Every 5 Years Everyone On The Internet Gets Into A Big Fight About Subs Vs. Dubs

First, A Fun Email I Received This Morning

This was the first email I opened this morning. Pretty upset about it. There’s a trailer. The guy who sends me these emails has been sending me porn parody press releases for a LONG time now. Like literally years. This one looks pretty horrible, but it still doesn’t top what I consider to be the worst thing on the internet — Strokémon.

I’ve Been Sending This GIF To Everyone I Know

Sorry!

A Moment Of Silence For The Joker

A Jaw-Dropping Response To An AskReddit Thread

I came across this Reddit screenshot on Tumblr. Looks like it was originally posted 8 months ago. The comment in the screenshot is pretty funny. The top comment currently is less good, which is: “Golden nuggets. They make you go yeee ha aaw.” Sure why not.

Luckily, though, as I said, I came across this on Tumblr. One user, werewolfofsector2814, who has sadly since-deactived their account, attempted to answer the question. Buckle up, people. This is a wild ride:

Here’s What I’ll Say About The Subs Vs. Dubs Thing

Earlier this week, media reporter for The Daily Beast, Max Tani, screenshot a Mother Jones article about how dubbing foreign films was better than subbing. The piece was written by Kevin Drum and it kicked off a whole hullabaloo on Twitter.

It should come as no surprise to Garbage Day readers that I, adult anime watcher, have thoughts about this. I didn’t feel like dumping everything into a Twitter thread, so here it is:

• Regardless of how you feel about subs vs. dubs, publishing this the morning after Parasite — a subtitled Korean film became the first ever South Korean film to win an Oscar in any category and the first foreign language winner of best picture — sucks, frankly.

• Any defense that this was innocently written is also negated by the fact the original version included the line, “No one likes subtitles. They’re only common in countries too poor to afford a dubbing industry.” That also sucks.

• I have read all kinds of tweets arguing that dubs are better for casual viewing and supporting foreign voice actors. Sure. Fine.

I’ve watched anime that have good dubs. Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, and Gurren Lagann all have famously well-regarded English voice casts. But there is a genuinely fantastic sense of immersion and discovery that comes with watching something subbed. I’m a big fan of Netflix’s international scifi and fantasy shows, like Dark (Germany), 1983 (Poland), Ghul (India), 3% (Brazil), and Diablero (Mexico). I watched all of those shows subbed and I couldn’t have imagined doing anything different. Part of the world that you’re thrown into includes its language! After 10-plus hours in a foreign language, you start picking stuff up, your brain feels a little more elastic, you make some connections you wouldn’t have. This week, start with something half way like Narcos if you need to, but trust me. Subs, when possible, are better every single time.

Two Really Good Tweets

Last month, Twitter user @rabiasquared tweeted out one of those basic question tweets that are really popular right now. A quick aside, these kinds of posts sort of remind me of those personality quizzes that were really popular on MySpace right before the site imploded. You can draw your own conclusions about what that may mean for Twitter. ANYWAYS…

I’m not 100% sure how I ended up in the replies, but I’m really glad I did. I came across two tweets that kind of took my breath away.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that the same speed and scale at which the internet catalogs every single horrible impulse of humanity’s collective id, it’s doing the same to small funny moments of genuine human connection as well.

Check Out This Absolutely Wild YouTube Video

I’d recommend hitting play on this for a second before you scroll any further. This will make you feel enthusiastic and excited for the future. The next and list thing on our list this week will absolutely not…

OK, Finally, Let’s Talk About The Hentai Chaturbate Thing

I made the really embarrassing mistake of referencing this in conversation with someone the other night. I was like, “oh yeah, that reminds me of the hentai AI camgirl controversy,” to which they replied with a deep uncomfortable silence. Sometimes I forgot that we’re all on our own journey in life.

Here’s what you need to know:

• There’s a hentai camgirl on Chaturbate called ProjektMelody. (That’s her in the pic above.)

• Melody is canonically 18 years old and has 87,000 followers on Twitter (NSFW).

• According to her backstory, she became a camgirl after her AI was infected by a series of pornographic pop-up ads.

• She recently posted a YouTube video called “Is Hentai Art?”

• Melody’s designer is called Digitrevx.

• I’ve seen some rumors that real human camgirls might be mad about losing work to a hentai AI, but I’m taking all of that with a grain of salt because there are a lot of men on the internet that love hentai, making shit up, and terrorizing and embarrassing camgirls.

You can read a very good VICE piece about Melody here.

I do find it interesting though that Melody appeared on Chaturbate the same month Andrew Yang dropped out of the Democratic Primary. He tried to warn us about AI replacing human labor. It’s almost as if the robots were waiting…

P.S. here’s a good goose video.

***Any typos you find in this email are on purpose actually***