I Was A Cringy Teen Weeaboo | Art + Storytime
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- In honor of spookymonth, I'm digging up the ghosts of my past and discussing the cringe of my teen years. There's catgirls in there.
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I know your deep dark secret
And yes, everyone, it really did make me laugh so hard I cried
._.
Yasss- I meannnn yuh- no no no... hmmmmmmmm Hello?
Oh my god now I NEED to know
It's better for our sanity to not know
Is that discussed on the podcast? I usually don't lke podcasts but I must know lol
"Don't kill the part of you that's cringy. Kill the part of you that cringes." Seriously needed to hear that today.
Favourite quote! ⭐️
I was apparently too young when I discovered night core to know that it was a genre, I legit thought it was a specific artist XD
@@enetgrinson8394 NOOOO XD
Me too...
until now
Well I mean some of the artists were just named Nightcore. So I can see how that could be confusing 😂
"Don't kill the part of you that's cringey. Kill the part of you that cringes."
genuinely inspiring. people should be allowed to like what they want without worrying about being deemed "cringey" or embarrassing!! (within reason ofc lmao)
also i think i'm a bit late but congrats on 100K subs!! you totally deserve it!
enough exposure to cringe culture and you'd realise that what's "cringe" is decided completely arbitrary and changes all the time. Trying to keep up with that not just inhibiting, but also is fruitless and a waste of energy
Yeah, it can be fun to be cringe! Not worrying about what other people think and having fun is what matters :)
Yeah, like how I like JJT, Googology, and Tower creator, all at once.
Indeed…. Love and embrace the part who want to love and remove the thing that doesn’t want to be the real you. ;)
humans are all cringe, and i love it sometimes
While I was taking Japanese in college, one of the grad students in the department did research on us, asking how many of us were in the program JUST BECAUSE OF ANIME.
@MrRainbow228 In my classroom, all of them.
I'm kind of like this, but instead of anime for me, it was the video game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Or it was for like 3 days because I hate learning languages.
I always pretend that no part of me did Japanese because of anime... Like mostly it was because it was more complicated, I have family that speak it, id like to go there more, and my friends were doing it. But anime was definitely part of that
This video has made me reflect on my middle school self… I think the worst thing I did was making mha characters into furries 😔
this made me cry
This also makes me cry
as a furry, this is the most funny thing I have seen today
when i was in 6th grade i cosplayed as ochako uraraka WITH FUCKING CAT EARS 💀💀
im never gonna forget the pain
man u used to be cool af
9:25 I imagined a scenario for this.
*jingling slowly approaching*
“You hear that?”
“Yep she’s coming, we gotta go fast.”
“Hey friends!”
*the pitter patter of small children running*
Ough, this gave me so much psychic damage and remembering my own cringe phase... I remembered that in middle school some "friends" and I would roleplay as Sailor Moon characters during recess. I was always Sailor Moon, and I was convinced I had psychic powers for like, 2 years. This doesn't include my own catgirl phase, as well as creating my very first Princess Tutu cosplay out of old white tshirts from my dad that I just cut up and literally stapled together. It didn't last very long, only an hour before getting tossed in the trash
That's hilarious- omg the roleplaying part made me think of when I wrote a book in second grade and asked my teacher to read it to the class (she did) and we all liked it so much that during recess we played as the characters-
@@PeriluneStar Wait that's actually kind of sweet of the teacher and your classmates, it sounds like they were very supportive!! Do you remember anything from this book that you wrote?
@@MsChaing yeah she was a very nice teacher!! Well, the book was called Wolf Adventures, there's three books in the series, and I have all of them actually! The first book is where the wolves all live together in a pack, and they're in the cafeteria and they keep hearing a banging noise on the window and try and find out who is doing it, and it turns out to be this wolf who got kicked out from the pack for some reason. It's not that great, but it was good for the age I wrote it at :)
WtG no worries I also had embarrassing moments but I had learn from my parents there is no need to be shame because that is the part of who we are (no harming anyone) we must cherish. Lol you been a full Chūnibuyo mode then activating Bankaiii!
me being a weeaboo actually built my career in art and video making too, so honestly we were just building life skills!
Holy crap! I saw my name, yay! I was much more cringey in highschool than I thought I was at the time... I was a SUPER emo, wannabe gangster rapper. Yep.. I was equal parts, writing my first album and writing ridiculous poetry that I dreamed would be discovered 100 years after my death
We all have that part in life where we think we are the hottest sh*t, but end up channeling our inner Bully Maguire.
What if it does get discovered 100 years after your death?
