The New York Times just published a scandalistic article about 2D lovers like Nisan (photo above) who dates his Moe cushion.

"Nisan is part of a thriving subculture of men and women in Japan who indulge in real relationships with imaginary characters. These 2-D lovers, as they are called, are a subset of otaku culture— the obsessive fandom that has surrounded anime, manga and video games in Japan in the last decade. It’s impossible to say exactly what portion of otaku are 2-D lovers, because the distinction between the two can be blurry."

Are you sure?! If you have been in Akiba or Toyko even once you know that this "new phenomen" (as they call it) is fake/maked up. Have you ever seen otakus dating their Mow pillows?!  Me no...
This is an example of why traditional journalism is sinking and why writers outside the Otaku culture should stay out of it and do not write about it...

Basically they took a classic WaiWai style "scoop" and presented it as a real and widespread social phenomenon in Japan !!


Have anyone ever seens a person like this freak eating in real restaurants with his moe cushion?!  99.99999% of MOE fans would never take a "REAL" walk with their MOE cushion (usually these photos are staged by otakus for their own blogs).

This guy is the "SO RONERY" net super star that a couple of years ago flooded the otaku forums around the (geek) world...

Kim Jong Il in the movie Team America: World Police by the creators of South Park.

“I’m so ronery, so ronery, so ronery and sadry arone.” - UrbanDictionary.com

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Update: according to the Japanese blogger Hitagi this "story" is 6 years old!!

Update: Adamu @ MutantFrog wrote a great post about this NYT piece.

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Why journalism can't be 2.0 and stop to report about totally fake phenomenons?! They should understand that thanks to google it's easier to uncover fake stories like this (note: for fake I mean take one person and elevate his supposed lifestyle to a social phenomenon)...  Kind of sad that the NYT is so ronery...

I don't have cited he author of this article since I respect her works and I'm sure this is the result of the NYT "cut and paste" editors more than her... I can't belive she really meant to say that this guy is part of a widespread otaku phenomenon!

Whats next on NYT agenda? Support for the anti-eroge campaign started by Equality Now?!
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