How To Stop Being a Weeb, a 12 Step Program

Weebs or Weeaboo are defined by a lack of social boundaries, social skills, and an unhealthy obsession with Japanese media culture. The label is meant to be derogatory, but over time people have embraced it as an identity label. Weebs, however, lack a healthy outlook on life. The lack of social intelligence can hurt their development, social lives, and ability to live a good life. A good life, as defined by Aristotle, is a life of happiness through virtue. While I won’t delve into Aristotelian virtues here, I will provide 12 ways for you to stop being a weeb.

Let me lead with a caveat. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying anime, manga, and Japanese media culture. There’s nothing wrong with being socially awkward to a certain degree. However, when these hurt your ability to function and prevent you from living a fuller life, then you have a problem. Obsession can hurt your personal development and your ability to form healthy relationships. It can hurt your ability to grow.

1. Bathe Regularly

Most game and card shops I’ve visited have a funk to them. To reference the sitcom Seinfeld (and show my age): “It’s the beast!” Geeks and weebs often fail to bathe regularly. During hot summers, you should bathe daily. Sometimes you need to even bathe twice if you are sweating heavily or active. Bathing is a basic social and health skill. It respects the boundaries of others by not offending them with your presence. This basic skill (and I use the word skill intentionally) sends the message that you care about your health and the well-being of others. Geek funk, or con funk if you prefer, shows your disregard for others and for yourself. The social messaging body odor sends can’t be underestimated even if polite people don’t mention it. It makes people not want to associate with you. Cleanliness is a foundational pillar of social interaction.

2. Don’t use Japanese Words in Everyday Conversations

Dropping Japanese words into conversations is a part of otaku and weeb jargon. When you are within such groups, it’s fine. It’s similar to how lawyers and scientists toss about their own jargon among themselves. However, when speaking to people outside the community, dropping Japanese words shows poor social skills. Lawyers and scientists also fall into this problem. It’s obnoxious and a way to boost your ego at the expense of others. Ironically, this effort backfires and lowers the opinions of others for you. This use of otaku jargon in the wrong company shows your lack of social skill. Socially skillful people match their speech patterns to the people they speak with. For example, when I work with patrons at the library, I don’t overwhelm them with computer jargon, unless there’s no other word for what I tell them. But when I speak with a fellow computer nerd, the jargon flies.

3. Learn and Practice Social Skills

Social skills, like all skills, require practice. The cure for inexperience is experience. You can find many books that explain how to approach socialness, including how to read emotional cues. Friends and family make safe practice subjects. Strike up conversations with people in checkout lines. Practice conversation starting techniques. Be ready to stumble. It is part of the learning process. Although people know me as fairly social, I stumble everyday in my speech. I misjudge what people find amusing or interesting, for example. All you can do is learn and try again when you fail.

4. Read Philosophy

I know urging you to read philosophy is a hard sell. Philosophy is boring! I disagree, but I find many “boring” topics fascinating. Philosophy is the study of knowledge and of life. Philosophy nudges your thinking about life and what makes life meaningful. It isn’t boring when you can see how it can help you. I’m partial to Stoicism and Zen. Reading philosophy deepens your view of life and of your own thinking. It can be hard to understand sometimes, but that is by design. The intellectual challenge of reading forces you to think, and that’s philosophy’s goal.

Here’s a short list of books I recommend:

1. Bible
2. Koran
3. Dhammapada
4. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
5. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
6. Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle

The Bible and Koran are long books. You should still try to read them through. Although they are seen as religious books, they are also philosophy books stuffed with observations of human behavior.

5. Have Non-Japan/Anime Interests and Hobbies

Add depth to your interests. Developing hobbies beyond Japan and anime rounds your character. Preferably, develop a hands-on hobby that takes you away from screens. If you like to draw in manga’s style, continue to do so but also experiment with different styles. Paint like an Impressionist. Learn to draw landscapes.Get your hands dirty. Gardening offers a wonderful hobby with depth. You don’t need a lot of space to garden. Just a window or two can be enough.

You can also look into: carpentry, wood carving, print making, cloth dyeing, sewing, embroidery, baking, cooking, bookbinding, photography, leatherworking, candlemaking, blacksmithing, and so many other hobbies.

Experiment to find new interests. You have a vast number of choices, far more than I can list here.

6. Have a Job

Anime and manga can be expensive interests. Any interest can be expensive. You need to have a job to fund them and to fund living. Many weebs lack work and remain at home or otherwise remain dependent on others. Independence is the reward for work. Don’t get me wrong, I wish I was retired already. I would work more as a retiree than I do now. I would be working on my interests. But work lays the foundation for freedom if you combine work with financial education.

7. Develop your Emotional Intelligence

I struggle with emotional intelligence. EQ is the ability to read, understand, and properly react to one’s own and other’s emotions. I’m bad at handling the emotions of others. I prefer reason and emotional control. However, emotional intelligence can be learned and improved with practice. You can read about EQ and learn how to practice it from various books. As your local librarian for help. Like physical strength, people have different levels of emotional intelligence. You can still work to improve yourself within those limits. To use myself as an example again, I know I have limited EQ compared to some people. I try to listen without offering advice or solutions, even if I can’t connect to the person’s emotions. As a social skill, EQ takes practice. This is an area were failure can be painful and difficult for you and for others. However, if you are genuine and open and apologetic when you fail, people forgive. EQ also involves knowing when you need to withdraw to take care of your own emotional needs. Well-rounded interests offer a refuge, as does anime and manga.