@Cocaine420_ that would be awesome and horrible lol
i had my weeb phase, my creepypasta phase, AND my fnaf phase all at the same time in middle school, so in 6th grade i was operating at maximum cringe at all times. i drew a ton of "creepypasta characters but anime" type stuff, and i still have an old unfinished drawing i did back then where i tried to make a fnaf/ib crossover work for some reason. one of my friends at the time (that i met because we happened to be wearing the exact same hot topic soul eater t-shirt on the same day) also convinced me to write some of the worst script format fanfiction known to man. but i think the worst thing is when i auditioned for my middle school's musical i literally just sang the pokemon theme song. no i did not get a part.
DUDE I DID THE SAME EXACT THING for drama class... we had this assignment thingy where we had to sing a song in front of the whole class, and of course my autistic ass chose the Pokemon theme song because it was the only thing I cared about back then XD And one time for a school musical, I auditioned with an MLP song. So no, you're not alone ^^
Props to Star for remembering her childhood, don’t ask me anything about my childhood before 9 I won’t have sh*t to tell you,
Edit: just changed the word “past” to the word “before”!
XD
Nothing teaches you patience like having to wait 15 minutes for your internet to load 1 minute of potato quality inuyasha on UA-cam. Those were good days :’)
I was into Warrior Cats and Dork Diaries in middle school. I was also obsessed with My Little Pony until I was like 14 lol. I think we all think of our younger selves as cringey. Who knows, I might look back in 10 years and be like "Oh ew I was into The Owl House, how embarrassing" lol.
im into warrior cats still! and i want to start watching the owl house bc my friend loves that show and i already like it too lol
and when i was little i loved MLP too
Dude I BUGGERED my family so much about MLP. I'm still a fan as I'm older now. Luckily it stayed off the internet xD
@@vaporean_boylove.0w083 Oh yeah, some of the MLP fandom is weird lol
@@-themightymittens-
I will say that I was kind of lucky that I didn't know you could go on different forums specifically for MLP, so I was able to avoid the very weird fans and just stayed away from the very critical side of the fandom.
I was a Weeb for China starting in the 5th grade but the roots started for me in Kindergarten after watching Mulan for the first time. My peak cringe was a wearing a red quilted Qipao jacket in my family’s Christmas card photo at 12. But some good things is that I read books about Chinese history which lead to me reading books by Chinese and Chinese American authors which really lead me to develop an actual constructive love for the culture and learning about issues in the Chinese American culture. It also lead to me learning Chinese and I have been actively studying the language for over three years. I would yell at 12 year old me for accidental cultural appropriation but I’m kinda proud of how I was able to turn my weeb-dom into something productive
I was an absolutely unrepentant nerd when I was a teen. I'm... just a little bit older than Star, so this was late 80's and early 90's. I remember telling anyone who would listen what "The Internet" was, and how it was going to revolutionize absolutely everything (and I hate the fact that the internet took so long to make an impact that I grew up before I could say "told you so"). I was part of Usenet, and I was the first person in my family to have an internet email address (except for the one my parents got for free from their ISP that they never even checked). I knew people who had UUCP bang-path email addresses (though I'm not _quite_ old enough to have actually had one of those myself).
My equivalent to Star's bell necklace was a binary watch I wore proudly for about a year or two. As in, instead of showing "8:30", it would show "01000:011110". The only reason I stopped wearing it was because it wore out (it was a cheap novelty thing that didn't last long).
And, yes, before you ask, I now make a living as a computer programmer and technician.
A cringe man thinks he is based, a based man thinks he is cringe
I know this may be off topic but i am saying this to everyone do you want a banana, i try to give everyone i meet a banana just to make there day a bit better and i hope you have a wonderful day
Of course
I’d love a banana
@@BDSomewhat here "gives you a banana" hope you enjoy and again I hope you have a wonderful day
Do you see banana man
Hopping over on the white-hot sand
Here he come with some for me
Freshly taken from banana tree (one, two, three, four)
Banana man, me want a ton
Gimme double and a bonus one
Gimme more for all me friends
This banana flow will never end
Do you want a banana?
Peel it down and go, mm-mm-mm-mm
Do you want a banana?
This banana for you
Tonight, we dance around the flame
Then we get to play spirit game
Spirit names, we shout out loud
Shake the thunder from the spirit cloud
All the songbirds in the tree
Chant a tune to let the spirits free
Then we see them in the night
Spirits jumping by fire light
Do you want a banana? (Do you want a banana?)
Peel it down and go, mm-mm-mm-mm
Do you want a banana? (Do you want a banana?)
This banana for you
Look you, you too uptight, you know
You could laugh and kick it back and go (wee!)
But without a rhythm or a rhyme
You do not banana all the time
Fly away from city on the run
Try to make a little fun
Look you, come to the bungalow
African't you tell me told you so
Don't you love the bumping of the drum?
