Once “loving fictional characters” was something related to childish fantasies and teenagers lacking the sense of reality – no love, rather admiration and infatuation. Nowadays something seems to have changed. The number of persons falling in love with fictional characters increases – not only including teenagers, but adults too. I´d like to discuss the problematic case of loving fictional characters, with a main focus on how and why humans are rather loving fictional characters instead of real persons.
Is it a proof of society growing cold and unlovable? Are humans no longer able to compromise, and rid of trouble and controversial with a partner? Is it a flight from reality? Or is it even the anti-socialization of society, because we spent more time in the internet than by meeting others, growing unable to found emotional bounds with someone?

This topic might be somewhat between psychological, philosophical and social – so write down whatever comes to your mind, you don´t need to have a proof of anything. Just let me know your theories, ideas and suppositions.

By the way: I´m totally aware that there is a thread which is collecting love-stories with fictional characters on Personal. Nevertheless, I felt like creating this thread here because this is no personal issue, it´s a purely hypothetical question in a rather general sense, which has nothing to do with the thread on Personal.

you know, I love anime more then other people, I love the characters a lot, and I also love my two little brothers and my pet cat, I have friends, and I have someone that I love, I love her, but as a friend, because I thought that I would be happier for longer with this person as a friend, and there is a girl in my English class, I think she is amazing in every way, and, I think people are loving fictional characters because these people have had lots of trouble with their life, lots of trouble with being rejected, I was rejected by this amazing girl, and it felt weird, because I wasn't sad about it, I realized that I can be happy by myself, and I ended up loving characters in fictional universes more then actual people, it can be hard to explain even with someone who does love fictional characters,

Fictional characters are way easier to get along with. You can´t argue with them, they do whatever you want and don´t want anything in return. It´s an easy relationship compared to the trouble you have in rl.
That we´re getting dissocial could be a factor too. Don´t really know, i see lots of kids only doing stuff on their smartphones stead of talking to each other. Wouldn´t be too surprised if they couldn´t get a gf in rl.

I´m surprised that someone answered to this - I thought Random wouldn´t care...

>>2 I see. So you could say it´s a way to protect yourself from being hurt?

>>3 Don´t tell me you don´t want to buy presents for your girlfriend lol
However, I also realised that kids are growing dependant on social media, instead of trying to socialise with the kids in their neighbourhood. Once there were lots of children in the streets where I live - riding a bike, playing tag or hide-and-seek - nowadays there´s no one outside except for a few wannabe gangster.

Nobody likes your thread, Chronos :P

I had been in love with Izaya. You may remember that from a thread in Personal you messed with...

Fictional characters can give us something real persons can't. When you are in a relationship you always have to be realistic. You have to talk about school or work and lots of serious topics. You must always be caring and can't be selfish. It is a sort of pressure when you can't switch your brain off for once. With a fictional character you can. You don't need to worry about the future or about how the character thinks of you. It is like a dream with many options where nothing is impossible.

People who really fall in love with fictional characters are either overchallenged with life or had some bad experiences and are afraid of getting hurt. At least this is my opinion. I don't think that social media has so much influence.

>>5
Don´t really know, but i heard that ppl get dissocial because they don´t communicate in rl. And when someone has no contact to others, he falls in love with a fictional character instead. Prove me wrong, but this is what i thought.
I´m sorta dissocial too and too shy to talk to girls.

>>4
I´d buy her a present if i had a gf! I sear!

*swaer

*swear
I´m so sorry, i can´t write!

Humans are physiologically inclined to recognize behavioral and personal patterns that remind them of other things and respond in kind: if it reminds them of something positive, they will react positively, the same obviously going for the negative reactions. The connections the brain forms by habit are often unknown to us and can and often do apply to things like characters. For example, to take us back to most of our roots here, some people can look at Izaya and feel an inherent reaction of anger, because the behavior he exhibits reminds them of a past experience, personal encounter, insecurity, etc., that they view as negative. Others love him because their brain associates him with positive experiences. Arguably, by this logic, humans love and hate characters BECAUSE they love and hate other people, rather than in lieu of it. This is a phenomenon present in many generations prior to ours, and as a result of that, I don't think it represents anti-socialization of society. I remember when I was very young, my mother talked to me often about her favorite book series. At one point, she told me she loved one of it's characters more than my father. When they divorced, she replaced her wedding picture in her favorite frame with a picture of Matthew McConaughey. The last one was probably out of spite and I do realize that Matthew McConaughey isn't fictional, but he loved him for the characters he played, so it's relevant on some level. Probably more significantly for his abs, but that has its own physiological explanations. Idolization and love of fictional characters has been present as long as fictional characters have been, in large part because of the brain's recognition of patterns and traits.

