11 ms·

Off-topic but, I'm noticing a lot of anime waifu and furry-type illustrations on tech blogs lately on HN. Can someone cooler/younger tell me: Is this the hand-

• junon 4y ago
  The former.
  • aliqot 4y ago
    Thanks, take care.
    • some_furry 4y ago
      I mean, sorta. I'm in my mid 30's. I started blogging about cryptography and security under my furry handle (and with blog posts adorned with furry art) at the start of the pandemic. It gave me something to do that was both productive and fun.
      • LanternLight83 4y ago
        Just wanted to say that I love your blog!!!
        • some_furry 4y ago
          Thanks <3
• meibo 4y ago
  Individualism is big for those generations, and identifying yourself with your favorite anime girl/pop culture element or the character you designed with the elements you like is a way to differentiate yourself from others. The furry/anime communities also tend to be pretty technically inclined, so I imagine there's just some natural overlap.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    Individualism is big ... so be like everyone else and have an anime avatar. The loop continues.
    • noSyncCloud 4y ago
      "Everything I'm not interested in is identical and entirely meaningless"
  • fortran77 4y ago
    Prove your individualism by all liking the same anime stuff?
• jstanley 4y ago
  I was curious what you were talking about, because I don't see any illustration. If you are browsing in dark mode, there is no background image. You have to switch to light mode to see it.
  • Groxx 4y ago
    Aaah. I was wondering too, and noticed that it was `width=0` and not visible, and had a few rounds of ????. So I guess we now know the heathens who drive in light mode ಠ_ಠ
  • Shared404 4y ago
    I can see it in dark mode on mobile firefox.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• coldpie 4y ago
  Choose your nerd-generation document aesthetic: Too old for this shxt: 80-col formatted plaintext Greybeards: LaTeX-generated PostScript Modern professionals: HTML doc with default browser stylesheet Kids These Days: Anime girl sidebar
  • AlwaysRock 4y ago
    > Modern professionals: HTML doc with default browser stylesheet damn. Got me.
    • aliqot 4y ago
      cuts deep :( Serif fonts did nothing wrong. Black and white text is timeless.
      • an1sotropy 4y ago
        and blue and purple hyperlinks are the best
        • EGreg 4y ago
          I prefer my resume in Comic Sans (ducks) Because I’m tacky… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zq7Eki5EZ8o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zq7Eki5EZ8o
    • tait 4y ago
      TIL: I'm old.
      • ninefathom 4y ago
        Yep... I too was hoping that something besides the first option would fit. Did not happen.
  • munk-a 4y ago
    It must be specified that the LaTeX-generated PostScript MUST use the default LaTeX styling - no adjustment to font size or face allowed.
• saint_fiasco 4y ago
  The relevant meta-meme is the "programming sock". A humorous screenshot of an Amazon recommendation that said one of those knee-high socks with pink stripes was often bought together with a nerdy book like "The C Programming Language". People started referring to those kinds of socks ironically as "programming socks". I don't know if the screenshot was doctored, or if the Amazon recommendation engine found a real cluster of customers who are interested in both programming books and programming socks. In any case, I suppose it doesn't really matter because when people spread funny memes ironically it's only a matter of time before people join in sincerely without the irony. In short the answer to your question is "both".
  • Quikinterp 4y ago
    Perhaps it's a self-fulfilling meme at this point, but searching "programming socks" on Amazon right now still only recommends socks like that. Definitely not doctored
  • hu3 4y ago
    Thanks for clarifying it! Here's a NSFW link about the meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/programming-socks https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/programming-socks (NSFW)
  • _k9eq 4y ago
    I don't think so, "programming socks" is a LGBT-adjacent meme to my knowledge, while this is related to https://github.com/cat-milk/Anime-Girls-Holding-Programming-Books https://github.com/cat-milk/Anime-Girls-Holding-Programming-... and image board culture.
    • saint_fiasco 4y ago
      That repo and the programming sock screenshot are both from 2017. They might have a common ancestor, or refer to the same subculture. Notice that an anime girl holding a programming book is in itself a (mild) subversion of gender roles. The stereotypical programmer is male, and the stereotypical programmer is not cute.
• rejectfinite 4y ago
  As old as /g/
• collegeburner 4y ago
  even for us youngsters thats still considered pretty weird and nobody normal is involved with it. unfortunately, it seems like it has a tendency to pollute technical circles since when i run across it it's usually there.
  • AlwaysRock 4y ago
    I mean I know two pretty normal programmer current/past coworkers who use anima girls as their main avatar at work. Is it weird? Kind of. Are they otherwise pretty normal people? Yeah. I'm friends with the both on steam and they are both very very very into gaming (like 4-5 hours a day at least) so I always thought it was related to that somehow.
