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Post by Nester the Lark on Jun 15, 2010 17:25:31 GMT -5
Let it go, guys. This isn't an argument worth having. It's only going to boil down to personal insults.
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Post by Shrikeswind on Jun 15, 2010 18:45:30 GMT -5
Yeah, seriously. If you can't say something with a scrap of decency, even if the point is valid, is it REALLY worth saying?
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Post by The Qu on Jun 15, 2010 19:44:03 GMT -5
The reason Tohou has never came to America is because it is a fanmade series. So I'm not even sure it would be applicable for a list like that anyways...
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Post by Boo Destroyer on Jun 15, 2010 21:29:15 GMT -5
Touhou Project is literally a one-man project, with all that series of games and shitloads of characters they've got. Oh man, how'd he do that...I'm even surprised that it's got quite a fan following like that. But if anybody's gonna make another picture slideshow out of Touhou, this song would be so perfect for it. Anyone here who's very familiar with the series will get that.  |
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Post by parrothead on Jun 19, 2010 3:34:30 GMT -5
One reason why I thought Touhou Project was so popular was because it became a meme that also caused more memes related to it to be created. (e.g. U.N Owen Was Her?, Ran Ran Ru, Yukkuri Shiteitte ne!, etc.) When I was watching a Bizarre Foods episode that took place in Japan, it showed some restaurants full of a lot of female cosplayers dressed in them large waitress uniforms, while looking like they are going too deep in their dreams and sometimes ignoring their reality. It briefly showed Touhou Project-related stuff in the episode. |
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Post by The Qu on Jun 19, 2010 5:25:12 GMT -5
Newsflash: Memes are created and perpetuated by a small percentage of the internet. Just because a meme refers back to a game, does not mean that it is popular. This is why so often you see people using memes without knowing the original source. You need to stop jumping to such bizarre conclusions.
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Post by parrothead on Jun 22, 2010 23:33:54 GMT -5
Okay, then what is the actual way of measuring the popularity of something? By being a census or something?
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Post by Shrikeswind on Jun 22, 2010 23:54:07 GMT -5
Basically, yes.
Can we get past this Touhou thing yet?
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Post by The Qu on Jun 23, 2010 0:00:58 GMT -5
That's why sales data is kept, Parrot.
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Post by parrothead on Jun 23, 2010 1:20:04 GMT -5
Seriously, I terribly apologize about all of this. One reason why I mentioned Touhou Project is that I kept seeing it in M.U.G.E.N forums and some YouTube videos that are mostly about other things, but with Touhou cameos. It made me think like "Why am I seeing these a lot?", and I thought the answer was that it's very popular. I showed this thread to four people at Know Your Meme and here is what they said: Tomberry (an entry moderator from France)(PART 1)I’m not much of a great Touhou fan but, aside from the fact many memes comes from Touhou (and with it, Touhou Fanbase first), I think a great question to ask to that person would be "If Touhou fanbase wasn’t so great, why would there be so much doujin circles reusing Touhou songs, including doujin web-comics about the characters, all the dances, MADs and remix made by people concerning Touhou only ?
Even if you don’t know what Touhou is, when you stumble upon one remix/MADs that you like, you would want to search for what it is about.
So I think the “This is why so often you see people using memes without knowing the original source” isn’t always true. Even a lazy guy can do some little research to know what is the origin of the material he found.
Secondly :
Memes are created and perpetuated by a small percentage of the internet.
Wait what ? Why and where does he find that statement ? Does he have any proof of this ?
It’s easy to say that, but that’s often far from the truth.Tomberry (PART 2)Parrothead, I don’t think you can compare Touhou to such monsters which are Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, for basic 2 reasons :
First, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are RPGs, whereas Touhou is a Danmaku, a very peculiar type of shoot’em up game. That game genre is really difficult and can easily disgust people because of that.
Second, The Touhou Franchise hasn’t had as much advertisement as the other games, not to mention it reached the Western world much more later.
So, true, there is a strong Touhou fanbase on the web, more asian than westerner maybe, but you can’t just compare those games…
For that matter, I agree completely with the one who said :
Parrot, I hate to push this further, but really, he has a point. Top insert number lists like this are popularity contests. So you’re not going to see Touhou Project even provided as much.
