THE JAPANOPHILES' JOURNEY

There are Francophiles and Anglophiles, but nobody takes culture appreciation to the extreme as Japanophiles do. This is why several slightly derogatory terms have emerged to describe people with such an interest in Japan that they experience a sort of cultural fugue, a split from their nation. The predominant urban slang for this kind of person is  weaboo. This is a corruption of the earlier, also-still-in-use term weeaboo. While this sounds like it has very Oriental origins, weaboo in fact originated from a webcomic (The Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch). In the comic, the word was intended to be used just that one time, but it was quickly spread by 4chan boards (for the site was originally intended for Japanophiles) to replace the more derogatory term wapanese, a portmanteau of "white" and "Japanese" (in the style of wigger). Since then, usage has exponentially increased, especially from 2014 to 2016. In the original comic, weeabo was actually hyphenated as wee-a-boo, but that quickly died out.