Make you shake until the bum go numb
Let de bongo play you 'til you drop
This banana never stop (never stop, never stop)
Forget all your troubles and go with the flow
Forget about whatever you may never know
Like whether whatever you are doing is whatever you should
And whether anything you do is ever any good
And then forget about banana when it stick in your throat
And when it make you wanna bellow, but you stuck in a choke
And forget about the yellow from the beckoning man
Who make you take another one and make a mock of your plan
Bungalay, bungalow
Make up your mind and tell me no
(Shh)
Well, it's nine o'clock, and it's getting dark
And the sun is falling from the sky
I've never left so early, and you may wonder why
Tomorrow morning on the plane
No banana make you go insane
Floating back to busy town
No banana make you want to frown
Do you want a banana? (Do you want a banana)
Peel it down and go, mm-mm-mm-mm
Do you want a banana?
This banana for... you
@@jelly_swooshbro thank you for singing me a song you made my day and again I hope you have a wonderful day
@@jelly_swoosh I'm gonna go listen to this, on loop, max volume, with my earbuds now
I love this song
My first steps into middle-school weeaboo-dom was seeing the first volume of One Piece in one of those Scholastic book orders in 2004. Pirates of the Caribbean was the big thing of the time, and the summary said it was about pirates, so naturally I wanted it and begged my mom for the ten bucks to get it. When my 13-year-old self got the volume, I went from, "Wow, backwards book? That's weird" to "Whoa, swear words and blood and violence? Awesome!!!" I got as many volumes as I could, but I think I petered out at volume 32.
"In the all my friends have crushes so I guess I will also pretend..." I literally slapped my hands on my desk like YES THAT IS WHAT IT IS LIKE for young aces!
I also remember the exorbitant prices of anime DVDs and even further, the VHSs with maybe three episodes on them (if that) from Suncoast. Also the UA-cam episodes cut into two to three parts, would open multiple tabs and pause the videos so they would buffer while I was away at class in college. What a trip down memory lane, haha! Kids these days are really missing out on having goofy signature images and silly forums.
As someone who makes over edited CapCut videos, I feel like this will be a large and embarrassing part in my art journey once I look back at this when I’m an adult
The reason I clicked on this video was the thumbnail. I didn't feel a shred of judgement from the way present you was looing at your past self. It's silly and still a bit emberassing, but the way she looks back with this kind and almost bitersweet expression was really touching and profound to me, I teared up a little. I felt that whole final point of the video, a journey I have been on and resonate with personally, just from that expression.
"What makes you different makes you strong." - Vi, Arcane
Star's point at the end of the video exeplifies this quote perfectly; all those "cringey" things of her past are part of her too. And they've blossomed into this beautiful passion carreer. For others, that might mean realizing that you're a girl (me haha). For everyone, you get to just authentically unapologetically be yourself openly and without shame!!!
Try not to let anyone try to make you feel shame about yourself, as if there was something wrong with you and that you need to hide or supress or change. Don't kill the part of you that's cringe, kill the part of you that cringes. You deserve to be who you are.
I was obsessed with magical girl anime in elementary school, to the point where I tried animating my own series...s. Most episodes were never finished because I kept giving up on animating the transformation sequences and starting over XD My Pokemon phase was the worst, though. It was LITERALLY ALL I EVER TALKED ABOUT, so I didn't have many friends back then XD
Instead of acting out my weeaboo tendencies irl, I channel them into my writing. Great way to create storylines
Ah damn, this one just brought me back to my cringe weeb days. They were good.
A little weird, and I definitely did some things that I don't like back in the day... but I had so much fun. And just as you said, I started then to do the stuff that I do now for a living.
I also had those "how to draw manga" books, btw. I begged my parents to get them for me and they were BAD but GOOD and weird...
I still remember the timeless character design advice: give your characters different hair, because their faces will mostly be the same anyways.
Star getting mad at Tiktok is so relatable
Me who likes "dumb" shows for "kids"(the owl house, amphibia, gravity falls, Rapunzel the series, ect.): *sniff * I'm not crying! you're crying!!!
It's okay, Star. You may be cringe, but you are free.
I often look back at my younger years, and the weeb phase I had for... a lot longer than I should've (from ages 11 to around 17), and while I do often go "Oh my fucking god why did I say/do/draw/write this?", I still look back fondly, because it was that phase that sparked my love of creating characters, writing and creating stories.
One of which was a literal carbon copy of a video game called Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on the N64; the story today is so vastly different than the first iteration that you'd never know that it was originally a weird weeb's story full of "totally original characters".
16:00 LMFAO that Gaia shoutout brought me instantly back to my weeb years.
8:47 This reminds me of when I was in my Warrior Cats phase and would pretend to be a cat. I made a "collar" and everything XD It was basically just a necklace made with a piece of yarn and a big yellow bead in the middle.
I don't find anything you did in middle school cringy. I wish I had that much fun in middle school. I didn't get into anime until well into high school and was still in my Hannah Montana phase in middle school.
