/jp/ - Otaku Culture

You know what to tell you the truth I don't know OP. I was just thinking about this last night. I don't think anime watchers are in general more perverted than the general population. But I do think the established otaku communities around the world share in a common glee of being perverted.
If I had to take a guess it'd be that for many anime was their first exposure to many sexual concepts. And even in Japan, watching a lot of cartoons past a certain age is seen as kind of childish (emphasis on a lot, normal people do watch some anime sometimes).
So non-anime people watch adult stuff for adults and they understand that it's sexy 'cause it's for adults. Whereas dumb teens watch panty sniffing in Rosario + Vampire or whatever and there is this perverse glee that watching anime itself is like getting away with something. And this pride doesn't go away because communities kind of enfore groupthink and going with the flow. So you have a bunch of weirdos who are weirdly proud about jacking it to cartoons. Whereas people outside of the community may jack it to cartoons but to them that's just one thing they do, not a big deal.