That said, it's very clear that the latest generation experiences this significantly more often than our predecessors. It's notable to include that, like most things, this generation is simply more connected and advertised, with a tendency to post most everything online and offer it up to others. As a result of this, our statistics can't as easily or accurately be compared to those of other generations, simply because they lacked the platform availability to broadcast these thoughts and opinions. This, in my opinion, is not only an explanation for those statistics, but an influence on them: the more exposure we have to each others' thoughts, views and opinions, the more a great deal of us are influenced by them. Because this generation is so much more connected, we have more ability to talk to each other about how much we love these fictional characters: and if you feed a dog too much, its appetite grows. The more ability we have to talk about these things, the more we're feeding the dog -- the more we love them. I attribute a lot of this generation's interest in fictional characters to this.

I don't think that humanity is losing its ability to socialize or form connections just yet -- although the moment people pass from loving characters to preferring them to people, and that becomes the majority of cases, is the moment that changes -- but I do think that this generation is the most idealistic in quite a while. We know what we want and we think we deserve it, but we don't know how to get it nor do we think we need to work for it. Fictional characters are a way of saying "this is what I want, this is the dream, I want someone just like this" without recognizing that people are generally not just like anything. I can't see that leading anywhere BUT anti-socialization in that our expectations are so high that we're just asking to be disappointed by ANY real person, but I don't think we're there yet. On our way, like with many things, but not a lost cause yet.

That goes hand in hand with flights from reality, because in all honesty, I think that's become more and more frequent amongst millenials and more and more normalized. Not to say we don't have our strengths, too, but this thread IS about criticisms, after all.

I do disagree, however, with the idea that we are becoming less able to form emotional connections because of the love of fictional characters, or that loving them is a result of that. I do wholeheartedly agree that that's what's happening, but personally, I don't think it's related. It ties into my first point (which I admit, is not the only factor in why we love these characters, but it is significant): if we're loving a character, it usually means we have loved or do love a real person.

Ultimately, I think that humans as a whole are and have always been particularly cold and unloving, but loving fictional characters is not an example of it.

Holy moly walls of text

>>9 last line was edgy x:

Dude, I can't not post walls of text when it comes to philosophical questions. I'm a little sorry, though.

If I can't be the biggest edgelord in the room, why am I even in the room, honestly?

>>11 Oh, somebody wants to challenge Chronos for his position as an edgelord lol

I'm ready to throw down.

Wow. How this thread went out of topic is just wow.

>>9 your opinion is interesting. Do you think we love some stereotypes, but when we don´t find them in rl, we fall in love with a fictional character that is similar to our preferred type?

>>14 It's Chronos' thread so it doesn't matter if it goes out of topic. To bring threads out of topic is his hobby.

>>9 I think your opinion makes a lot of sense.

I grew up in the military so any friends I made in real life quickly left because it's the military. I started retreating into books when I was in 2nd grade. By the time I was in the 5th grade, I spent most of the time reading than with people. I had watched several of my friends move away and I had decided that it was easier to have fictional friends than real friends because fictional friends don't just leave (even if they "die").

I spent a lot of time obsessing over fictional characters, not because I was in love with them, but because I could relate to them in some way. Sure, I had crushes on a few characters but most of the time, I just really wanted to be their friend. Half the time I really just want to give them a hug (and I hate physical contact).

I live in one place now and I have a handful of friends, but after moving around so much it is really hard for me to connect with other people. I am also an introvert and I find trying to keep conversations going with people hard (and sometimes boring). Relationships with fictional characters don't require the upkeep that real-life relationships do and for those of us that find interacting with people exhausting, fictional characters are the ideal friends or girl/boyfriends.

I hope this post makes sense!

>>14 Thanks, I try. To answer your question, I do and I don't believe that. I think we love stereotypes because our brain is connecting them to things we've already seen and experienced, which implies that your order of events is actually reversed in that we don't love the stereotype first, but secondarily and as a result of prior events. The brain doesn't need the character to be just like the person or experience from their real life, it just needs to recognize significant similarities. In that vein, what I think is that we fall in love with fictional characters because of our real life experiences and not before them, but that a result of falling for those characters is heightened expectations for future interactions, and inevitably disappointment by those interactions. Consequentially, that disappointment could lead to a lower tolerance for real people and less motivation to meet them, which will then lead to them falling in love with more and more fictional characters and growing to prefer them because they don't disappoint.

