Hello Kitty Fanatic Experiment

It’s always an adventure (to put it diplomatically) when walking with a Hello Kitty fanatic. Usually they look at my wife, then look at me bravely smiling and give that sympathetic look — tears beginning to well up in their eyes at the pure injustice of it all — which is reserved for the truly unfortunate beings of the world; small kids starving in Africa and me.

Then there are the times when I am forced out on my own with some Hello Kitty item in hand and have to face the unapproving wrath reserved for serial killers and terrorists on the nation’s most wanted list.

So when Not That Kind of Girl decided to parade around as a Hello Kitty fanatic as an experiment, I instantly felt sympathy for her.

Hello Kitty bling

True Hello Kitty fanatics have the unique ability to deflect all of the looks of terror of those around them and magnify them onto the non fanatic in the area. This was what she was in for, so I wasn’t at all surprised by her findings:

It’s hard to say which is worse: that the cashier so coldly cut off my life philosophy, or that I was actually starting to believe my own chirpy pro-Kitty blathering. Continuing the walk, I paused with a grin of delight to babytalk an approaching bulldog (standard practice! I’ve never been rebuffed!), and the young owner physically placed his hand between me and the dog and scooted the thirty-pound animal in a wide berth of me on the sidewalk. Jesus. Did I accidentally put on a KKK hood this morning?

Then again, a KKK hood might have been helpful. At least it would have covered the damn (Hello Kitty) barrettes.

Two blocks away from my sister’s place, my get-up finally attracted its first fan. I stood at a corner waiting for a light to change; six or seven feet away, a barefoot (presumably homeless) man, carrying a defunct ghettoblaster and begging for change, gnashed his arms at passers-by and growling obscenities. Equidistant between the two of us stood a prim young-ish mother escorting her five-year-old home from Hebrew school, and waiting on the same light. “Look!” cooed the child, stretching up toward my necklace. Her mom looked me up and down. And up again. Then scooted her daughter three steps closer to Obscene Beggar…

Welcome to the daily life of someone living in Hello Kitty Hell…

18 thoughts on “Hello Kitty Fanatic Experiment”

  1. If she went to a Sanrio store and purchases some jewelry and a shirt and lose the cheesy necklace she might have gotten a better response.

    PS. I am getting a sense of Deja Vu This a second post Iread about a made up post, with plenty of misconceptions, but some outside the fandom poser.

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  2. Correction
    PS. I am getting a sense of Deja Vu This a second story I read concerning a made up post, with plenty of misconceptions, by some outside the fandom poser.

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  3. @Acton: I’m not going to start an online war here, but come on. Buying some random Hello Kitty crap at Sanrio wouldn’t have made this a true experiment, and in fact, that would have been a complete cop out. Her amazing writing style and way with words is what truly makes this experiment unique and entertaining. If you’d actually read her other blog entries, you would know that she is no “fandom poser” and this is not a made up post. HK has better taste and sense than to post something of that nature directly to his blog.

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  4. Do you have no shame? Comparing Hello Kitty to starving children? This is why nobody takes you seriously.

    This experiment was rigged from the beginning. She never had the real Hello Kitty spirit within her and people could tell. People know when you aren’t genuine. Had she been real and embraced the love of Hello Kitty, then people would have embraced her. You can’t fake it because people know so this whole experiment is tainted.

    People love it when I walk down the street with Hello Kitty. They want to talk with me and get closer to Hello Kitty. She has no idea what’s she’s talking about because she is a faker, not a fan.

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  5. personally I’d embrace any HK fanatic with a straight jacket liberally laced with C4.

    Beyond that I applaud her brave stupidity for going out like that.

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  6. Angel :I read her post.
    The problem not just her style but the posting is biased on a straw man logical fallacy or should I say straw kitty.
    She builds a straw man of a hello kitty fan and reports on it rather than seeking a real hello kitty fan. The post is a report on herself and her weak argument not on Hello Kitty Fandom.

    We can agree to disagree.

    I see the same reporting about furry fandom. The report is the one who runs around in a cheap Halloween bought outfit and was ejected for harassment.

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  7. Pingback: and I thought my Hello Kitty experience was bad… « Not That Kind of Girl
  8. darlene, then you agree that that woman was better off bringing her small daughter close to a possibly dangerous, possibly deranged man, as opposed to being anywhere near someone who isn’t “real and embracing” Sanrio’s money-making, badly-drawn cartoon character? what priorities. people “love it” when you walk down the street in HK garb because all you want to see is the good in it. you refuse to see the people rolling their eyes or crossing the street to get away from you because you refuse to wrap your mind around the concept that not everyone likes the same thing, or the fact that there has never been and will never be anything wrong with that.

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  9. “People love it when I walk down the street with Hello Kitty. They want to talk with me and get closer to Hello Kitty”
    of course they do honey. They wanna be able to smell that crack you’re always on…you know to get high ^_^

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  10. That isn’t jewelry, it’s a mini billboard…kinda like a T–shirt with writing and a picture on it…suspended on a chain…Clever…NOT !

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  11. Wow, dude… seriously, you’d think the Hello Kitty cultists would get the point by now, but it doesn’t look like it from here. I’ve heard people talk about their religion in less freakishly devoted terms, which is a very worrying thing.

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  12. i think that the paper necklace was her downfall. no true HK fan would wear a paper necklace. they would shell out the money for a real necklace (serious fans would get a Kimora Lee Simmons or Tarina Tarantino). i would think anyone wearing a paper necklace was insane. but trust me, Kitty fans know that to really love her you have to sacrifice your money.

    i’m really REALLY embarrassed to say that i think darlene is actually kind of right on this one. except about people coming up to her in the street. that’s just odd. most people don’t even notice my HK jewelry or they just don’t care. either way, this experiment was definitely interesting and i have referenced it on my own personal blog.

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  13. Haha, this reminds me of me. Whenever I go into town, I ALWAYS get kids staring at me because of my HK handbag 😛

    A few weeks ago, I was in a cafe with my sister and two friends. They’d gone up to get some drinks and stuff, and i was sitting at a table by myself. These two younger children from the table next to us were running about and one of them came up to my table, looked at my handbag and started shouting across to her mother “Look mum, Hello Kitty!” The mother of the child just looked over and saw my handbag (it’s in the shape of HK’s head, and it’s very cute, in my opinion anyway) I just laughed, smiled, and waited for my sis and her friends to get back.

    Though one day I was on a music course and on the final day of the course I went round the boarding school I was staying in wearing my HK shirt that says “Boys never call when they say they will” on it. The boarding school I was at on the course was being shared with a group of Spanish/French pupils who were learning English, and most of them had been wearing HK shirts a lot of the time. When I went down for breakfast, I was getting looked at funny by all the Spanish/French people.

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