more likely to be drawn to it. How much attractiveness has to do with this is a good question. Another question that pops into my head due to our results is if otakudom and the world in general is mostly made of average looking people who just think they are much smarter than they actually are? I mean I think we have all had conversations with members of anime community that have proven 75% of anime fandom is not made of the world’s greatest think tanks. On the other hand, I have had conversations with people in fandom that have proven to me that some very intelligent people are members of the community who can dissect trends, analyze information, and create works of amazing genius. This leads me to think that while there is some delusion of the overall intelligence of anime fans it is not without a grain of truth.

#0009
I was bullied in school, sometimes worse than others. It’s another thing I don’t like to revisit.

While bullying is never quite how it is in fiction it is all too real for most nerds, geeks, and otaku. Almost everyone in the survey has been bullied at some point. I am sure if we all look back over our lives we will notice that sometime someone has tried to hold dominion over us physically or mentally to the point that it could only be called bullying. Sometimes it’s a family member, sometimes it’s someone at school, sometimes it’s someone at work, sometimes it’s long term, and sometimes it’s a few isolated incidents. For most people, it is a trial you must face in their life at least once. But over all the weaker people perceive you the more people with predatory natures will be attracted to you. People who have geeky hobbies tend to be people who give off an aura of vulnerability and therefore they will get harassed more than other people.

This particular article in the series probably isn’t too surprising to anyone. If there is one thing that has been played to death on television and movies it is that nerds/dorks/geeks/what have you are notorious for being picked on. Though those instances are usually pretty exaggerated, the underlying idea that this happens a lot is still relevant. And while many of us think of bullying to be a thing sectioned off for childhood, there is plenty of it going on in workplaces. Bullying can take many forms from physical to verbal to isolation and it is always a coin toss to say which is more detrimental to a person. In this survey it became clear, for the most part, that almost everyone had suffered (or is still under such strain) under someone’s hand and it is not something easily forgotten.

#0055
I was a standard victim in junior high, but I was sensitive and took it very personally which caused problems later on.

#0030
I was picked on quite a bit from when I first started school on, and am still picked on now.

#0094
I was mostly ignored and excluded in school more than bullied.

People who were willing to share their kinkiest fantasies, their shocking misdeeds, their heartbreaking sorrows, and their darkest fears in great detail but would give one line answers when it came to being bullied. Even the safety of anonymity prevented many people from sharing their experiences which shows how powerfully it effects some. When people did bring up their stories they were usually painful and almost everyone who was bullied had a sense of shame about telling the story. This coupled with the number of people shows there is an extreme stigma not only about being bullied but even talking about it. This victim’s shame keeps things instead bottle up inside them. While bullying leads to anger management problems, low self esteem, depression, isolation, and all other sorts of physiological damage, keeping such feelings bottled up inside surely aggravates them. Also the few people who admitted to bullying others were just as silent on the whole matter. They would off handily mention that they did it and then say no more. But that sort of guilt is much more understandable.

#0019
I was picked on for being a nerd. . . . Frequently, groups of girls I’d never met would walk up to me, say “see that girl? SHE LIKES YOU!” before indicating a friend of theirs whom they were teasing and then bursting into laughter like the notion of a girl liking me was the funniest goddamn thing in the world . . . .

#0016
I was teased pretty much throughout my entire school career. . . . Starting in middle school I was sexually harassed by a group of boys who were spreading rumors that my best friend and I were lesbians . . . and the principals we complained to didn’t do anything about it.

#0045
I was smaller than most and kind of scrawny growing up, so I got bullied a bit until the late years of high school when I started getting bigger. I also was a bit of an outcast when it came to social standing, so that didn’t help any.

While many people listed varying degrees of being bullied ranging from quite severe to only minor isolated instances, the thoroughness of their accounts was given sparingly. For the most part people were reluctant to go into details about their experiences in this instance, sometimes in lieu of the fact they elaborated extensively in other parts of the survey. Many answered with a simple “Yes.” Perhaps the other things we may not tell the whole world about don’t sit on the same level of humiliation, helplessness, or erosion of confidence as bullying does for many people. There are multiple ways people are bullied so it is unclear what kind was most prevalent. Though many of the group mentioned their “looks” to be a factor. And while slowly over the course of reading through our participants survey’s we came to understand their personalities, it doesn’t really give you a direct line in many cases as to why people become victims. Or perhaps it didn’t give us a direct link to who they became later on.

#0099
It did a lot for my confidence I’ll tell you because I have absolutely none.

#0065
I had a bad temper, so kids found me to be a wonderful target, but I always got the feeling that even if it didn’t bother me they’d still do it.

#0011
I was picked on for much of elementary and middle school to the point of being beaten up fairly regularly. I wound up learning some martial arts to defend myself.

I am very surprised that whenever someone mentioned bullying they mentioned being bullied at school. I am sure that people who took the survey also got bullied by siblings, coworkers, customers, and a variety of other people but for one reason or another people, including myself, associate school with bulling more than anywhere else. I suppose that when siblings bully us it is seen as part of life unless they are particularly horrific about it. When you are at work it is seen as more of being lower on the food chain. But cruelty by follow students at school sticks out in our memories more than any other type of bullying. We are at our most emotionally and mentally vulnerable so any and all traumas are more severe because we have not yet developed all the tools to deal with such abuse.

Being bullied can taint your views of school and for some, maybe for many, it doesn’t make you long for childhood days gone by. But that doesn’t mean that everyone handled their situations the same. For some being bullied caused them to get angry, for others it sent them into depression, some in turn bullied others, and still others said they learned to turn the other cheek to such things. With all of these varying reactions it becomes clearer that being bullied doesn’t take its lead from your personality. For some it made them work harder to achieve, to prove themselves, and for others it left them feeling hurt and reduced their confidence to nil. Even the people that bullied, expressed remorse and guilt for their actions. Looking years after, you can see how it shaped each individual.

#0036
I became quite vindictive towards my tormentors and bystanders eventually.

#0073
At the time, I thought of it as friendly gestures, but now I’m very sure I bullied him.

I think this question more than many others showed a limitation to this form of doing the Otaku Diaries. While the email gave the participants both anonymity and good deal of time to answer lots of questions it also meant we were not able to ask follow up questions. Had we been face to face with many of the participants we would have asked for more detail about being bullied. I would have liked to hear a little more from the people who bullied other people, too. One or two people mentioned that since they were bullied they would never bully anyone else but almost anyone who was a bully had been bullied as well. But the information we got was quite illuminating on its own. It show us an ugly and tragic fact of most of our participants lives. But it was a universal hurdle that the majority had to face at one point of another.

Some take bullying very seriously, and some shrug it off as a the way of the world. Everyone in the survey had their own ideas about what it meant to them. What happens to us is just as important as how we move on from it (or if we ever do). This is certainly a fascinating topic that could have a survey all its own. More importantly, in connection with this survey is that the geek being bullied factor is a very real piece of growing up. Even if you weren’t bullied or did any bullying, you probably saw it happen. This is just one more important connection found between so many people sharing common hobbies.

Look for a new Otaku Diaries Post
the first Monday of every month!