February 4th, 2008
15. Game-show tape trading
Pity the poor game-show fans, who've been either pandered to or ignored by the major networks for the past decade, and have seen their one TV refuge—the Game Show Network—gradually shed its retro programming in favor of less appealing originals. So the stalwarts gather on the Internet, offering videocassettes and DVD-Rs of Classic Concentration and The Joker's Wild, and comparing notes about the greatest hosts, the greatest contestants, the greatest celebrity guests, and the greatest eras of long-running series. And the really faithful gather in person at the Game Show Congress in Los Angeles, where they attend panels, meet legends, and play the games themselves. The ranks of those who remember Bullseye and Blockbusters may be dwindling, but they're all going to go down together.
16. Anime
Compared to where anime was 20 years ago, it's practically mainstream today. Not that long ago, non-Japanese-speaking fans (or otaku, as many of them prefer to be called, even though that Japanese word for "fanboy" is heavily pejorative) had to get their fix by buying imported Japanese-only laserdiscs and watching them while reading script translations they exchanged online. Today, a handful of distributors exist just to license and market anime DVDs in America. There's an Anime Network, Cartoon Network has made anime a staple of after-school viewing, American animation is increasingly anime-inspired, and the popularity of anime has dragged manga into American markets, heavily influencing the American comics industry. And yet anime still has a rep as a haven for arrested-development pervs who like watching battling robots, tentacle porn, and big-eyed, saccharine magical girls with a tendency to lose their clothes whenever they change costumes. Funny, Japanese otaku face similar prejudices in Japan.
17. Cosplay
To paraphrase a popular office poster, you don't have to be crazy about anime to engage in cosplay—the act of dressing up as your favorite cartoon character—but it certainly helps. Why else would grown adults cross-dress, show obscene amounts of cleavage, don capes, style their hair impossibly high, and strap tails onto their belts? It's far more interesting than dressing up like Bob Newhart from Newhart, plus non-anime enthusiasts can easily/snottily be brought up to speed: "It's from an anime! I'm [obscure character] from [equally obscure anime]!" And isn't flaunting your esoteric knowledge about things the world at large couldn't care less about the very essence of being a nerd?
18. Live-action role-playing
The dice required to play Dungeons & Dragons lack the weight and heft of a mighty broadsword or a +3 wizard's staff, so it was only a matter of time before role-players donned costumes, took to the woods, and maxed out their charisma and dexterity by poking each other with padded "weapons." So while it's easy to ridicule LARPers (live-action role-players), when was the last time you got together with 50 of your best friends in a forest and ran around having the time of your life, even if you didn't get any experience points or potions? (Or, alternately, skulked around university meeting rooms with 50 of your direst enemies, politicking it up as a creature of the night.) Plus, LARPing has adapted to the 21st century swimmingly. YouTube is overflowing with endless footage of videos with serious production values: Boffer weapons strike with skull-shattering cracks, wizards unleash lightning bolts from their pasty white hands, and a kick-ass orchestral score from a Lord Of The Rings-like soundtrack instantly makes the whole endeavor majestic.
19. Second Life / MySpace / FaceBook
It goes by many names, but it's really just a digital substitute for socializing. But if you're lonely, shy, live in the sticks, or just don't know anyone, you'd probably be encouraged when your computer screen effectively announces: "You are connected to 243,502,001 friends through 1 friend(s)." These "friendships" would probably resemble normal interactions if the participants interacted in any way at all, but aside from Second Life (which actually gives people the rare opportunity to write each other sentences in real-time), it boils down to an exchange of images (usually from some drunken party), e-vites (to some drunken party), and the now-immortal words "Thanks for the add!" But whether you're an amateur child molester who wants to send your favorite links, or you just met a carbon-based life form on the street, you'll probably demand digital friendship—and now the only thing more annoying than someone who sniffs, "I won't give you my MySpace page," is someone who smugly announces, "I don't have a MySpace account."
20. Fanfic
Because cartoonist Jim Davis, for instance, will probably never tap the raw, unspoken sexual tension between Garfield and Odie, diehard fans are obliged to write their fan-fiction version of the steamy scene, post it on the Internet, and insecurely encourage readers to review the typo-ridden and laughably out-of-character scripts of their favorite book/game/movie/TV show. True, fan fiction isn't always relegated to weird, unnecessarily erotic original stories with awkward dialogue, plot holes, and spelling errors, but it frequently is, and even fanfic devotees know their hobby lapses into the unfathomable: fanfiction.net's Garfield board yields a good cross-section of reader responses, from the justified "WTF" to the not-helpful "the writing is good. But the jokes are horrible!" Yes, there are also interesting scripts, like a Home Improvement where Mark gets addicted to drugs, or a Fight Club epilogue that finds Tyler Durden eerily resurrected, but who wants to read that? There's also a Dilbert where Dilbert finally rapes Dogbert.
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