Forum - View topicNEWS: Library Bars 43-Year-Old from Manga Club Meeting
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daxomni
 Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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Thanks for that dose of much-needed common sense MeggieMay! Sometimes it seems as though anime fans can be our own worst enemy.
Last edited by daxomni on Thu May 01, 2008 2:02 am; edited 1 time in total |
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VORTIA
 SubscriberPosts: 942 |
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You know, Hikaru, maybe you should reassess the methods at which you are arriving at your assumptions. If others did the same type of thinking as you do, they could easily see your Becky Miyamoto avatar and label you a pedophile. Maybe you should think about the facts before you let your assumptions lead you off on a witchhunt.
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Hon'ya-chan
 Posts: 973 |
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That's like saying the local BDSM club needs to critique every Dom if their a potential Lunatic Psychopathic Serial Killer who gets his jollies in torturing women. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Why? What on earth is abnormal about a Manga fan bringing his Manga to a Manga club? I just want to ask all the people jumping on him to try putting yourself in his shoes. You're 40 and you are a fan of manga. You see a flyer for a manga club. It doesn't say anything about it being just for teens. So you decide to go. You go to all the trouble of going down there. You even bring a bunch of manga with you. You arrive there only to be told that you cannot participate because it's only for teens. The flyer didn't mention anything about that. You're somewhat annoyed that they wasted your time like this so you try to file a complaint at which time you are treated very rudely by the library staff. You look into the possibility of a lawsuit. What part of that was wrong? |
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Sandstar
Posts: 196 |
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The part where he files a complaint for being told that the club is for teenagers only? OH NOES! He wasn't allowed into the club! Call out national guard to force the library to let him in! Where's Lyndon Johnson when you need him?! It's tiresome the way people go around saying "I should be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, and if you don't let me, OMG! my rights have been violated! SUE TIME!"
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Beruda
Posts: 114 |
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Well said my friend.  Same goes for you MeggieMay.
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VORTIA
Subscriber Posts: 942 |
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I think you're blowing out of proportion what complaint means. Complaint could simply be "Hey, I saw this flyer, and I decided to show up for this event only to find out it was only for kids. I thought I might let you know so you could rectify that next time. It was kind of a pain to lug all my stuff down here just to get turned away." We don't know what the library staff said to him, so there really isn't enough to decide either way. I do agree that going to the ACLU is a bit much, but I do believe the guy has a right to gripe about the library's oversight. |
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Hon'ya-chan
Posts: 973 |
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Perhaps the librarians made a snide reference to Chris Hansen. "Have a Seat." |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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I genuinely hope that one day, those who accuse Mr. Palmer with nonexistent "evidence" will find themselves victims of "community's opinion" on stereotypes, preferably due to one of their hobbies. Only then they'll realize how foolish they are today.
You haven't answered my question of how big a city has to be so its residents are not expected to "know each other."
By the standard of hikaru004 and many others, that would make things worse because now he seeks legitimate opportunities to cover his "real intentions." Last edited by dormcat on Thu May 01, 2008 2:08 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Conversation
 Posts: 8 |
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I am a balding lawyer pushing 40. The guy who runs my favourite comic book store is about 50. He has been into manga for decades. Me, I started reading manga and watching anime in earnest quite recently, about four years ago, and have acquired a decent collection.
I have been a comic book nerd most of my life, and I am not the least bit embarrassed about reading the works of, say, Bill Willingham, Alan Moore or Richard Sala. Not only are these creators older than me. I also know that plenty of middle-aged people like myself read their works. I am in good company. Anime and manga is a different story, however. In Japan I notice middle-aged men reading manga, but from what I can see, they read the manga of their youth, about samurai and gangsters. Me, I mainly read stories about high school kids, be it Cheeky Angel or Saikano. The otaku of Genshiken, with whom I can identify to some extent, are in their early twenties. In short, I often ask myself if I am too old for this stuff. I obviously don’t belong to the target audience. Quite frankly, I would feel embarrassed discussing anime with teenagers, whereas I would gladly talk V for Vendetta or Sandman with anyone who seemed genuinely interested. Being a member of a club of teenage anime fans doesn't appeal to me at all. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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I feel sorry for you being limited by US licensees, for their "target audience" are teens and teens ONLY. However, in addition to the famous Gyakuten Saiban series (known as Phoenix Wright in North America), there are many, many titles with the life of lawyers and/or corporate employees ("salaryman" in Japanese) targeted at older audience, such as Deru toko Demasho! by Shinji Inamitsu and Kosaku Shima series by Kenshi Hirokane, respectively. Just start with Morning and Big Comic / Big Comic Spirits and you'll find more interesting titles with a nice blend of maturities. It's a pity that US licensees don't really want to invest this part of potential customers, but I wouldn't blame them because I don't see a profitable manga market for US adults either. |
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abunai
Old Regular
 Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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Hon'ya-chan, your last two posts have been fairly obvious trolling. Consider this a warning -- if you cannot contribute to the thread in a sober way, find something else to do with your time. If you find it difficult to resist the urge, just let us know, and we'll help you with a tempban.