This video launched me back into being in middle school in 2002 and my insides just crumbled to dust from how hard my bones cringed. This is the most accurate telling of what it was like to be an anime fan in the early 2000s.
I started out cracking up to this video....then about halfway through I just clutched my head and screamed at the ceiling.
This was WAAAAY too relatable. O_O
I loved it! Awesome stuff! ^^
"Don't kill the part of you that's cringy. Kill the part of you that cringes."
If you ever found a way to include that quote in Castoff or one the D&D-streams you participate in, I would passionately applaud you😆.
I felt so seen AND heard with this video I STG. The nightcore and AMVs. ESPECIALLY Everytime We Touch. You sent me and probably several others into a nostalgia spiral
Ohhhhhh I feel this hard, It was an Undertale phase for me, still have tons of posters and a couple of plushies. Undertale fanart was what got me into digital art though! That game has a special place in my heart to this day, but I don’t work a reference to it into every sentence anymore. Maybe just every other sentence...
9:37 UH UHHH THIS IS WAY TOO RELATEABLE 🥹🤣🤣
“This one kid I kinda had a crush on, in the all my friends have crushes on boys so I guess I will also claim I have a crush on a random boy is slightly attractive and then do absolutely nothing about it type of way”
THANK YOU. This was me all of my elementary basically 😭
I'm glad i grew up in a weeaboo family. My brother, cousins, and nieces all love anime and manga
... let's say my family doesn't...
@@C052-ip9zs i was called gay for it well they ain't wrong really (aroace in ze closet)
14:40 funnily enough, I remember doing a similar thing. I wanted a song I could play offline, but didn't know how to download it, so basically, I borrowed my mothers iPhone so I could do what you did and play the music directly onto the microphone of our iPad. The big difference is that I actually managed to make it sound good (not lossless obviously, but good enough). I did this by recording it under a heavy blanket in my closet, trying to stay perfectly still after hitting play. It worked surprisingly well.
Oh god, i forgot about the 10min youtube anime episode videos. Hahaha
When I was in middle school, I started watching anime, with my first one being Princess Tutu (aside some of the more questionable antics in the show, I highly recommend it!), but afterwards I dove into a really weird phase of horror anime shows. Elfen Lied happened to be a show I really liked, and one day during class I was drawing the cover art of Lucy (iykyk), and this boy I had a small crush on saw what I was drawing and went “EWWW WHY ARE YOU DRAWING TITS???” The way I wanted to just run out of the room and rot away was immeasurable 😭😭😭
The choosing a random kid to be your crush that you actually didn't care about and mixing it with your current weeb obsession felt too close to home.
Hehe, middle school is something.
Your last few minutes of your video where you said "love something and love it fearlessly" is the information that I needed to hear about 15-20 years ago. I mean, I have discovered this myself in my adult life, but oh how I wish I could go back and tell that to myself. I was always teased for liking Warrior Cats, anime, manga, all of that fun stuff- I should have never been afraid to love it.
9:11
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
finally, youtube recommended me a good youtuber with a large catalog of videos that I can binge while eating
I took psychic AND physical damage watching this entire video dare you unearth these memories.
I LAUGHED OUT LOUD WHEN YOU SAID ALBUQUERQUE- THAT'S THE FUNNIEST SONG YOU COULD EVER USE FOR AN AMV XD
OH MY GOD. WHY DO I KEEP FINDING YOU EVERYWHERE?!?!?!?!?!?-
@@bubblelovessans OMGGGG I DIDN'T SEE THIS COMMENT LOL- HOW DID YOU EVEN FIND THIS COMMENT??
@@PeriluneStar IDK I WAS JUST SCROLLING DOWN AND I SAW U AND THE ASRIEL XD
Felt the nightcore thing, that was the WHOLE thing of my personality for 6th to 7th grade
NOOOOO THIS VIDEO HAD ME HOLLERINGGGGG the tmm and gaia online mentions specifically 😭 tmm got me to start taking art more seriously (although the style definitely leaned more into chobits after a couple of months) & my friend group assigned mews to each of us and i was lettuce 😂 my weeb phase did bleed into high school but a certain incident with my best friend's sister snapped me out of the most extreme part of it pretty quickly so i understand the laughing hard enough to cry LOL
Me at 14:50
"Ooh no. I see where this is going. Oh gosh good SHE DIDN'T SING THE SONGS"
I was scared for a moment there
Oh it's definitely a cash grab. Because even now, some animes have their season broken up onto two for DVD sales. And when some animes are asking for $50-$70 per half a season, yeah...
Albuquerque and Azumanga Daioh.
Sounds like my childhood!
Thanks for the story time! Things were wild back then, but as much cringe as it was at times, they were good times.
