Comment by jmyeet

I've thought a lot about (and I don't mean this in a derogatory way) the weebu phenomenon. I remember encountering it first in college when I met people who were in an anime club. It wasn't for me but my philosophy generally is "let people enjoy things".

I will say that it often goes beyond "idealizing". I'd use the word "fetishizing".

I've wondered how much of this stems from being disaffected by the modern (particularly Western) world. I worked with an ethnically Chinese guy who was a massive weebu and that always struck me as odd given the Japan-China history.

Japan has always rubbed me the wrong way: misogyny, racism and denial about Japanese war crimes in WW2 mostly. Also the salaryman work culture. I see videos from Japanese workers and life honestly looks miserable. It's also a country that is dying. The samurais, ninjas, Ronin, shoguns, etc are cool though. Japanese history is fascinating.

My hot take here is that China is actually what people idealize Japan to be. China has the most competent government in the world and it's not even close. It's not problem-free. Nowhere is. But the transformation in the lives of ordinary Chinese people over the last few decades is unbelievable. China pulled ~800 million people out of extreme poverty.

It could be worse than Japan too. I think South Korea is that. As a non-Korean from the outside looking in, South Korea looks like a dystopian run by aristocratic (chaebol) families where the birth rate is the lowest in the world and it's in fact so low that if nothing changes, South Korea simply won't exist in 3 generations.