The Godzilla Cringe Thread

[Dv-218]

If we are going to go all the way with the extreme and frankly sometimes narcissistic “guilt by association” approach of hounding upon people who merely had a tiny connection to someone who turned out to be human scum, more than a half of the world population should be in jail lol. The truth of the matter is that when it comes to professional deals there is virtually no way of predicting someone’s twisted nature, and that’s scary on its own right- but doesn’t warrant immediate lambasting of said involved people without at least understanding the context to their connection.

[ebirahsmeg1]

If we are going to go all the way with the extreme and frankly sometimes narcissistic “guilt by association” approach of hounding upon people who merely had a tiny connection to someone who turned out to be human scum, more than a half of the world population should be in jail lol. The truth of the matter is that when it comes to professional deals there is virtually no way of predicting someone’s twisted nature, and that’s scary on its own right- but doesn’t warrant immediate lambasting of said involved people without at least understanding the context to their connection.

It’s basically akin to damning anyone who happened to work with Ted Bundy before his crimes came to light. Unless one has actual real proof/evidence, I suggest that JVM and others stop this nonsense.

[JVM]

It’s basically akin to damning anyone who happened to work with Ted Bundy before his crimes came to light. Unless one has actual real proof/evidence, I suggest that JVM and others stop this nonsense.

I wasn't trying to create any new accusations; in fact I was careful to only restate what others were suggesting or confirming; I being responsive to things others have been saying on other platforms by other people in the community. My point was if others are accusing these guys, it is creating implications that make me uncomfortable. There are people suggesting the fandom has actively neglected a social responsibility to expose pedophiles or otherwise cancel people, and these are coming from within the community not outside activism. The idea that social responsibility has been willfully neglected in the fandom space and that people like this are being actively protected is more what's caused my confusion and distress. Even if the allegations were false outside what is already proven, the idea someone could look at Jaramillo's actions and say we are all in some way to blame is disturbing on a pretty serious level. I wasn't trying to endorse either the viewpoint so much as express my inability to even wrestle with the question, especially since once I had seen other people offering support towards it.

[edgaguirus]

As disgusting as some in the fandom might be, they have zero connection with the toils of Honda, Tsuburaya, Ifukube, et al. in creating something special to many people around the world.

I think this is a very good take to have, and I wish more people would have this mentality.

The men and women that make these films and anime are good people, as are most in the fandom.

[Titanus_Rodan]

This is EXACTLY why i brought up the issue months ago of fans on Twitter trying to sexualize the monsters....turns out they are gigantic creeps.

Also finally glad to see people calling out that Neo Monster Island/Sean McGuiness clown for what he is

[LSD Jellyfish]

This is EXACTLY why i brought up the issue months ago of fans on Twitter trying to sexualize the monsters....turns out they are gigantic creeps.

Also finally glad to see people calling out that Neo Monster Island/Sean McGuiness clown for what he is

Unrelated to the TOTAL CREEPER, conversation regarding horrible things, it's fascinating seeing how cringey and thirsty a lot of Godzilla fans are. Recently there was episode 2 of the Godzilla Island Show, and in it, there's a female Xillien. While attractive, I guess, I saw a lot of cringey ass comments like, "THAT WOMAN IS PERFECT" and lots of other weird things about her. It's bizarre when she appears for like 20 seconds, doesn't do anything particularly amazing, and that's the takeaway.

[Legion1979]

Not really bizarre. This is a very nerdy fandom. And very nerdy fandoms attract a lot of single, horny guys who have no idea of the proper way to act socially, either because they've never been taught how or because they have an actual social disorder.

[JVM]

See, though, this is what's so strange to me about any generalized fandom discourse in the last five years -- we see people who are perverted and thirsty, and across unrelated fandoms, you see people collectively go 'well, our fandom has a problem' as if it is a direct result of a unique fandom culture out of control... and every movie/TV fandom I've been in has people claiming that their fandom is the uniquely perverted one. I don't think a lot of people realizes that to an outsider, this sounds like 'something about the property these people love attracts perverts'.

Most fandoms are full of thirsty people. I don't think that's an aberration. It's a reality that makes people understandably uncomfortable, but it's not really unique to any community, nor is it a recent phenomenon as is sometimes assumed. People in fandom communities are more often younger and unmarried and ergo more likely to be lonely. Older people with families won't be as lonely or have as much free time to express it. Character/world-based fandoms probably show it somewhat more than because for more typical live-action programming the fixation will be actor/actress more than involving who they play.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think these things are magnetized to certain communities (despite what I said last week when emotional) though it's very fair for people to express discomfort about them. I would agree with Legion that it is not bizarre outright.