>>16 That's interesting; your story's certainly less common than most, I must say. So, in your case, would you say that you rely on fictional characters because you're lonely? Is it out of laziness, lack of tolerance, or has it simply become your personal preference? Maybe it's something that you can't consciously know at all, without affecting your answer with personal bias. Either way, it's certainly intriguing to hear your experience with it; thank you for sharing.

It seems to me like that's the common factor for a lot of people lately when it comes to this; it's easier. Less maintenance, less disappointment, less effort, less pain. Sometimes I wonder if it's related to our generation's sense of entitlement, that because of what you've been through, you shouldn't have to try any harder than you have to to get what you want. It seems more and more frequent for people who've experienced hardships to feel like the world owes them better treatment, and that it sets them apart and puts them in a new group, one in which normal standards don't apply. For example, not having to try to form relationships and taking the easy road with fictional characters instead (and don't get me started on people thinking each other aren't worth the effort and preferring characters, and what that means about how arrogant we've all become). We seem to think ourselves so /special/ lately, thinking that the things we experience only apply to us. In reality, more people than you'd think experience loneliness, introversion, and exhaustion at the prospect of talking to others. But everyone thinking they're the only ones has led to a generation of defensiveness, overreaction, self-victimization, and segregation of social groups and tiers, and when that's your reason for loving fictional characters more than people, you're contributing to it in your own way by isolating yourself from it all. In this way, I think that the love of fictional characters DOES contribute to the anti-socialization of society; not the love itself, but the reason for it and the execution of it. When that doesn't matter to the individual and they don't feel any need to form real relationships, I suppose it's 'to each their own'; but that combined with the sense of entitlement is creating a whole generation of people who care too little about making any kind of connections, but they're all too blinded by their own lives and needs to see that they're not the only ones who are becoming so asocial. But, maybe the society that leads to will work perfectly fine -- who knows! We certainly don't. But what we do know is that our generation is amongst the most selfish yet, and we don't care about the future of our world nearly as much as we care about our own individual futures. Which is, I suppose, to say that I think that love of fictional characters over other people is selfish and detrimental. But whatever, I do it too! And I can't wait to see what kind of world that takes us all to.

NinjaTantei, I don't mean to apply any of that to you as a person, as I obviously have no idea what motivates you or what you think past speculation. I'm speaking to the grander scheme of things -- based on what you've shared, but not about it.

when everyone else is making big scientific paragraphs about why people love fictional characters and im just like

theyre beautiful thats why

>>18 Fucking fair. Same.

>>17 I don't take any of that personally.
When I was younger, my reliance on fictional characters was because I was lonely. I don't feel as lonely now because I have friends that I know are not going to move, plus with social media, I am able to stay in touch with other friends. I used to think that people were not worth the effort. I thought that it didn't matter if I made friends or not because I was just going to move in a year or two, so why make the effort. I always did have at least one friend where ever I moved, but the relationships were superficial and shallow. Military children tend to not make close friends because of all the constant moving.

I try not to isolate myself, but sometimes I do have those days where I have to shut out the world. But everyone has those days, so it's not unusual. I love people, I just wish I could connect with them better. I'm so used to the military life that I have a hard time with civilian life. Maybe things aren't as different as I think but it's hard to live as a civilian.

I don't know what to think about the future of our world. As a soon-to-be teacher, I hope I can inspire children not to be as selfish as our generation.

>>18 Fictional characters are beautiful!

>>20 Very interesting, Ninja! Admirable, too. You seem like quite the unique exception to the rule. I wish you luck with your goals for the next generation.

>>9 I´d definitely agree with humans recognising behavioural patterns and connecting subconsciously feelings or experiences with persons, which influences their formation of opinion. Basing on this fact there is the well-known “love at first sight” or “hate at first sight” – it´s something subconsciously happening without our recognition, but without doubt it is the way you stated it. Which would lead to >>14 - the mentioning of “stereotypes”. At least I believe that humans are searching for a certain type – something like a “dream lover”-, which would lead to the assumption that humans are perfectionists. Humans are perfectionists, but humans aren´t perfect, so referring to >>18 (“they´re beautiful that´s why”) humans aren´t able to find their “dream lover” in reality, and even if they find someone who might seem to fit the “type”, there will always be differences between human imagination and what reality gives us. In other words, humans can´t be perfect and aren´t able to become the – so called – “dream lover” so we have no other possibility but to fall in love with a fictional character instead. Unless we are able to find a compromise between the “dream concept” and what life offers us . Basing on this facts we could state that a fictional relationship is the best way to prevent divergences and conflicts for persons who aren´t able to strike a compromise. From this point of view a person loving a fictional character truly seems to be kind of egoistic; thinking real persons wouldn´t fit their expectations.