Thank you for telling these stories, they were an absolute delight to hear, I enjoyed it. Took me back to when I was in middle school in the 2010s. Not the same scene as the early 2000s, we definitely had a lot we learned thanks to those that came before us, but I can confirm, we were cringy too. X'''D My best friend got me into anime in the 11th grade, we had this tech class that was super lax, and we constantly had our work done before everyone else, so we would just, watch anime in the back on some websites she knew of. I got introduced to Tokyo Mew Mew as my first anime too. X''''D Haven't ever watched it in full, as she wanted to switch to Sword Art Online, but it was cool, and I continue to love Magical Girls. We enjoyed a lot of RWBY and Blue Exorcist as a friend group too. I had a few manga books for Shugo Chara, One Piece, and Fairy Tail, but none of those were anywhere near as enticing as my REAL cringy love: Sonic.
I was a MASSIVE Sonic fan growing up. I started drawing OCs to try and appear cool to one of our other friends before they moved away, and it continued to be something I would do all the time. I'd get into my first roleplaying space in the comments section on UA-cam channels, and later Deviantart would be the home for my art. It's not anymore, but that was a time. It would also kickstart my earliest days of voice acting. So many people are surprised to know I started out as Cream the Rabbit, considering that nowadays, I'm known for Rouge the Bat. That's kind of the funny thing, I was bullied relentlessly in my fandom space for a number of years, told that my art was garbage and that I would never be good enough. It got so bad that when I got to my junior year of college I quit drawing Sonic altogether. But that's the thing, I was out there studying for my graphic design degree, and it was a rough patch, I ended up graduating wondering if I was really ready for the world, afraid that maybe I really was just that bad at being a creative. And while I'm still struggling, I'm happy to report I was wrong about that.
I ended up in another fandom space that left me feeling fulfilled and happy: Bendy and the Ink Machine, and that genuinely changed my life. The second chapter was coming out right as I finished junior year, and I fell into it HARD now that I'd left a toxic relationship that had previously shamed me for my passions. I roleplayed with friends, I made OCs (one of which had her 6 year anniversary the day I'm writing this), made an effort to celebrate my fellow fans, and my positivity and passion in the fandom didn't go unnoticed. I'm now one of the Bendy Fambassadors, a group of fans brought together by voice director and actor Lauren Synger to celebrate our fandom and do creative projects geared towards engaging the fandom, and I've made friends with several of the cast members for Bendy and the Dark Revival. I moderate their cast signing streams too. It's, still really surreal, I mean having a voice actor you look up to tell you that you've got a great voice and that they appreciate what you're doing means a lot. But they're not the only ones who have me feeling welcome. I've made so many friends with fellow fans, I love hashing out theories and geeking out with them.
I recognize I'm probably still very cringy, but the difference is, I'm happier now. I have people who value me, not for my connections, not for my skills, (i mean they value me for those things too, but that's not ALL they value me for) but because I am in fact a likable person, and my passion is part of what makes me, well, me! It's a part of me worth embracing. And if there's no other takeaway, I hope people reading this at least walk away feeling a little better about themselves. Like, yeah, I needed to learn some social skills over the years, and sometimes I'm not a perfect compatibility match with those around me. Sometimes I have some extra things to navigate as a result of being autistic. But I finally get to be me now, a nerd who loves storytelling. That's seeped into every facet of my life, I am a storyteller, and that's what makes me happy. I still voice act, heck I still do Sonic voice acting. You've probably heard me if you're a fan of Adrenaline Dubs, a comic dubbing channel, I'm regularly there as Rouge. I do original stuff too now thanks to people I know through Sonic fan projects too, like voicing Venus on the original webcomic series, Tales of Annualia, something I remain immensely proud of! I can finally draw Sonic stuff again without hurting over it, and happily enough, my skills have gone way up in all my mediums.
Things got BETTER, I found good people who want me BECAUSE I'm passionate. Who cares if you're cringy? So long as you're not putting yourself or others in danger, go do what makes you happy.
9:29
As an aroace, I felt this on a different level
My interest in drawing was born from doing gacha life edits, and thanks to gacha life I also know how to animate. It was quite a cringe phase of my life, but it has served me well.
IM SO EARLY ! I used to have the SAME phase and ive had to have EVERYTHING anime themed. I had all my walls in manga pages, i had a lot of anime clothes, figurines and i used to make my own cosplays... my cosplays werent so good but i was happy. I miss that era when i didnt care that i was cringe and enjoyed it.
