As someone who watched this grow, I disagree with "pretty clearly". So what do you mean by accessible narratives when you talk about the other players? And are you fully accounting for the network effects?
And I am not sure which vocal users have made their interests abundantly clear. Again, there is nothing wrong with men liking women or anyone liking anyone. In fact, the people who post the closest thing to sexual innuendos and lewd pics *are not* the people who post predominantly on those threads and I would issue them warnings if I was allowed to moderate. But I would like to make it clear that this is about much more than accessible narratives and individual success. It is a culture created out of a lot of information enabling building a network of narratives.
What league teams does Diaz play for? Cheng-I-ching?
How many national championships does Diaz play that have been streamed to youtube? Cheng-I-ching?
How many Olympics in recent years have been held in Puerto Rico? Chinese Taipei/Taiwan?
How many players from Diaz's or Cheng's countries play in WJTTC events etc.?
How many TT magazines or news articles report prominently on Diaz and Cheng-I-ching? You think if you were to produce what Zeio and now Catennacio do in terms of finding material, you would be able to do what happens with tt-kingdom magazine etc.?
Some of what happened was simply network effects - Ito is successful and develops her fan base, Hayata is upcoming and expected to be a star, Hirano did well in 2016 and 2017 and developed her fan base, the Olympics battle and Hayata missing out despite improving enough was another story, Ito trying to challenge the CNT, Hayata trying to do the same, Harimoto on the men's side with his sister , the choppers Hashimoto and Sato never getting on the team despite decent results... I mean I know names like Haruna Ojio, Kyoka Idesawa, Udesawa, Minamo Ando etc. and it is all largely because of stories shared, the T-LEague being streamed, the national championships being streamed etc.
What has happened on this forum, largely by accident but with the help of TT-fans, because it has been largely about the TT, despite talk to the contrary, has been a confluence of things that just led to a lot of talk about the JNT women. The sexual dimension of it is *much smaller* than I think people who sit outside of it would like to believe, and even if it were larger, it has largely been kept undiscussed except by a few people who think it is a good thing to discuss it in a public forum trying to appeal to users of all ages and sexes (I do not think it is a good thing for the record).
The problem with these things is that once the narrative takes hold, it will allow people to start defining the discussions as being largely about men wanting to look at women and that will do a disservice to what has gone on for a long time and built up over years. I don't think men wanting to look at women is a bad thing, but I also think that this aspect of what is happening is far from the defining element. And while I know it doesn't matter to people who want to believe what they want to believe, there is nothing wrong with someone loving to watch a woman who plays a style of table tennis he finds beautiful (and yes, I am talking about
@tzifos ).