- abunai To be expected, honestly, of a thread infected with GATSU. |
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Farix
 Posts: 152 |
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As many have said, we don't know what really when down between Mr. Palmer and the library staff, but if the library staff reacted in a similar way as hikaru004 has reacted, then I completely agree that Mr. Palmer is well within his rights to sue the library and its staff. Any time you assume someone is a pedophile simply on the bases of their age; you are demonstrating a form of age discrimination.
It also seems from the article that the library staff gave Mr. Palmer a hard time about filing a complaint on the library's failure to fully adverting that the club is age restricted. This could be as simple as refusing to give Mr. Palmer the contact information, or proper form, needed for him to file his complaint to railing him that a filing a complaint wasn't necessary and a waste of time. Mr. Palmer could have very well asked questions about why the manga club was limited to teens only and the library staff did not give an affective answer. In fact, the library staff answer could very well have been that they were protecting the teens from pedophiles. If so, it would not be a hard leap for a person who was already upset to conclude that the library staff was accusing him of being a pedophile. Even in the news article, the library did not give an explanation as to why the manga club was a "teen only" event. It may very well be that the library staff really didn't think things through or realize that adults would be interested in manga or a manga gathering. Moreover, while the library director did offer to start a manga club for adults if there was enough interest (something I doubt there was), he didn't explain why there can't be a general "all ages" manga club. In fact, he took such an idea off the table when he suggested the adult manga club. |
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MokonaModoki
 Posts: 437 Location: Austin, Texas |
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He was rendered "furious at how he was treated by library employees when he tried to file a complaint" and then defamed as a pedophile by a bunch of snot-nosed brats on the Internet. |
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SalarymanJoe
 Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
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Likewise, the suburban area I live in, as part of Atlanta is at the bare minimum 30 miles in all directions. Hilton Head, being the vacation desitnation it is, I can easily see 11 miles or more being included in its metro area. quote="Moomintroll"]Frankly, I'm failing to see how this person has been terribly oppressed. Proofing mistake + bad customer service does not equal a civil rights outrage. [/quote] I don't think he's being oppressed, but there is a lot of backlash that could be a mischaracterization of Mr. Palmer. I'm not decrying this as a violation of civil rights (because to do so, I believe is to discredit the actual strides for civil rights by those who fought the good fight) but this is a PR debacle. If the library made a mistake, as I noted in my first post, they should have admitted it and perhaps this wouldn't be anywhere near the blow-up it has become. To the members of the thread who are librarians, library staff, library sciences students et al. - I can understand your wanting to defend the staff of this library. Where the real crux of the matter is that we don't know what went on between Palmer and the staff - it all gets murky from there. But the overall tone of the thread is more what worries me more than this one little incident. That a middle aged man can't share his love of something with others, just because they're minors. I mean, we're not talking about alcohol or tobacco or some other prohibited product - we're talking about comic books. I think it's absurd to think that because a guy shows up to an event, accidentally a teen-only event, he's automatically labeled a pedophile and all of that. I guess my opinion's skewed though. I got into anime because I used to be into (American) comics. Part of it was a bonding moment between my dad and I, but we spent a lot of time at comic book shops and conventions, always surrounded by other middle aged guys. A few years later in my youth I was doing martial arts and I was in classes with guys between 22-50. I can probably count on my hands the number of times I wasn't the youngest one in the room over a span of 9 years. If you were an anime fan then, even in the middle to late '90s when I first really got heavy into it and going to anime cons, you had to interact with people older than you. When you're fifteen and a high school freshman, it could be kinda daunting to strike up a conversation with "just some guy" in his twenties or older. Now it seems the tables are reversed; you're automatically a pedo if you talk to anyone who conceivably could be under 17! I wonder if this sort of age separation going on now is part of the reason why we have people complaining about personal behavior (aside from the bathing issue - that's persistent) at conventions and the like? Adults are shut out because of the new cliquish nature that's become anime fandom and any adult trying to interact with younger fans in a legitimate manner is automatically labeled a pedophile. Everyone complains about the hatred due to Internet Flame Wars and how fandom can't become a single entity again; don't you think that younger fans can learn a lot from the older guys who had to beg, borrow and steal to get their anime? Also lessons like being a "super fan" but still having a mainstream persona that goes to work, pays the mortgage and does a lot of "normal, boring adlut stuff", too? It's not like older fans can't learn from the young one either. The young, new anime fan has that spark that we all had when we first got into it. While the youth can learn to be more respectful about thier interest, the aged can also re-kindle that spark that we once had. Sorry, the text may seem kinda off topic but I think the context is right in how the whole library incident plays out into the general scheme of things. I'll get off my soapbox now. |
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