  • daptaq 4y ago
    It is the classical phenomenon of when most people of a distant group are normal, but a minority is peculiar, that you don't notice the normal ones because they are overshadowed by the minority. E.g. when in school, I always remember not wanting to get into trouble with older generations, but then wondering why the younger ones did so when I was older. It is probably the number of trouble-makers didn't change, just that while I was younger I didn't blend out all the normal ones who were my age, which I did when I was older.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• bbno4 4y ago
  A lot of these sites do it deliberately to annoy people on hackernews, it is so funny :)
  • _k9eq 4y ago
    Why would that be funny? I just wonder how these people have no sense of embarrassment. I suspect part of the reason is that isolated communities encourage this kind of behaviour.
    • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > wonder how these people have no sense of embarrassment Suppose it's challenging why having an anime character next to a blurb of text is embarrassing.
    • marginalia_nu 4y ago
      Not sure if this is what's going on here, but I've noticed sometimes isolated communities don't want too much attention and front load these types of things as scarecrows to keep the general public away.
      • daptaq 4y ago
        Then the question is why bring it up in the first place. If you don't want attention, you avoid these signifiers in public, I'd think?
        • marginalia_nu 4y ago
          You might also want to find likeminded people.
      • Shared404 4y ago
        See Also: 9front
        • marginalia_nu 4y ago
• eating555 4y ago
  Here's a repo for all kinds of anime girls holding programming books: https://github.com/cat-milk/Anime-Girls-Holding-Programming-Books https://github.com/cat-milk/Anime-Girls-Holding-Programming-...
  • wyldfire 4y ago
    Please tell me you used Stable Diffusion to generate this repo after seeing this post on HN, and not that this is some kind of odd almost-rule-34 fandom domain.
    • _k9eq 4y ago
      These images have been shared around on image boards for probably over a decade, what you see here is just a group of people who sat down and categorized them: https://github.com/cat-milk/Anime-Girls-Holding-Programming-Books/graphs/contributors https://github.com/cat-milk/Anime-Girls-Holding-Programming-...
    • Morgawr 4y ago
      There's no porn in that repo. Anime girls holding programming books is a common meme/trend/style that's been around for over a decade by now.
      • nostrebored 4y ago
        > common absolutely not
        • bskan 4y ago
          You need to spend more time in /g/
      • nocoiner 4y ago
        I believe a predecessor to that meme would date back at least to the early ‘90s, as demonstrated by the plot point in Wayne’s World 2 in which Olivia d’Abo’s character was approvingly identified for holding a book on Unix network programming.
• badsectoracula 4y ago
  I don't think it is related to a new generation or something like that since i remember people using anime wallpaper backgrounds and avatars (in MSN Messenger, etc) since the early 2000s. It is just that in recent years anime became more popular in general than it used to be even 10 years ago, so you are more likely to see anime stylized characters nowadays.
• LanternLight83 4y ago
  I get totally different vibes from the chat-esque furry avatars, which I see as both an extension of the increasing fluidity of identity on the internet/AFK/remotely and a push for representation and "positive shamelessness" (am I just trying to say "self-acceptence"?). Waifus still come across more ironically, clearly memes in casual settings, and without those aspects of identity and representation. Stuff like VRChat/Vtubers blurs that line and brings identity fluidity back into the picture, but that doesn't feel like what's happening here, nor does it's appearance on literally every page carry the tone of irony needed to combat cringe, but... I kinda like it, and kinda wish it was just totally cool to have a waifu on my site too without having to lean into irony or identity to "justify" it against this cringe instinct. Maybe that instinct comes from a specific subculture on a younger internet which, although still present, need not color the spread of these aesthetics forever. Like rage memes, which come from eg. SA/4c but have been widely adopted to the point of belonging more to "the internet" than specifically to their roots. ...I think I like it
  • daptaq 4y ago
    I find that there is something inherently suspicious in having a parallel online identity. I respect anonymity, but for some reason people constructing a parallel world and personality online always irritates me.
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      My first thought is always: Who are you and why do you obscure your identity? What are you hiding? Yet here I am with a random username. I do also have a public professional website though.
      • daptaq 4y ago
        I think the difference is that I usually don't notice usernames, unless I want to check if the same person wrote two comments. In this sense, they are just opaque identifiers, or a trivial identity that doesn't express anything in itself. An online identity is something more, because it usually comes with a personality, an image, a history. To me it isn't even that something is being hidden, rather that a lesser version of oneself (merely virtual) is being overvalued. This argument could be extended to people who might base their online Instagram/TikTok/etc. persona on that of their real life, but glorify it beyond recognition, while at the same time reducing its being to digital communication.
