The origin of the word 'Weeaboo'

Always present as part of internet community jargon, who and what is a 'weeaboo'?

Memes dedicated to the meaning of this word

The word 'weeaboo' originated in the 90's in the infamous but legendary message board known as 4chan.org. It took form after a relatively obscure arcade game that consisted of slapping a duck with a paddle and the duck would make a'weeaboo' sound, meaning how idiotic can some fanboys and fangirls be.

It is a despective term used for people in Western countries that become so obsessed with anime, manga and otaku culture in general, that they believe they can go to Japan and live exactly the same lifestyle as depicted in the series they watch, or that Japan is some sort of Disneyland where situations and people are exactly like the anime series they watch.

According to urbandictionary.org, a weeaboo can be someone who likes their illegally downloaded anime to have romanji karaoke in the opening songs so they can memorize and sing them in Japanese, uses constantly words like 'kawaii', or 'moe', or even 'sugoi' to refer to things, end their sentences with 'desu', imitate all facial expressions from anime characters, imports groceries and candies from online Japanese stores, believes that anything from Japan is better than what is produced in America or Europe, and the list goes on.

In general, they live a life completely absorbed in otaku culture, thinking that the complexity of Japanese culture can be reduced to that.

But what is the difference with a Japanophile, for example?

Japanophiles are more about the culture and the way of life of the Japanese. They are more interested in history, traditions, society, politics, economy, and mostly it is for academic purposes. But that doesn't exclude an interest in media, and we can say that anime and manga are the most popular expressions of Japanese culture. It is what the foreign world sees, no doubt about that.

That's why I'm all against generalizing and discriminating groups of people with names.