There really is no accurate way to do this, since all polls of the sort depend on getting people to reply, and the only people who are going to reply are the people who are paying attention, which means the people who it applies to most, in this example gamers.
There, hope it helped.mona_jpn (Japanese meme researcher)As for Touhou, I think his statement is right.
Indeed Tohou’s fanfics, image macros and MADs are very very active on Dojin market and Japanese internet, but they are made and enjoyed by the specific communities on both regions. And, as compared with whole Japanese society, the population of those communities are quite small.
So, as compared with other video games, Touhou itself is never popular video game.Blah-tan (Touhou Project researcher)In context with the thread Touhou is not really popular among the rest of the world. Also that quote is saying Touhou is not popular as a video game in general. However Touhou has a much bigger existence in Japan.
Memes are among the small percentage of the internet, although this is really ambiguous. I dunno about this one.
One more thing, that Guinness list is terrible.  Well, you all win. So popularity is more about "the number of people knowing it" than "the number of people that enjoy it", right? And it's more about fan artists than fan creations; however, fan creations are like advertisements, especially when two or more different characters or franchises cross over each other in one fan creation (e.g. GAME1 and GAME2 in one artwork may cause GAME1 fans to become curious about GAME2 if they didn't know GAME2 existed). I guess the Touhou Project franchise would of been on the poll if at least three games in the series were created and published for any major console (either a PC, a Nintendo DS or any of the Big 3 home consoles) after being licensed by the console owners. Isn’t Touhou Project more of a homemade game like Line Rider, but less popular? |
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Post by Shrikeswind on Jun 23, 2010 1:48:20 GMT -5
When was it about winning or losing? I thought we were just talking?
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Post by kirbychu on Jun 23, 2010 6:00:53 GMT -5
Memes are created and perpetuated by a small percentage of the internet. Wait what ? Why and where does he find that statement ? Does he have any proof of this ? It’s easy to say that, but that’s often far from the truth. [/i][/quote] Yeah, I'm sure all the businessmen, preppy teens and old women who surf the internet on a daily basis use these memes all the time. It's not just a select faction of nerds. |
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Post by parrothead on Jun 23, 2010 16:21:18 GMT -5
Tomberry and Blah-tan also told me to ask Community Manager of Know Your Meme, Chris Menning, and here is what he said: Chris Menning (PART 1) Memes are created and perpetuated by a small percentage of the internet. Just because a meme refers back to a game (Touhou Project), does not mean that it (Touhou Project) is popular. This is why so often you see people using memes without knowing the original source. After I asked him to check this thread, he said: Chris Menning (PART 2)Well, I’ve never been to Japan nor do I speak Japanese, but if the Wikipedia entry is accurate, I’d say the thread is wrong.“Touhou Project became a media franchise spanning a steadily increasing number of official games, in addition to commercial fan books, light novels, and manga.” Commercial product? Media Franchise? It sounds to me like it grew into something far greater than the creator could have ever hoped for.That is all. |
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Post by The Qu on Jun 23, 2010 17:05:25 GMT -5
When I said meme, I meant in the internet usage of the word. Not the Dawkins sense that the word was coined as. As for Tohou's popularity, the fact that he said it has a very active niche alone defeats the idea that it is widely popular.
As most of you know, I am a big fan of the Mother series of videogames. We have perhaps the most vocal fanbase on the internet. Starmen.net is one of the most thriving communities I have ever seen. Despite this, I do not believe that the series is "popular", in or out of Japan. Sales data says it isn't widely popular.
So, just because a game has a seemingly large, vocal community online does not mean it is anywhere near popular. So please give it up, Parrot. We've defeated every point you have thrown at us over this.
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Post by kirbychu on Jun 23, 2010 17:21:07 GMT -5
This is patently false. That’s like saying only a small percentage of people ever have ideas, ever speak, or ever communicate. Culture, language, and communication are made up of memes and memeplexes. Whoever said this is talking out of their ass. This guy's talking out of his ass too, but it's muffled because of his head being so far up there. It's pretty obvious that Qu was talking about 4Chan-style memes. That guy takes his memes far too seriously. |
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