Everything you need to know about Weebs – Exploring the Weeb culture

As a person who has been in the anime community for about 6 years, which is, even before the word “weeb” became popular, (and later on participating in the said culture myself) I believe I could give you guys a tour of this anime subculture.

Now, I do realize that just watching anime for years doesn’t mean I’m entitled to know everything there is about the anime & weeb community. However, I’d like to believe that I’m up-to-date with things as I’m actively participating in social media and stuff.

Regardless, this article is going to be a tour of the weeb culture from my perspective. I’ll be talking about everything I’ve seen and experienced in this community.

The Misconceptions

Before getting to what the weeb culture actually is, let me begin with what it is not.

Let’s get this clear. Not all anime fans are weebs, and not all weebs have to be anime fans. As controversial as it may sound, hear me out.

What is a weeb? – True definition of the word ‘Weeb’

It is a common misconception nowadays, that the term “weeb” means ‘anime fan’. But this couldn’t be any far from the truth. While the original meaning of the word has been bent beyond recovery, the term ‘weeb’ was originally meant for someone who is obsessed with Japanese culture. Particularly, it was meant as a word to describe a foreign person who tries to act like a Japanese person (and make an awkward scene doing that.)

Otaku vs Weeb

The word ‘weeb’ was a degenerative term and was considered an insult. It became a really big incident back when it originated. It was pretty much the same as the ‘N’ word. Why? Because people began calling western ‘Otakus’ as ‘weebs.’

While Otaku is itself a degenerative term, it refers to people overly obsessed with anime, hentai and all other 2D, computer related stuff.

The thing is, there were people who believed in what they were obsessed with, so they were fine with the term ‘Otaku’, because to them, that’s exactly what they were and they were proud of it.

So when they were called a ‘weeb’ they started feeling insulted. After all, that’s not who they were.

Current meaning of “weeb“

However, new anime fans who didn’t know the real meaning of ‘weeb’ (or ‘otaku’ for that matter) started believing that weeb means anime fan/person who like doujins and hentai.

Years passed, and anime became wildly popular in the western culture. A huge number of new fans began calling themselves a weeb, not knowing its true meaning, and thus the original meaning of the word changed. As a matter of fact, the meaning of the words Otaku and Weeb have become the same now. That is, Otaku=Weeb.

Yet another misconception

These new fans who label themselves as ‘weebs’ think Otaku means a different word/insult. They just don’t know that the actual meaning of Otaku was just passed down to the word ‘weeb’, and they’re synonymous to each other.

Some think Otaku refers to ‘old/outdated anime fans’. Others think they’re “lesser weebs” or anime watchers who don’t love anime as much as the weebs do.

Honestly, it’s funny how people don’t know the truth (and don’t care to actually know it), but make up all sorts of stuff they feel is right.

So, these were some of the misconceptions about the word. Now you must know, when I say I’m going to talk about “weeb culture”, I’m also essentially talking about the “Otaku culture”, as they are ultimately the same according to their current meaning.

Exploring the Weeb culture

What we listen

• Ani songs – Basically all anime intros and outros
• Jpop & other Japanese songs – While not everybody out there listens to other Japanese songs, it is safe to say a good number of weebs listen to Jpop and other Japanese songs.
• Nightcore – Nightcores are basically sped up versions of an ordinary song. These are usually English songs, although nightcores in other languages exist too.
• Vocaloid – These are computer generated voice synthesizers. Some of the most popular vocaloid singers are Hatsune Miku, Ren & Rin.

What we read

• Manga – These are Japanese comics that are traditionally black and white that are read from the right to left. Manga are known for their amazing artworks and great storylines.
• Webtoon – Webtoon are colored comics from all over the world. It includes western comics, manga (Japanese comics), manhwa (korean comics) and manhua (Chinese comics).
• Doujin – Doujin are basically Hentai manga. What is hentai you ask? Check this post where I’ve explained it in brief.

What we watch

• Anime – These are Japanese animated series that are renowned for their art style and amazing plot. There are a lot of misconceptions about anime in general, for example, “anime is for kids” and  “anime fans are pedophiles”. You can read more about these misconceptions here.
• Hentai – These are anime p*rn that have all sorts of genres (from Monster to Vanilla, we’ve got em all)
• Vtubers – Vtubers are youtubers with a virtual avatar. These characters are usually 3D or 2.5D models. There are also cases where some Vtubers use static 2D character artworks for their videos. (Speaking of which, I do Vtubing too! You can check out my channel here.) They usually talk about games and not anime (despite looking like an anime character. The irony.)
• AniTubers – These are anime youtubers who talk about all sorts of anime & otaku related content.
• AMV – Anime Music Videos, or AMV in short are videos that are composed of various clips from different anime series and regular songs in the background.
• Japanese series and movies – Again, not all weebs watch Japanese series and movies, but there are definitely some who take it to the next level and watch such shows.