In response more to LSD's example, the above is generally rambling, the tone of online thirst in the last couple of years is very... memetic like that. There's been a tendency to replace making comments perceived as more obviously out of line like discussing body parts and sex acts with a more generalized tone of praise and worship that appears more respectful but signifies the same base attraction... but also, when the 'Tall Vampire Lady' thing was going around, I knew a lot of people who had no special attachment or attraction to the character play it up because it had become a meme. I think that spread this style a lot, because it turned it into more of a joke instead of 'locker room talk'.

[HedorahIsBestGirl]

Let's be serious, large pockets of horny young men thirsting over women is hardly a "nerd" or "fandom" exclusive thing. I've hung out with friends of friends who aren't part of any fandom - unless you count sports which, really, we should - and they're just as guilty of objectifying and lusting after women. The biggest difference is that they do it with actual, real-life women that they know instead of actresses or cartoon characters. Both are cringe but, to me at least, talking about women you know like they're sex objects is significantly creepier than talking that way about fucking anime girls.

[JVM]

Let's be serious, large pockets of horny young men thirsting over women is hardly a "nerd" or "fandom" exclusive thing. I've hung out with friends of friends who aren't part of any fandom - unless you count sports which, really, we should - and they're just as guilty of objectifying and lusting after women. The biggest difference is that they do it with actual, real-life women that they know instead of actresses or cartoon characters. Both are cringe but, to me at least, talking about women you know like they're sex objects is significantly creepier than talking that way about fucking anime girls.

This. Yeah, this is one of the little cultural divides that people seem afraid to openly discuss but is very clearly there -- between objectifying real people you know personally or that you might never meet, and outright fictional characters. To some, objectifying a real woman is the bigger sin because that's an actual person and it can be reductive and ignorant to the aspects of who they are you aren't privy to, not to mention can make them very uncomfortable, whereas a fictional character lacks inherent feelings and isn't going to be personally affected by that kind of behavior and in many cases fictional women (less often men) are created with some degree of sexualization intended, which may or may not make the response more understandable or justifiable. For others, exhibiting sexual interest in a fictional character seems low-effort, low-risk and lazy, the willingness to fixate on an unobtainable, theoretical idea that isn't rooted in any kind of reality and lacking in serious depth instead of doing the hard, difficult task of trying to build relationships with real people who actually exist that might be messier and more confusing but poses a higher reward. In between this, there will be a divide over whether a crush on a celebrity counts under the 'real person who would be disturbed by this' or 'unrealistic ideal that won't be really affected' category. There's also plenty of other questions like time and place, tone, and so forth, but I do think these are some of the bigger concepts and questions at work in terms of what we're discussing.

A lot of these questions are affected less by individual comments but our interpretations of what they say about the person - that they may represent a man's general attitude about women, or that expressing a dominant or submissive vibe towards a person or character alone is suggestive of someone's worldview about gender and sex, ie the idea that submissive men/women lack self-respect, so jokes of that nature are demeaning to their sex/gender. (Yes, that's a very real viewpoint and yes I've seen it firsthand in both men and women.) Not to mention fandom 'cringe' responses are often driven by a fear of association, a fear that the existence of someone in fandom who might do this awful thing me look like I believe in that awful thing, so I'm going to make fun of the kid who did this so everyone knows none of us would do the awful thing. So it can be easy to view someone's inappropriate comments as cringe out of an insecurity that it will make some larger shared community look bad, which it very well may if the comments become too egregious or too normalized.

[Kiryu2012]

To throw in my own two cents on the matter, while it will always be rude and creepy to objectify people out of lust/attraction/whatever, I personally have seen plenty people online express 'thirst' over characters, even kaiju or generally monstrous characters, while still being courteous and respectful towards others as they should. While there's indisputably creeps who fit the description that's been given here (lolicons can go to hell), there's also plenty of people who know better than to act in such a way.

[Jomei]

Breaking news: men are horny. CRINGE!!!!!

[Executive Hamster]

There isn't anything wrong with acknowledging when a person or character is hot. We all do it, and if you say you don't you are a liar, plain and simple. For me, there is a point where it starts to go into weird incel territory, and thats when they aggressively simp over things. Usually its not with real people so much as anime characters. Mainly because I feel like a lot of anime women are designed to be objectified; its off putting, and its one of the reasons I never got into anime but I digress.