• Morgawr 4y ago
  It's been a thing for quite a while now, probably a good 10-15 years already. I don't think it's a new generation thing.
• Aaronstotle 4y ago
  I'd say its a shamelessness type thing rather than a new generation thing. People can like what they like, however it definitely reduces the message when its plastered on a blog filled with risqué anime girls or furry art.
  • Morgawr 4y ago
    > risqué anime girls What's risqué in OP's picture?
    • Aaronstotle 4y ago
      I wasn't referring to the OP, however I've seen other blogs that have it and I feel that it takes away from the actual content.
• fortran77 4y ago
  • kps 4y ago
    Typo? If so, please don't fix it.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• falcolas 4y ago
  My take: People have used animals, drawings, and random photos as avatars since avatars were a thing. Anime has been growing in popularity and reach over the past decades, and the new (and broadly available) "Holo-live" style animated YouTube and Twitch avatars have created its own boom. Combine with a greater acceptance of non-traditional personal identities, and you get professionals using anime and furry avatars and decorations. Practically speaking, it's not really any more or less professional than O'Reilly using animals to create an identity for its programming book covers (so long as you're not wearing a fursuit or sailor moon leotard to work).
• dqpb 4y ago
  [flagged]
• fxtentacle 4y ago
  20 years ago, programming skills and access to Anime in Europe were highly correlated. Back then, me and friends spent an insane amount of time on reverse engineering a Japanese file sharing app so that we could build our own server version (like Deluge nowadays) and then we built our own IRC server and our own XDCC download bots so that we could get Anime raws onto a university server and then recode them to make download over ISDN (64kb/s) feasible. Also, a lot of the Animes featured socially awkward nerd guys who by accident stumbled into their own harem... With that context, posters of Anime girls together with nerd stuff sold extremely well at Connichi (a big Anime convention in Germany). A friend of mine (who's now CTO of a C++ dev shop) even bought a wax printer so that we could make really high quality A3 posters. So I guess it's an in-joke for Europeans born in the 80s.
  • secondcoming 4y ago
• jrussino 4y ago
  Not sure about the trend in general, but this particular image (Anime girl holding a programming book) made me think it was a reference to these manga guides on various math/science/engineering topics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manga_Guides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manga_Guides
• dawnbreez 4y ago
  It's really funny hearing someone ask if this is the hand-off to the new generation, when the fact is that furries were working on the internet well before anybody else cared. Furcadia came out in 1996! [edit] Oh, right, I should explain what Furcadia is. It's apparently based on Multi-User Dungeon type technology, but has a graphical frontend and was driven by user-generated content. Essentially, it was Habbo Hotel for furries, four years before Habbo Hotel even existed.
  • Izkata 4y ago
    Supposedly a furry who called himself Ogg worked on ARPANET.
• noobermin 4y ago
  In the spirit of upsetting things about this article, the "retrocomputing" tag is probably the worst part.
• jchw 4y ago
  The funny thing is that while I don't doubt in my mind that a lot of the folks with anime/furry illustrations in their blogs are generally younger, I suspect many of them are still knocking on 30 at least. What happened? Anime and furry fandom became more socially acceptable across contexts. Why? Probably because of the ridiculous degree to which we are connected online and the way this has eroded our ability to segregate identities. A lot of people you have seen online have always been huge losers, but many of them are more open to flagrantly displaying it now. Is this good? Dunno. I think making some of these subcultures more mainstream can suck for the subcultures themselves. I've never found it all that off-putting personally, but that could just be a reflection of my own biases as a long-time online loser.
  • diputsmonro 4y ago
    Generally agree, but I do have to bristle with the "huge losers" sentiment. The fact that furries/weebs have a strong visibility in the professional software/IT space should be a signal that those people aren't losers, and are in fact doing quite well for themselves. And if you're in the industry, then you need to do yourself a favor and remove that label from yourself. What you call a "flagrantly display", I call a typical, progressive break from meaningless social conventions. People like cute drawings and post them on their websites, so what? And I think it provides good visibility to those communities to demonstrate the skilled and creative people that inhabit it.
    • jchw 4y ago
      I mean, the truth is, it's obviously not that weird. It's a reflection of culture, at least in America, that I regard such things in this light. Still, I mean it with affection. The fact that it was somewhat outcast culture also freed it from the bounds of giving a damn about social acceptability, which led to some very free creativity. I always embraced this. I realize now this attitude may seem unnecessarily self-deprecating, though. Oh well.
• staticassertion 4y ago
  The furries have always been here, younger generations are just more accepting of it and so you get more people willing to openly identify
• P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  It's a female anime character, is there some reason you interpreted that as waifu?