BUT are we even able to call this “love”? Isn´t it stated that “love” includes at least two individuals? Furthermore, isn´t “fictional love” a flight from “real love”, because the person loving a fictional character isn´t able to lower the expectations and to accept deviations from the “dream concept” of a lover? Rudely stated: A person entirely loving a fictional character is incapable of a “normal relationship” and perhaps even unable to be accepted by a partner because of insularity? So it´s no “love”, isn´t it? Wouldn´t it rather be infatuation, mistaken as being “love”?
However, referring to >>9 once again: fan bases operating like an indicator in loving fictional characters and in continuing loving them. That´s right, moreover their function is almost religious – well, at least like a worshipper cult – founding a community with people who think along similar lines, which could be an essential part in life. This leads to >>16 “fictional characters being like friends”. I´d totally agree. Why are so many people joining the Dollars? It´s simple: Because they search a community who thinks alike. We saw Mikado and Dotachin and whoever in Durarara!! and thought “Oh, how I wish to be part of such a gang” and that´s why we´re here. Also this life is much more simple than the life in the real world, because we can role-play, pretending to be someone we aren´t, but desperately want to be. With fictional characters it´s the same. We are able to form our relationship in the way we like, and it´s definitely a way which doesn´t exist in reality, because the divorce rate increases and every second couple breaks up. It´s almost as if real love wouldn´t exist - I for myself don´t believe in love. Love is an illusion and humans aren´t willing to wake up yet, so they search desperately for a “dream lover” which only can be found in fiction – at least this is my impression.

And once again >>9 I agree with you in almost everything, except for “if we're loving a character, it usually means we have loved or do love a real person”. It could also be the other way round. To explain my point of view I return to the “stereotypes”. Where do they come from? As you yourself stated they are based on our experiences or on experiences we heard from others, read in books, saw in films etc. But that mustn´t mean that we have loved someone, it could also mean that we hated someone. Let´s take a cute little girl as an example. Her father was a drinker, beating her mother, smoking cigarettes and he had dark hair and a deep voice. What kind of person will this girl love? Definitely no one who´s drinking, smoking, violent and perhaps even nobody who has dark hair and a deep voice, because the summary of all of this means “danger”! Imagine she´s 14. Everyone starts drinking and smoking and playing rough and cool – will she fall in love with one of the guys from her class? Probably not. Then she sees Tamaki from Ouran High School Host Club – looks like a prince, is handsome – that´s her guy!

“humans as a whole are and have always been particularly cold and unloving” – that´s a good statement, could have been mine. And that´s why your parents got divorced.

Oh, and I forgot to mention some unnessesary details:

>>6 you´re name´s "funnyman" so be funny and don´t apologise for typos, that´s lame.

>>13 We´ll see that, wannabe-edgelord 2.0

>>14 Nobody dares to lead a thread out of topic except for me - as you stated by yourself it´s MY "hobby". I´d rather prefer you to write something useful, Dear Kyouka.

>>23 hoo dang things are gettin salty in the innocent thread

>>24 It´s all Kyoukas fault! She started it! Don´t blame me. I´m as innocent as this thread!
Oh and by the way: You were right - fictional characters are way more beautiful than real persons (just in case I didn´t mention my agreement in >>22 ).

>>25 Why is it suddenly all my fault? :(

You said I should write something useful, I'm going to write something useful then. Whoever talked about the stereotypes was right. I had a huge interest in philosophy and psychology and searched for a potential lover with the same interests, but I couldn't find anyone my age. Then I watched Durarara, saw Izaya and all I thought was: "I want him to be real". I like his face too, he's beautiful ;P

>>22 You kill your own thread when you say that humans aren't able to love someone. But I think we are. Maybe you aren't, but "normal humans" are.

>>25 and >>26

ok do i have to be the responsible one here cuz i really dont wanna have to stop people arguing today T-T;;;

>>27 Never mind. Our Dear Kyouka has some of these teenager problems - seeking for attention caused by a lack of friends and affection, you know? But her shall be forgiven, whilst I ignore the fact that I was subtextual stated as being an "abnormal human" ^^

^ I'm interested in how you people think you can step into Random and still maintain innocence.
Care to explain?

>>27
I took that role. You're welcome.

>>29 It´s because we´re all liars, Dear Neko-chan! lol

>>29 thx m8