It gets weird when things get objectifying, simple as that. People should learn to restrain their horny just a bit.

[Legion1979]

I think the fact that so much anime features young women in schoolgirl outfits sporting absolutely gigantic breasts to be unbelievably gross.

[KingKong2005]

I think the fact that so much anime features young women in schoolgirl outfits sporting absolutely gigantic breasts to be unbelievably gross.

"uhmnmmmm actually she's a 5,000 year old dragon "

Yeah I hate how trendy that is too recently. Like bro that's coming daaangerously close to some illegal territory.

[_JNavs_]

I think the schoolgirl with giant tits thing is more of an older american stereotype that falls under a very specific genre of anime that really isn't watched by anyone *except* the overly horny incel types and potential p3dos. It's like saying all western animation has their young women and women in power looking super tomboyish. A lot of Anime has (have?) very attractive animation styles, and almost all of them are more competent (except the bait stuff) than what we have in the states, but the genres in which they're used vary almost as much as genres here.

[miguelnuva]

I think the schoolgirl with giant tits thing is more of an older american stereotype that falls under a very specific genre of anime that really isn't watched by anyone *except* the overly horny incel types and potential p3dos. It's like saying all western animation has their young women and women in power looking super tomboyish. A lot of Anime has (have?) very attractive animation styles, and almost all of them are more competent (except the bait stuff) than what we have in the states, but the genres in which they're used vary almost as much as genres here.

That's over generalizing. A lot of anime have giant breast schoolgirls even when the anime is not etchi. I watch a anime called Tomo Chan is a girl that a pretty tame anime and it even uses that joke.

[_JNavs_]

I think the schoolgirl with giant tits thing is more of an older american stereotype that falls under a very specific genre of anime that really isn't watched by anyone *except* the overly horny incel types and potential p3dos. It's like saying all western animation has their young women and women in power looking super tomboyish. A lot of Anime has (have?) very attractive animation styles, and almost all of them are more competent (except the bait stuff) than what we have in the states, but the genres in which they're used vary almost as much as genres here.

That's over generalizing. A lot of anime have giant breast schoolgirls even when the anime is not etchi. I watch a anime called Tomo Chan is a girl that a pretty tame anime and it even uses that joke.

Would you not then say you're also over-generalizing? There's humor to be had in the generalization, but they're generalizations nonetheless.

[Executive Hamster]

Like I mentioned, I don't really watch anime (I do want to change that soon), so I can't speak too much on it, and its kinda off topic anyway, but I've definitely seen a lot of....lets just say uneccessarily sexualized characters in anime. In that the shows aren't hentai or porn or anything but the female characters still seem to have a lot of emphasis on their boobs and body and what not. One Piece, that character's name is Nami, right? , was an example that comes to mind. Gurren Lagann and Kill La Kill also come to mind. To me, its very off putting, but I also have been making a lot of generalizations myself and thats why I want to give anime a fair chance.

[miguelnuva]

Like I mentioned, I don't really watch anime (I do want to change that soon), so I can't speak too much on it, and its kinda off topic anyway, but I've definitely seen a lot of....lets just say uneccessarily sexualized characters in anime. In that the shows aren't hentai or porn or anything but the female characters still seem to have a lot of emphasis on their boobs and body and what not. One Piece, that character's name is Nami, right? , was an example that comes to mind. Gurren Lagann and Kill La Kill also come to mind. To me, its very off putting, but I also have been making a lot of generalizations myself and thats why I want to give anime a fair chance.

Nami is a good an example because she started off with a normal figure and then was given massive breast during a time skip.

Added in 1 minute 54 seconds:

I think the schoolgirl with giant tits thing is more of an older american stereotype that falls under a very specific genre of anime that really isn't watched by anyone *except* the overly horny incel types and potential p3dos. It's like saying all western animation has their young women and women in power looking super tomboyish. A lot of Anime has (have?) very attractive animation styles, and almost all of them are more competent (except the bait stuff) than what we have in the states, but the genres in which they're used vary almost as much as genres here.

That's over generalizing. A lot of anime have giant breast schoolgirls even when the anime is not etchi. I watch a anime called Tomo Chan is a girl that a pretty tame anime and it even uses that joke.

Would you not then say you're also over-generalizing? There's humor to be had in the generalization, but they're generalizations nonetheless.

Not at all. I'm saying it's impossible to say everyone that watches these types of anime are closet pedos or horny incels.