8. Watch Classic Films

Classic films differ from modern films in approach, story, and acting. They offer a visual version of literary novels. Classic films offer an accessible perspective to history and what people thought about. They also provide a comparative context for anime and modern films. You can see how cinema and storytelling techniques have developed. Classic films involve more than American films from the 1920s-1970s. As an anime fan, you should also watch Japan’s classic film period, roughly 1950-1970, and classic anime from roughly 1960-2000.

I recommend you start with these films:

1. Casablanca
2. Scaramouche
3. Dracula
4. Enter the Dragon
5. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
6. Cowboy Bebop
7. Neon Genesis Evangelion
8. Super Dimension Fortress Macross
9. Akira 
10. Ghost in the Shell
11. Cleopatra
12. Godzilla (the original)
    

9. Look After Your Health

Put down the chips! Many weebs are overweight and sedentary. Ill health shortens life expectancy, hurts mental health, and hurts your social life. Poor health choices hurts your ability to relate to others with confidence. It’s hard to have fun when you feel poorly physically and psychologically. Eating better, eating fewer calories reduces weight. Exercise, while it doesn’t lead to weight loss, increases health. Small steps, like cutting sugary drinks, leads to large gains. Walking improves health. As you look and feel better, you will become more confident. And more confidence improves your ability to practice social skills. Likewise, you will want to go out more which will reinforce your confidence and drive to improve your health. Remember, small steps lead to a many mile journey.

10. Read More Books

I’m a librarian so this shouldn’t surprise you. Reading has been proven to increase compassion, emotional intelligence, standard intelligence, and more. Reading allows you to expand your frame of reference and deepen your knowledge across subjects. Reading offers a chance for you to converse with the past, other cultures, and explore ideas that are no longer commonplace. Books give you a way to escape life for a time, just as anime does. Books also give you a break from screens (unless you use a tablet; e-ink screens don’t count as screens), and we all need more time away from screens. Reading helps fight against the erosion of focus. Too much exposure to screens and social media damages our ability to focus for long periods of time. A regular reading habit helps slow and, to a certain extent, reverse the neurological changes distraction brings.

11. Learn How to Cook

Even basic cooking goes a long way toward improving your health. The ability to cook whatever you want to eat remains one of life’s joys. And cooking doesn’t have to be difficult. There’s plenty of easy options and simple cooking techniques. For example, I like to take a fish fillet, dose it with whatever herbs (basil, dill, thyme, whatever is handy), bake it in the oven. I also roast veggies from my garden or from the freezer. On the veggies I use olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette, and a touch of salt. A half-hour later at 400 degrees F, you have a simple, easy, and tasty healthy dinner. Cooking also saves you money. You can buy components that you can combine to make different dishes, lending a good bit of variety to each day. Likewise, this gives you the ability to control the quality of the calories you eat. This allows you to look after your health. Not to mention many people find the ability to cook sexy.

12. Financially Educate Yourself

If you want a calm life, you must be financially educated. Financial education involves the use of money to build wealth and security for your life. Living paycheck to paycheck brings anxiety and a life without retirement or stability. Financial education involves budgeting, investing, and learning how to regulate your thinking about money. Many people chaff at the restrictions financial education imposes, but those restrictions on spending (many will read fun here) bring contentment over the long term. If you lose your job, you will have an emergency fund in place so you don’t have to worry about how to pay your expenses. If you want to buy a house, you can save and invest to minimize how you much pay over the long term. Financial education increases your chances of retiring in old age. But it also means you have to learn to delay gratification and learn how to spend well. Financial education doesn’t mean you never spend. It means you spend only when you can afford to do so. Net 0 thinking, that is spending until all your money is gone, harms you. Unfortunately, many weebs (and non-weebs) I know suffer from Net 0 thinking.

If you want to learn more about financial education, check out the YouTube channel Minority Mindset. Of course, there are plenty of books out there. I recommend reading A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel.

Conclusion

Extra step: Avoid drug use of all types, including marijuana. Contrary to what people believe, marijuana, particularly with teens, links to decreases in the prefrontal cortex, making you more impulsive and leaving you more vulnerable to advertising and other manipulation (Schneider, 2008). If you want to relieve stress, take up meditation instead. Meditation is linked to increased neural density, less impulsivity, decreased risk of late-life mental problems, higher resistance to manipulation, and other benefits. Meditation, unlike weed, requires work and practice. People take the path of least resistance. Don’t do this. A fulfilling life requires hard work and the conscious pursuit of virtue.

These 12 steps only get you started on your journey away from weeb behavior. Don’t misunderstand. Liking anime and manga and Japanese culture is fine. What isn’t fine: ignoring social boundaries and holding back your own character growth. Anime should be just an aspect of who you are. It shouldn’t be your defining trait, nor should the behavior of any social group be what you are known for. Rather, you should be known for your character. If you don’t bathe regularly, ignore your culture’s social norms. and otherwise be socially awkward and emotionally ignorant, people will view you as poor of character. In turn, this will hurt your ability to relate to others. And this will hurt your ability to refine your character. Like it or not, the refinement of character depends on other people, even if you turn to books as I do. Anime offer great stories that help build character, but it shouldn’t be your sole source for virtue education.

I will leave you with a quote from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius: “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”

References

Schneider, M. (2008). Puberty as a highly vulnerable developmental period for the consequences of cannabis exposure. Addiction Biology, 13(2), 253–263. https://doi-org.oh0164.oplin.org/10.1111/j.1369-1600.2008.00110.x