Yet another “pioneering” event has happened in the digital world. A Japanese man named SAL9000, married his longtime virtual girlfriend, Nene Anegasaki, a character from the digital dating simulator Love Plus. Yes, folks. This is a real person with a fake name, marrying a fake person with a real name.
Here is a video of the “ceremony”:
Unless you think this is a fluke event, it’s not. In fact this is a growing trend in Japan. Here’s a quote from a New York Times article that details this peculiar cultural phenomenon:
In Japan the fetishistic love for two-dimensional characters is enough of a phenomenon to have earned its own slang word, moe, homonymous with the Japanese words for “burning” or “budding.” In an ideal moe relationship, a man frees himself from the expectations of an ordinary human relationship and expresses his passion for a chosen character, without fear of being judged or rejected.
I think this is a prime example of emergence of digitalism and digitalist culture, which I wrote about here. The inherent narcism of the Internet and digital media is leading to men who are unable to love anything that requires a pouring out of self. Worst yet, they justify it by blaming society and other women for wronging them! And worst of all, the culture in Japan revolves around pre-pubescent anime depictions of girls, often in the nude – inanimate depictions of helpless girls.
As one Ken Okayama explains it:
“I was steps away from getting married,” he explained earnestly when prodded about his experience. “You have to make sure you don’t hurt a real person; you have to watch what you say, and you have to keep your room clean. In Japan, it’s not O.K. to like another person if you’re already with somebody else. With an anime character, you can like one character one day and a different character the next.”
Many might think that something like that wouldn’t happen here, but American advertisers are already setting up technology to replace relationships as the primary value providers in our life. In what I wish was intentional irony, this ad was prominently displayed at the top of the New York Times article.
Wow.
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