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@jp: Point taken. But I wonder if you're not underestimating the prevalence of rituals celebrating mainstream hobbies. In France, we don't have anything like swearing on the Bible (heaven forbid), but you can hear loud cheers everywhere on all evenings with an important soccer match. Back when I was a college lecturer, it would almost feel awkward not to participate in the discussions about how great the previous evening's last-minute goal had been—and college professors are not exactly the most dedicated followers of spectator sports.

More generally, the “weirdness threshold”, so to speak, varies according to your hobbies. That was kind of the point of the Gizmodo article that started this. And I surmise that the “too far” point for anime fan is below what qualifies as otaku (because otakudom implies a measure of emotional involvement with fictional entities that won't fly with most people).

@relentlessflame: Sorry to have misrepresented what you were trying to say, and glad that you could come and clear it up. Though I must say I'm a bit at a loss with your contention that some of us are striving for social unacceptability. I can accept that 4chan posters are often on an immature counter-culture trip, but it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that they “stick out”: you have to be somewhat involved with the fandom to even have heard of this sort of sites, so that's hardly where the public image of the hobby is formed.

And no, I was not trying to suggest that Danny Choo is too extreme. I don't think he is, though Aorii seems to think that way. The most basic problem (among many others) with Hard Gay as an (even tongue-in-cheek) gay archetype is that, well, he's not gay. I'm not an avid Danny Choo follower, but he seems to have at least the same basic problem as far as being an otaku archetype. I understand why he would be so grating to the OEG guys.

Regarding your last point, suppose for the sake of argument that we can make “the gap between us and the mainstream less pronounced”. What would we hope to gain in the process? And what compromises are we prepared to make to get there?

@TheBigN: I guess my own sense of caution goes just a step further, then (which in Japan seems to be more or less common sense).