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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   27901 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Considering the gratuitous Egyptian theming in the former, is this somehow facilitated by Hotepism? (Egypt-related power fantasies slot better into the African-American cultural narrative?)

Strong doubt.

Compare the wild popularity of Dragon Ball, which has nothing to do with Egypt.

Are Hoteps actually…common? Outside of hand-wringing news columns feeding off the latest Ye controversies.

Are Hoteps actually…common? Outside of hand-wringing news columns feeding off the latest Ye controversies.

I threw darts and ate beef jerky with one in Lexington Kentucky in 2019, so they definitely exist.

I think you might be underestimating the impact a niche movement can have on the memespace of a larger culture. Two Korean girls I know independently got married to Turkish guys (as a result of processes that can be rounded to "I heard somewhere that Turks are our kin, so I will go to Turkey and find one", starting out not knowing a single one), even though the Macro-Altaic hypothesis was by all accounts just a cute linguistic theory that has long since fallen out of fashion. Among African-Americans, I would wager there are more now who have Arabic first names while not being Muslims than Nation of Islam had members at its peak.

I mean, I didn't learn that Jamal was an Arabic name until later in life- I thought it was a black name that came from wherever 'Shaniqua' and 'Devontarius' did until doing some research on early Islam. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's lots of African Americans using Arabic names and simply not knowing about their origins- honestly some of them probably think the Arabs copied the names from them.

Dragon ball is a Hispanic thing, though. I don’t think blacks are into it relative to the baseline.

I don’t know about hoteps specifically, but there are a lot of African Americans with pseudo historical views about black greatness. Wouldn’t be surprising if hoteps were common.

My sister loves Dragonball, and has several impressively sized DBZ tattoos in normally visible places. She has a job which involves regularly interacting with black communities across the country. The tattoos are literally the first thing that comes up in any introductions, and they are apparently instrumental in quickly gaining approval and credibility with any and all black men under the age of 35.

She tells me a story about stopping to get gas somewhere in Georgia, when she suddenly hears someone shout from across the street: "IS THAT VEGETA!? ON YOUR LEG?!" She shouts back "yeah man," and three black guys working in a car shop across the street start popping off, they all drop whatever they're doing and walk across the street and have a 20 minute conversation about their favorite DBZ fights.

It's true that an entire generation of Hispanic kids grew up on DBZ, but they're not the only ones!

I’m not sure, submitting this for research purposes:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ormQQG2UhtQ

Blacks love DBZ and Naruto. Latinos love DBZ and Evangelion.

And what do white people like?

DBZ and One Piece?

Ok, challenge question: Indians?

Which kind, Amerindian or Indian-Indian?

It's probably just the hyper-successful advertisement anime? I was into Yugioh, but I was also into DBZ and other such shows and their tie-in products.

Seems like a lot of black American nerds are also deep in the same medium.

Probably also a generational thing: lots more older hwhite nerds as a proportion.

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