There were certain parts if this video that felt like they were pulled straight from my own experience. God I did so many cringy things back in middle and high school days. I wore a bell until I was told to take it off, just to name one. I also named my first car after Kisshu from Tokyo Mew Mew. And dang I think about my Gaia days often, including the friend I had at the time that did the whole fake Japanese boyfriend thing. His name was Rikamaru. 😂 but all in all, these experiences probably made us more well rounded people in the long run, and brought us where we are today. I'm about to have my first convention art booth thanks to the skill I built up in those days. You are such an accomplished comic artist and you've been selling at kons for years. We truly wouldn't be who we are now without the cringe. 🎉 Thanks for sharing your stories.
"Don't kill the part of you that's cringey. Kill the part of you that cringes."
Lovely phrase.
Im from Uruguay and we didnt have a blockbuster that would sell us anime, so what we did was, found a forum of anime fans in general and then we setted up a date and a place (rented by the forum administrators) and everyone who ever was lucky enough to download a series or any other way of adquiring one would go to that meeting with their series and a lot of DVDs... and we would spent the whole night trading copies and making new ones of the anime that everyone had... Good times
I'm sorry but
*phrase
I related so much wanting to get song audio but only having my parents' computer, headphones, and recording software! And that wearing the cat bell choker for 2 years?! Cringe, yes, but I've gotta give you props for the dedication!
25:35 this is me with transformers. My dad told me about it when I was 7 or 8. Nearly a decade later and I’ve got a 200 figure transformers collection and know way too much lore
Your life story is my life story LITERALLY!??? also I’m making a comic and I use your videos to focus 🤯
Ok when I was say 11-13 i was OBSESSED with panic at the disco. It was in 2018 when pray for the wicked came out and omg. I painted my converse red black and gold from fever you cant sweat out. I screamed ‘SHOTGUN WEDDING’ at the top of my lungs outside where probably all of my neighbors could hear me. (i didn’t know what it meant) I was ‘emo’. I thought panic was the best music i’d ever heard. It was so bad.
I was so fake edgy it makes me cringe so bad.
The absolutely inhuman noise I made when you mentioned Gaia;;;;; I'm right there with you Star, we probs wouldve traded items on there at some point in another timeline!
this exact video made me wanna read your comic recently, i really love your artstyle a lot and your comic is actually really something that made me happy, congrats on everything man love you.
You just sent me back in time to when I would watch Naruto in 3 parts on early youtube LMAO. I was also super cringy on Gaia and deviantArt back then.. my Gaia account was probably nuked but (unfortunately) my first dA account full of weebspeak and angsty journals still exists. Looking over it though, I'm sort of glad I still have some bits of my cringy past xD It was a fun time.
Awesome video, from a fellow former cringy teen weeb
I feel your pain. I too was a teenage weeaboo and seeing messages I sent and conversations I had makes me cringe SO hard. I've grown up so much! But also! Oh BOY I hope nobody ever sees those ever again.
I too had a collar, but my friend thought it was funny to buy me a collar. Still wore it til the end of my Sophomore year.
its fun how , despite the country
the Weaabo teenager were linked on the same cringe momments
i remember watching a lot of anime on youtube back then
and did a lot of thing u did, so i felt the cringe inside me screaming...
those were rough days
"Respect your elders dammit!" Had me laughing so hard I cried. 'Just Communication ' was my ringtone.
15:18 I USED TO DO THAT TO RECORD ANIMATION MEMES! oh my lords, my animation memes phase, it felt amazing at that time, not gonna lie.
It must be wild remembering your childhood in such detail.
I just know somehow in elementary school I decided Anime was amazing and needed to watch all of it (action exclusively)
Aww! I love this story! So relatable! For me, even though, yes, I loved anime and Japan too (and still do!), my equivalent of this was when I got really obsessed with a cartoon Canadian band in junior high (and into high school!) and got all my friends into them too. My friends and I always used to act like we knew them and made up this whole story that they had this whole other life outside of their music and that we all went on dates with them and to parties with them and stuff. It was crazy! We would sleep over at each other’s houses and make up this continuing story over the weekend, that every weekend, the band flew in to hang out and get into all kinds of crazy situations with us because they were on tour, but then went back to Canada because their school was there. Then my friends and I would come back to school and pretend like all that really happened over the weekend, and talk about it, around everyone else, like we were cool, when we were actually nerds who just sat around and did basically nothing on the weekend except draw and listen to the radio stations on tv. We’d talk about the DJs on those stations like they were at our parties, and about us drinking weird drinks that we actually made up, because none of us actually drank, and that even the teachers (whom we gave nicknames) actually partied with us! It was crazy! I didn’t get good grades, except for in English and art, and didn’t plan on going to college because I couldn’t afford it, but since everyone always talked about the college they were going to after high school, I said that my “boyfriend”-aka my favorite band member-was going to Harvard after high school. And my English teacher, whom was kind enough to play along, was like “oh wow! He must be really smart!” And people seemed to buy it! Lol! It was crazy! Later in high school, I think I had built up such a reputation for spewing bs, that that’s why one of the actual smart girls in school thought I was a straight a student, other people had wanted me to run for class president, and even another one of my teachers was impressed that I knew something about a subject when nobody else did because I came across it on accident while studying about that band. It was insane. But I guess people wanted to believe it since we had managed to get together the biggest friend group in our lunch room-when actually, we were just a bunch of nerds who met in choir! Lol! But, like you said, it does shape you. I got more into music from around the world and studying all sorts of other subjects because of that fake band! I got more into writing, and studying politics, and frankly, I improved my life A LOT because of them! I am forever grateful, even if, I too, ended up being so cringeworthy, that they actually ended up writing about me liking that band in our senior year yearbook!
