{"id":2376,"date":"2009-07-25T13:53:49","date_gmt":"2009-07-25T13:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2376"},"modified":"2009-07-25T13:53:49","modified_gmt":"2009-07-25T13:53:49","slug":"imaginary_girlf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2376","title":{"rendered":"Imaginary Girlfriend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Loneliness pushes people to seek comfort and solace from some unusual sources. For some Japanese men, the source of that comfort is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/26\/magazine\/26FOB-2DLove-t.html?_r=1&amp;pagewanted=all\"><i>manga <\/i>character printed on a pillowcase<\/a>. These men belong to a particularly obsessive group of <i>otaku<\/i>&#8211;hardcore fans of anime and manga. They profess to having genuine romantic feelings for their favorite fictional characters, most of whom are prepubescent girls drawn in a disturbingly erotic fashion. The implied pedophelia is downright creepy, but Japanese society seems to tolerate these&#8230;eccentric?&#8230;man-children who have removed themselves from the realm of human love and romance. If an American guy showed up in any kind of public place carrying around the likeness of a half-naked cartoon girl, he would meet a much more hostile reaction.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>I suppose this is a sign of things to come. I can foresee a time when digital actors could be indistinguishable from flesh-and-blood people; real enough to become objects of desire for people who wouldn&#8217;t give an animated character a second look. <\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?w=600\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Loneliness pushes people to seek comfort and solace from some unusual sources. For some Japanese men, the source of that comfort is a manga character printed on a pillowcase. These men belong to a particularly obsessive group of otaku&#8211;hardcore fans of anime and manga. They profess to having genuine romantic feelings for their favorite fictional <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2376' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-Ck","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}