Where’s the weeb community at

We’re literally everywhere on the internet. But here are some of the most popular internet hubs where weebs dwell:

• Reddit – A social media platform that has a ton of anime fans.
• ZeroChan – A platform to host images. Mostly used by artists and people who love seeing fanarts.
• Pixiv – Similar site to ZeroChan.
• Instagram – Another social media platform.
• VRChat – A virtual world where we can be a 3D character and roam around, meet other people and make friends from all around the world.
• Facebook – yet another social media platform.
• Anime Amino – An app where we can write anime related articles, fanfictions, post memes and other images. We can also go into live chat with other weebs from all around the world.
• 4Chan – An anime forum mostly used by veteran anime fans.

What websites do we use

• MyAnimeList – This website is literally the official place where all seasoned weebs find what anime to watch next. It consists of a massive list of every single anime that exists. Using this site, we can create a list of anime we’ve watched and rate/review them.
• AnimeNewsNetwork – As the name suggests this is the official place to get anime news from Japan.
• Crunchyroll, Netflix, etc – This is a legal anime streaming site where we can get paid subscriptions to watch our favorite anime.
• Nhentai – The site where all horni weebs dwell. This site is the home for tens of thousands of doujin.
• Hanime and others – These are hentai streaming sites. Everything else is self explanatory *wink*

What games we play

• Ero games – These are erotic games/hentai games featuring 2D anime girls who do lewd things with your game character.
• Dating sim games – These are text based, visual novel novel games where you can make decisions to control the story flow. The main objective of these games is to date 2D anime girls and make them fall in love with you. Some of these games also have “happy endings” where you get to see some uncensored action.
• Official Anime Games – Games like Jump force, DBZ etc that are released by official companies.
• RPG games like Genshin Impact – These games are not anime related, but have anime looking characters and Japanese voice actors.
• Ani games on mobile – Both official and fanmade anime games for mobile devices like Duel links and love live.

We ask for sauce – ‘It’s a weeb thing’

This is a special word in the weeb community. We use this term as a replacement for ‘source’. Basically, if we see any anime/manga image and we want to know which anime/manga it is from we ask for sauce.

We ship characters

There are anime characters we’d like to see as a couple. Although the author of the anime/manga doesn’t intend to make their characters involved in romance, we weebs would love to ship them together and see them as a couple.

We’re into traps and futas

Traps are femboys, who are boys that wear girlish clothing. They look and act like a girl. Futa on the other hand are characters with both genders. Basically girls with a pp.

While not all weebs love these characters (mostly because they are boys and they don’t wanna be ‘gay’), most of them are open minded and accept both the genders equally.

We have waifus & Husbandos

We love anime characters to the point we live with them in our imagination. Wafius are anime girls whom we weebs would like to have as a wife. And Husbandos are the anime boys we’d like to have as our husband.

Have anime wallpapers and profile pics

This one goes without saying. We anime fans have anime wallpapers and pfps to show off the anime that we’re proud of. There are closet weebs who don’t use them though. They pretend to be “normal” (non anime fans), but watch anime secretly. On the other hand there are also non anime fans who use anime pfp just because they are cute. So having anime wallpapers/pfp doesn’t necessarily mean one watches anime, but the majority of the time that is actually the case.

We buy anime merch

There are weebs who buy tons of anime merchandise and make every other item in their house anime related (would you believe if I said there is a roomba with anime voice and people actually buy that?)

Then there are people like me who only have a decent amount of anime merch like Posters, T-shirts and figures. And of course, there are those brave souls that buy anime body pillows and s*x dolls too.

Hobbies we’re into

Most of the weebs stop at consuming anime content, but some of us go further and create our own anime related hobby. We draw anime arts & lewds, blog about anime, post ani-memes, create fanon stories on wattpad, draw our own manga, do youtube, sing/create anime music, do cosplay, or simply just support the people who have the above hobbies.

Other weeb hobbies include collecting anime figurines, trading cards, etc.

Places we’d like to visit

• Anime Cons – Anime conventions occur in various parts of the world. These are a way for anime fans and weebs to celebrate the anime they love.
• Maid Cafe, Yaoi Cafe, etc. – Japan has a lot of anime themed cafes like maid cafe, yaoi cafe, tsundere cafe, etc. While I personally think it’d be awkward to visit those kinds of places, there are people who visit them.
• Akihabara – This city is basically the dreamland of all the weebs. It is a city entirely dedicated to anime and is the home of dozens of anime themed shops.
• Anime based attractions in Japan – Japan, being the source of anime, has a lot of tourist attractions that are anime themed.

That’s it for this post! These were pretty much all you needed to know about weebs and the weeb culture. Hope you liked this post (^^)

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See you in the next post~