Ah, this was such a fun video to watch and it really made me think a lot as well. It had been so long since I had last heard of Gaia Online, not going to lie. I had a few stories with that, but most of them are lost in my memory. But from what I do remember is a little before I stopped using it, I turned my entire head into an eyeball. I don't know what the hell was going through my head when I did that, but, I was young, and I was a creative.....kid back in the day. I also remember my sister friending one of the NPCs. I never had as cringy of a weeaboo phase as most people since I didn't get into anime until high school, even though I was aware of it as far back as elementary school, since I had a large Pokémon phase back in the day. I got into anime as a teen as a way to "fit in" with my online friends. I used to meme about it a bunch before I really got into watching it regularly. My first time dressing like a character from an anime was the costume of Rosario+Vampire I did in my sophomore year of high school, when my interest greatly increased the most. As time moved on, I got invested in more and more even when my high school's anime club subsided into nothing. And now all these years later, I am still an avid anime watcher and am now the secretary of my university's anime club, but it is interesting thinking about where it all started.
The like button is not big enough for how much I enjoyed this one. I was expecting to just be entertained and then you dropped some wisdom. Thx for posting this. 🎉
How are there no comments about the *MYSTERIOUSE FLAG* that popped up when she was talking about fake crushes (Ik it was the aromantic flag). But srsly tho- there was a soon-to-be-not-cis character in castoff and it got me so exited- "SHES AN ALLY--!", and - now- wow!
(Aromantic - Not feeling romantic attraction)
(NOT AROMATIC)
When I was like 20 I used Gaia to watch public domain horror movies with friends, it was one of the earliest and easiest ways to do that at the time. You and your friends avatars would be sat in a movie theatre and you could chat while the movie played on the screen. I've been trying to remember what the hell that website was called for going on twenty years now, so thanks for that.
I was a cringy, Bionicle obsessed kid, and never fully grew out it. I'd draw/build characters make self inserts, and watch a ton of shitpost stip motion videos on UA-cam. Tried making my own, but I did not get the editing software knowledge til much later. I was also a cartoon lover, and made comics in my sketchbooks, too. Went tk college for animation because of that.
And now, I'm an animation lead on a Bionicle fan cartoon starring one of my favorite characters, and I'm writing my own cartoon pilots! Tried comics, but I view them as a stepping stone towards animating.
But yeah, hard relate! Embrace what you love!
I grew up being the only one who liked anime in my family and my older sisters hating it, saying that it was for kids and weird. So I grew up being VERY much a closeted anime lover. I still am but have begun to open up and talk about it more. I guess from having a family that hated what I loved, I don’t have many cringe stories.
i didnt really have a weaboo phase but i did grow up with my brothers watching anime like Pokemon and Dragon Ball z in the computer room, my 11 year old obsession was Link from the Legend of Zelda i had a google drive full of pictures of him and i still like him a lot to this day just in a different way it brings me comfort to remember how much i used to like him
25:30
the latest moment like this for me was when i discovered lackadaisy from the pilot back in april.
This video sent me reeling back to my freshman year of highschool when me and all my friends were all Hetalia obsessed deviantart kids, it was truly tragic.
Add someone who also grew up as an anime fan in the early 2000s this hurt me as well. Like when you mentioned Gaia I literally facepalmed. I never want anyone to ever see the cringy shit I posted on there. I remember distinctively my first ever convention finding someone selling physical dark goat clips from Gaia and I begged my mom to buy them for me. My excuse was I'm too broken game to buy them but I can have them IRL.
Pekora's theme at the very beginning was a perfect touch
14:44 I honest to God thought you were about to say you SANG it yourself 😭
I just flashed back to early mornings watching Yu-Gi-Oh and other anime in parts before school on my Mom's computer.
ALSO I discovered SO MANY songs through AMVs. And I LOVED when someone would take a movie musical soundtrack and set anime to it to essentially use the anime cast as a mock version of the movie.
My favorite was probably where someone did Prince of Egypt/Yu-Gi-Oh.
Also I live in the middle of nowhere so I would have to wait for AGES for the videos to load back then.
EDIT: OMG GAIAONLINE.
