Between 2014–2021 I was a huge anime fan. I was a loner with no real life friends (I only had a few people on the Internet I talked to) and I spent my entire days watching anime and reading manga. I used to get absolutely engulfed in the stories, I was getting attached to the characters and had a strong emotional reaction several times when watching/reading something. It was like experiencing an alternate reality since my real life sucked.Fast forward to today. I'm way better at socializing, I even had my first girlfriend last year, I have multiple friends, I go out with them frequently... But as my life has changed I have also almost entirely stopped watching anime. And whenever I attempt to watch it again today I don't enjoy it nearly as much as I used to. When I try to start a series it takes me months to finish with several breaks and the feelings just isn't there. I kind of miss the enjoyment I used to get from it. Now I'm glad I have a social life and I'm not a loser khhv anymore but when I remember the feelings I used to get from anime I start longing for it. Is there a way to fix this and enjoy it again while not being a loser anymore?
>>34073274Just let it go, man. You grew up and you matured. Anime was like a safety blanket, a pacifier. You grew and stopped needing it. It felt amazing back then because it was all you had. Now you have more, so it no longer feels as life-defining. I stopped watching it too. I’ll watch it again one day if my future kid(s) get into it and try to make me watch it. I’ll pretend to be all tsundere about it and act like I’m indifferent but I’ll be there, watching with my kids and enjoying it with them. You can do the same, focus on building your life and come back to anime later. Anime won’t run away or anything.
>>34073274Damn guess I'm never getting a social life then
>>34073302Why did you stop watching it? Were you in a similar scenario or for some other reason?>Anime won’t run away or anything.I guess that's true but I feel like I'm missing out on new shows that are airing every season. They won't "run away" but they will pile up if I want to actually watch them some day.>>34073397It doesn't have to be correlated for everyone. Even some of my friends do watch anime while still having a social life. I'm just not able to do it.
>>34073408>Why did you stop watching it? Were you in a similar scenario or for some other reason?Just stopped having time for it, job & marriage eats up a lot of time. I could still watch but I wouldn’t be able to binge like I did as a youth. Another reason was the anime community, the fans, the weebs. I used to have a weeb friendgroup, back when I was a NEET. We all bonded over anime. When I stopped being a NEET and got new life experiences, I stopped relating to them. They’d be talking chingchingjujukaisen bizarre maid in kuroki no high school or whatever non-stop. And if I decided to talk about the stress or excitement of planning the wedding to my wife, or planning for kids, or the adult sized life events, they’d just go quiet and have nothing to add, cuz they dont know. So I grew out of the old friend groups, and that meant I stopped caring for anime even more because i stopped having a group of buds to talk about it with. And the ones I had were too anime focused, cuz its all they had to talk about.So the simple answer was dropping anime and anime culture and pursuing real life instead.
>>34073274It just means you grew out of it. I was obsessed with anime as a preteen but I haven't watched any in over a decade at this point.
I'm 23 and still a friendless girlfriendless weeb, is it over for me?
>>34073449>Is it over for me?Fuck nah. You’re only 5 years into adulthood. One of the biggest scams you will ever fall for in this life is the insane idea that you have to meet milestones or social expectations. Don’t fall for it because if you do it ironically slows you down. Most people aren’t getting their shit together at 18, or 21, or even 25. Most people are doing this by 30 - 35 now. I didn’t have my life together until 28 and even then it was just starting and ive still got lots of work to do and room to grow and shit to grind and whatever. Life is process, there is no schedule or deadline. Your only job is to make sure you are a part of the process, a participant and not an outside observer. The minute you choose to play as a participant of life is the minute you start growing and evolving and getting where you wanna go in life eventually.
>>34073462Wow. Thanks man. This is really reassuring for me. My parents keep telling me that I'm behind I'm this I'm that. I'm doing the best I can, get off of me man. I have a job, car, good credit, planning on going to school in 2026, this stuff takes time.
>>34073449>>34073479OP here, if you're going to school that's the place to build a social life. I'm still in college and it's there I got my friends and a girlfriend last year. Although I'm single now again it was a good experience. Just force yourself to socialize. I can now talk without a problem to people I've never talked before which would be unthinkable for me few years ago. And at first when I was going out with people from college I was just sitting there quiet but I gradually got more comfortable. I talk to so many people weekly I sometimes get surprised myself.
That's cuz anime is a waste of time substitute for social relations you don't have IRL so you form fake ones with characters ie parasocial from the safety of ur bedroom with ur self remaining unexposed to the world, a modern trap.
>>34074130It doesn't have to be a "substitute". You can watch anime and still have real life relationships.
this happened to me with videogamesnow I'm back to hermit life and they're just meh
i became this way with fiction in general, as i got older and my life got better, i stopped reading and stopped being able to finish books. i found them to be boring, tropey, when i was younger everything was fresh and i was also escaping from a shit home life i had no control over.i think it's normal to lose interest in things you once used as escapism after you've escaped.
>>34077248You can but that doesn't stop it from being a dangerously thin line to tread for a lot of people who are socially anxious and avoidant and hiki tendencies etc to devolve into parasocial escapist manufactured fantasy lands of tailored deres and tropes to itch and tickle their deprived brains. At the cost of lost real life experiences that could've helped them evolve with more self awareness and connections in the real world
>>34077949It's a bit of a complicated relationship we have, us versus media of any kind
>>34077955Because sometimes one also NEEDS to consoom media otherwise they'll be too out of the loop and be excluded from real life stuff
