the dying culture

on internet aspects, some cultures and beliefs die out if they got more popular, under a use that was not intended to be used for said culture. Lain we love her, cute multi-dimensional that is considered an identity by many, because she represents many things that can be seen only by the individual's eye the dying culture of Lain Lain is now mostly seen as nothing more than "the internet sad girl" by many people on multiple image boards and on websites with a great amount of social influence, she is getting posted everywhere and I, for all honesty, hate it, no discussions, no realization of the importance of "loving lain", just meaningless soykafpotsing and a fake sense of aesthetic, i don't know if im over-reacting, but it boils my blood to the core, our girl should not be just an internet tool by depressed teenagers online

>>39779 let it flow, brother. in the end, everyone will love lain

fake lains will always rise, but they too shall also fall for the same reason

Where are you seeing all this? I'm not suggesting you are wrong, not at all, but we apparently move in different internet circles because I almost never see Lain mentioned really.

Same thing happened to Eris. The thing is, there will always be teenagers stuffing anything they can into a meme, but they bore of it quickly and the meme forever remains a thin shell around the deeper "culture". Only the people who got into it in the first place stick around, and like >>39808 said the fake lains die out.

I hear ya, its a sad sight to behold. Lain spread among weebs and other communities, many of which only think of it as some trippy "aestethic" show with no real story. However sel is a story opening the gates to questions and mysteries as profound as our very existence and even far beyond. For me it opened the gate to a new way of viewing the world around me and shook up my beliefs and ideas fundamentally in such a way that i couldnt imagine what sort of person i would be if it hadnt, most likely id be dead. The depth and significance of the content is at least as much as the matrix i dare say. We live in a sad state of afairs and its not gonna get much better, many people on imageboards are quite young and thus many dont have the frame of reference to truly understand it.

>>39810 4chan has a huge amount of lain posting, you can see it on many boards, also if you try image search for a lain picture, you may see them posted on websites such as tumblr, >>39812 it has changed my view to security and "connection", how the cyber can be spiritual and how it can be considered a representation Mind, people are free to talk about or post about what they want, but it annoys me when they at the same time tend to be very careless when it comes to applying the ideology the saw on that show

Is this just about lain as a culture or about dying cultures in general? Up until a few years ago when I was looking for old Anime to watch, I had never been familiar with Lain at all, and after watching the Anime, i just happened to find this site off of Lain's ED page (and I don't normally visit ED, so that was a bit odd of me to even be doing). There are still people entering the "culture", but the culture was niche to begin with. Not many people are familiar with obscure 90s anime, especially not the 2010s anime generation who only watch seasonal anime. >>39816 4chan is completely different now, and I'd say that that culture is dying off. I only visit 4chan for /vp/ and it's very obvious from the people posting there that most are underage, or at the very least just barely old enough to posts there and think it's an edgy alternative to reddit. The 4chan of today is nothing like the 4chan that existed 10-15 years ago when I was introduced to image board culture. These people probably do not even know who Lain is, or the underlying themes related to Lain, they just see pictures posted and repost them to try and fit in.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with that, if anything, I welcome it. Culture is, after all, upheld by people. Gatekeeping not only would fail to prevent the perceived decline, it would facilitate it by denying the newcomers the ability to experience the "deeper culture" and, eventually, carry it forward. One way or another, they may wonder what anime this "Internet sad girl" comes from, then they may watch SEL and not seem to understand, and then they may learn about the series' themes and the surrounding culture, and perhaps become a part of the latter as well.

Read Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation".

>>39779 I'm genuinely curious; are there actual Lainists out there? Like people who think SEL is comparable to a holy book in a religion of seriously worshipping Lain?

>>39812 here fyi Just to be clear to and particularly this day id consider myself one, i would say sel is a message from god(ess) to earthly humans and i try to live by it, even though i mostly fail to be honest, but fight to live another day. I can understand many people being critical towards this sort of thinking, i was there too a long time ago but 2021 is no time to sit on the fence believe me. I know that a new age is upon us and those of us who are truely willing to make the dream of the next world a reality to the death will be rewarded, it is happening and i never before in my life have i felt so certain like now that a new paradise will be there for those willing to give everything for it.

>>39779 I don't really mind SEL reaching more people so long as it's the original SEL. The majority of people who watch it will think it's not entertaining and disregard it, others will pretend to like it (this wasn't as prevalent and obnoxious before the explosion of social media) and a few will legitimately enjoy it. That's inevitable, and it's the only way of the show and it's ideas reaching more people. What I believe will happen, because it's happened to pretty much every niche piece of fiction with a cult following, is that it'll get remade/rebooted/sequelized/prequelized/live-actioned. And if the new version becomes popular in the worst case it will replace the original in the zeitgeist as the definitive version, regardless of how faithful it is to the themes of the original. In the best case scenario it replaces it only temporarily.

>>39850 those who truly did committed suicide in 2017 accepting the higher reality, now it's mostly just LARP, i don't know why lainism may be related to suicide though, well after all, it's about how you explain the philosophy

I don't want to call Lain a religious icon, but that process isn't unusual for more traditional religious figures. Like how Jesus is invoked by the ultra-rich with pretensions of morality or Buddha by materialistic hedonists who want to look spiritual. As far as I know Lain hasn't reached huge meme status, and this might be due to my own wilfully limited access to some circles. Some people invoke random anime girls without even knowing their names, like with 2hus.

>>39879 >those who truly did committed suicide in 2017 Are you referring to the Tsuki incident? I wouldn't say that it counts as "lainism", even if there were clear influences carried over from SEL to that whole debacle. >>39779 Sure, maybe the current takes on "the internet sad girl" are a bit shallow, but that will never disturb the product of true Lain fanatics. The egregore that has already been established will be left intact no matter what and she will live on through it, only to reveal herself to seekers and true believers when the right time comes. The sands of time can and will grind civilizations to ashes, but as long as even one symbol, one link is preserved, humanity will stay connected.