f I remember his words correctly, he said that anime is just naturally hard for Westerners to get into, and especially the older you get. You have to basically have grown up with the medium in order to stay a fan of it, or at least got exposed to enough kino movies/OVAs in tape-trading circles or movie clubs and are open to the weirdness and schlock that occurs in them.
it is a product of a different culture, which means it does require some getting used to. but I wouldn't say age is a big factor. these days most people grew up with pokemon and sailor moon, so "anime" isn't something completely new like it was back in the 90's or before. good media (ymmv) is time- and ageless, first example being ghibli movies.
what doesn't help is that the "fans" simply suck at recruiting people. that's not limited to anime. what I mean it's like trying to get your gf/wife into boardgames and you start with a weekend-session of risk global domination. obviously that shit won't fly and turn her off from the whole thing altogether (and normalfags really dislike changing their formed opinion if they don't have a reason to, like the specific interest of someone they care about).
otoh it works well as a filter, no one wants to see his specific interest become mainstream.
I suspect that Null lets his time as an administrator on 8chan paint his view of anime and Japan.
not just anime and japan. calling everything weird non-mainstream "autistic" is simply retarded. it's the same logic from people talking about porn and the internet, heavily implying "before" everything was alright with the world and degenerates didn't exist. essentially it's the other side of the post-modernist coin where everything in the past was always bad and needs to be "made better".
point is there were always socially stunted outcasts which obviously congregated in their own spaces either because it was more comfortable, or because no other space would accept them. that's how it always worked and will, it's basic bitch sociology. obviously these spaces have different issues since they're created by "different" people; one of them being more welcoming due to aforementioned ostracization, which makes it much easier for bad actors to invade it - be it troons to get into positions of power more easily to find more victims or normalfags who social gentrify that place. it's a big irony that in the pursuit of more inclusion and acceptance it inevitably destroys what made that thing and place special.
just look how information technology, THE nerd domain of the past is overrun with troons. so logically anything with computers attracts troons, and the only solution is to go medieval again, which will make troons and this whole social dynamic disappear (instead of, you know, just finding another space to invade and exploit...)
implying that this didn't happen before anime attracted "the autists" (which in itself is an highly overused term) is just dumb, and what's really disappointing that he should know better instead of falling for the same retarded arm-chair logic trying to make sense of it backwards. ffs the farms are villainized like 4chan of old, so he knows how it is to be on the receiving end. maybe it's cope "at least I'm not like those people" or something.
no, anime didn't attract
the autists nerds, they were just more open to it than the force-fed MSM niggercattle, same way star trek, dnd, or any other "nerd shit" was it's own looked-up subculture before big bang theory made it cool. look at any fucking media from the last 60-70 years till today, heavily influenced by US cultural hegemony, the behavior and treatment of that character type wasn't invented in fucking hollywood.
and quite simply, different strokes for different folks. sports is a trillion dollar industry (if not more when you look at it globally) and mainstream as fuck, but simply bores me to tears. yet you won't seem me try to psycho-analyze someone buying an all-year-pass and watching every match of the season ("those plebian dregs getting excited over modern-day gladiators!"), let alone then tangent off into hooligans and shit ("they're just the hitler youth for sport clubs!!").