I remember back before the fishtank gold-getting game exploits did some HUGE damage to the economy of the site. I *swear* that's what did a huge amount of the damage.
I remember a lot of the fandoms I was in when I was younger. Mainly FNaF, MLP and Creepypasta.
I remember the last two very fondly because they often overlapped (all three overlapped each other tbh). I remember watching “Tribute” videos dedicated to Creepypasta characters (videos that show cases fanart of certain characters over a song) and searching for the “evil” versions of MLP characters in them.
I loved the end part where you spoke about how your cringy weeb phase helped lead you to what you do now.
I became a fan of Vocaloid in 2020. That led me to discovering MMD, which led me to Blender when I wanted to learn how to make custom outfits. Now, I have just started a course in animation.
Also, I think the most cringy weeb thing I did was trying to style my hair like Asuna’s from SAO. And trying to style my hair like that turned out to be much harder than my early teenage self thought it would be.
This video and your drawing with the Vampires reminds me of own most cringy phase. Vampires. It was cringy, but I still look back at it very fondly, and I'm not as much into them as I was before, but seeing anime Vampires brings me back to that time, even if for just a second.
During my middle school age, I was a rebel. I left girl scouts and decided to be a cool kid when I joined martial arts. A movie came out and it was rated MA and I knew I had to be the first one to watch it out of the whole class. After throwing up and full of adrenaline I knew I had to have more. I started getting a lot of horror movies and surrounded myself with Gothic items. I was even into witch craft and did some pretty damn weird things xD To this day I love horror and even taking courses to become a horror movie special effects artist, but I definitely won't try to curse anyone ever again.
I was a Dinosaur Kid(TM) and I'd walk like a velociraptor all through middle school and screech at my classmates. It was fun lmao
Geez, you make me feel old... My anime phase was 2002-2004, all my resources were super early Deviantart and VHS bootleg anime lol
Kids these days don't know how good they have it because GOD I remember how painful it was to watch anime in three parts on youtube but it was also so worth it.
For real. My neices (12 and 14) are into anime, and it just amazing how different their experience is from mine. They'll never know the pains of stuff like downloading 480p anime eps in multiple parts from...ehem certain websites and watching on real media player.
Imagine being a newly-forged anime fan in the early 90’s! There was little to NOTHING available unless you were happy with the kiddy version of Robotech or some other botched dub on VHS, no less!
Fortunately the media stores started carrying anime tapes and me and my pals were finally able to see some quality dub/subbed OVA’s and series!
Oh man, when you started talking about nightcore I felt so old- I didn’t even realize people didn’t know the name of that anymore until rn 😭 I didn’t even start using UA-cam very often until well into my middle school days, so it just feels so weird to think that I would sometimes listen to the ‘relics’ of a past UA-cam Generation. No idea if it would be better or worse for the internet if we taught TikTok about the proper ‘nightcore’ term, though 😨😂
Awesome vid Star, I didn’t have a huge weeb phase myself but I had other cringy phases that this video properly reminded me of 😅 keep up the great work!
Took me back to my middle school days. The first FNaF came out the exact same day as my first day of middle school. I had so many OCs, but one was a yellow rabbit. Needless to say, when FNaF 3 came out, I was a happy camper
Don't worry Star- I ALSO tried to learn japanese with my friend. You are not alone in shaking your head at mini self- but I'm glad mini me enjoyed what they enjoyed despite what was going on in their life.
when i was 14, i was obsessed with johnny c from jthm. i drew loads of fan art, ship art, and yes, even ship art of him and myself. i also became obsessed with jeff the killer due to a comic called pasta monsters, so i drew incredibly cringey fan art of johnny and jeff fighting over me. i think back on it now and it gives me a good chuckle, but that j vs j image will haunt me forever XD
A lot of this stuff is a mirror to my own teen years as a weeb. Augh, I remember the financial pain of anime only being available three or four episodes at a time. Looking back, I am genuinely amazed my parents bought me about 30 Pokemon VHS tapes. I didn't make myself a cat ball choker, but I wore a pair of black cat ears for about five years before eventually losing them on the bus. I idolized Japan. I even did that thing where you make online accounts for a fake friend that I claimed was totally real. Since I was already an artist at the time, I made my fake friend be an artist too, and even gave "Leith" an art style radically different from my own. It actually helped me improve my drawing skills a lot, faking a wildly different style... Anyway, one of my real friends, uh, developed a crush on my fake Leith persona... so I told her the truth about him not really existing, and uh... we ended up dating in real life. Wild times! Like you, my love of anime in my youth led me to become a comic artist.
I did the bell neck choker too, in High school. You were not alone. It honestly wasn't that bad. It was just anime reference the mass school population did not get. Gosh feels its so nice to know I wasn't alone in doing this.